Introduction to .NET MAUI

You may have heard of .NET MAUI and are wondering what, exactly, it is. Not to worry – we explore the basics of the App UI and what it means for .NET developers in today’s coding highlight.

If you have not heard of it, don’t worry – .NET MAUI is not an entirely new technology! .NET MAUI stands for .NET Multi-platform App UI. But what, exactly, does that mean?

.NET MAUI is simply Xamarin.Forms supporting desktop apps. What is nice about this is that it can be used with Visual Studio Code. While experimental, it is still better than Xamarin.Forms not supporting Visual Studio Code at all!

.NET MAUI provides a single stack that supports all modern workloads, including Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. Each platform’s native features are included in a cross-platform API with which you can deliver awesome user experiences while sharing even more code.

In .NET MAUI, you can use a single project to target multiple platforms. This simply means you can quickly deploy to targets such as desktops, emulators, simulators, or physical devices with a single click. Built-in cross-platform resources enable you to add any images, fonts, or translation files into a single project. .NET MAUI will automatically set up all the necessary native hooks, so you just have to code. You will also always have access to the native operating system APIs. With .NET MAUI, everything is in one place, allowing you to be more productive.

NET MAUI supports MVU (Model-View-Update), Blazor development patterns, as well as MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel), and RxUI (ReactiveUI) like Xamarin.Forms does.

MVU provides a unified way to build cross-platform native front ends from a single code base. Blazor, meanwhile, is an adaptive programming model for building web applications.

.NET 6 further extends the Blazor platform and also supports complete hot reload.

Hannes DuPreez
Hannes DuPreez
Ockert J. du Preez is a passionate coder and always willing to learn. He has written hundreds of developer articles over the years detailing his programming quests and adventures. He has written the following books: Visual Studio 2019 In-Depth (BpB Publications) JavaScript for Gurus (BpB Publications) He was the Technical Editor for Professional C++, 5th Edition (Wiley) He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for .NET (2008–2017).

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