Uno Platform’s vision since day one has been to bring WinUI everywhere, enabling developers to create pixel-perfect single code base, web, mobile and desktop applications using both C# and XAML.
That’s why this year’s UnoConf proved to be an exciting one as we got to share the release of 4.0 and how much Uno Platform has matured – and why we called it a “platform” to begin with.
We welcomed viewers from over 30 different countries this year, showing that Uno Platform is making waves globally. We were able to showcase contributions to the platform from Microsoft, demos from core team members and more. If you missed this year’s UnoConf, we’ve got you covered.
In this UnoConf blog series, we’ll be breaking down each one of our speaker sessions and their demos in a deep dive. Make sure to tune in weekly, for now you can catch up on our tech talks firsthand from links below.
• Uno Extensions
• Styling Uno Platform Applications
• Deploying Uno Platform Applications to Azure
• Using Native Controls in Uno Platform Apps
• Best Practices for Testing Uno Platform Applications
• Migrating WPF Applications to Web
• How Uno Platform ports features from WinUI on Day 0
You can also view snippets of Uno Platform in production and why our clients are betting on us.
Kicking off, you’ll be happy to know that Uno Platform 4.0 is running on top of the newly released .NET 6 and now also supports the latest release of WinAppsSDK 1.0 and therefore WinUI 3.
Since it’s inception, we wanted Uno Platform to be more than just a UI framework, we wanted it to be an all-inclusive platform that offers everything you need to build an app efficiently. We initially began by offering ready-to-use Fluent, Material and Cupertino but now we’re introducing four new major parts of Uno Platform to help you in your developer journey: Uno Toolkit, Uno Extensions, VS Code Extension and Uno Platform for Figma.
Uno Extensions is a package of productivity helpers to help you get started with your new Uno Platform projects. The first of these extensions is what we call App Templates it gives you everything you need in terms of patterns and recipes to get you going. It builds on top of services extensions to add dependence injection, logging, serialization, and a variety of other helpers that will be helpful for you when you’re building an app. The second extension we’re shipping today is Uno Reactive, what we’ve coined internally as MVUX – MVU for XAML. It allows you to write business code as a reactive immutable declarative set of code while we generate all the glue required to make your XAML happy. We’ll be publishing hands-on guides about it soon along with more extensions. You can learn more about the navigation extension in Nick Randolph’s session.
Another addition is the Uno Toolkit. It contains eleven controls that aren’t part of WinUI as a desktop focused technology but do make a lot of sense in a multi-platform world. At UnoConf keynote we showcased, the Tab Bar, both in bottom and top format, then the Navigation Bar that allows you to navigate easily between your pages and the surprise Auto Layout control. Plus, a variety of more controls will also be shipping in the Uno Toolkit, including a set of controls that are available as part of the Uno UI Toolkit with Cupertino and Material designs.
Also shown at UnoConf keynote was a preview our VS Code Extension. With it you will be able to benefit from C# and XAML code completion for VS code. It gives you the same experience you would have with intellisense and Visual Studio but within your favorite VS code environment. Part of our VS Code Extensions is C# and XAML Hot Reload so you can make modifications in real time and see the impacts of these modifications within your app without having to restart and rebuild your app.
Lastly, we launched a free preview of Uno Platform for Figma. It contains a component library of WinUI controls and Material components packaged together. It also contains a plugin that allows you to live-preview all your designs as to how they’re going to run in the WinUI app and generate that XAML automatically into your app.
Hope you enjoyed UnoConf and we hope to see you there next year – hopefully in person!
