how does the .NET MAUI delay affect MBB & Blazor Desktop?

[BenMakesGames]

I'm really excited about MBB and Blazor Desktop. I've been working on a medium-sized application with MBB, expecting to release with .NET 6 and Blazor Desktop proper. with the delay of .NET MAUI, some questions have (re)surfaced for me:

• what is MBB's relationship to .NET MAUI exactly? I've found it difficult to find examples of how to do Blazor Desktop in .NET 6 ("blazor desktop" doesn't seem to be a topic a lot of people are talking about, in general)
• does the delay of .NET MAUI affect MBB? if so, how?
• what are the anticipated changes I'll need to make to an MBB application once .NET 6 and/or .NET MAUI release, if any?

thanks for any help. Blazor Desktop has been a joy to work with, and I'm excited (and sometimes a little nervous) about its future!

[Eilon]

Hi @BenMakesGames , here's a few thoughts on this:

• Mobile Blazor Bindings (this repo) is an experimental project that is technically independent of other projects, including Blazor Desktop, .NET MAUI, and others. This serves in part as an incubation for trying some new ideas with Blazor, one of which was the BlazorWebView control.
• Blazor Desktop, which will be supported in .NET MAUI (on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android), and in WPF and WinForms, is all located in the https://github.com/dotnet/maui repo, and was delayed for a target of Q2 of 2022

The main developer for MBB is... me! But I've also been spending almost all my time on getting BlazorWebView for .NET MAUI / WPF / WinForms, which meant that MBB has taken a backseat to that effort.

MBB is not stopped (though I admit it seems it has, it's genuinely a "pause"), and it will continue to serve as a place for us to experiment with new ideas for Blazor (and we have plenty!).

I hope this clarifies a few things. If there's any more questions I'd be happy to try and answer them!

[BenMakesGames]

thanks for the response! (I really didn't expect one so quickly!)

do you see MBB as always being "experimental", with the proven ideas moving into BlazorWebView for .NET MAUI/WPF/WinForms? or is MBB intended to stand as a production-ready alternative someday?

[Eilon]

MBB for right now is purely experimental and we have no firm plans to ship it as an "RTM" release. But, as we see with BlazorWebView, a major component from MBB is being made into an RTM release for next year (~Q2 2022).

Having said that, there's nothing stopping anyone from using MBB in a production app, but it is unsupported from Microsoft, so that can be seen as having some risk (of course, the same is true of many packages on NuGet as well, which are often unsupported in an official capacity). I realize that's not a great story, but that is where MBB sits right now.

[gpproton]

MBB is a no brainer to use for individuals like me who do lot of single file components development, I really don't see why it's still in an experimental state.

[BenMakesGames]

@Eilon I'm not afraid of code just because it hasn't received MS's blessing. (there isn't a world in which I don't use popular 3rd party packages found on NuGet.) my worry is more along the lines of... whether MBB sees itself someday among the ranks of Avalonia, Angular, and other such frameworks, or whether it's purely a testing grounds for concepts and code that may make their way into MS-blessed .NET.

MBB does feel stable to me right now (I've encountered missing features, but no outright bugs) and I'm happy using it. I guess I'm just trying to set my expectations for the future. (and it's totally fair if you don't know the answer right now, or aren't willing to commit to one at this time!)

[Eilon]

@gpproton said:

MBB is a no brainer to use for individuals like me who do lot of single file components development, I really don't see why it's still in an experimental state.

It's experimental because we're not making any guarantee about its status and it's unsupported. But it's not a statement about its quality or usefulness. We're just saying "here's a cool science project, let us know what you think!" 😄

@BenMakesGames said:

@Eilon I'm not afraid of code just because it hasn't received MS's blessing. (there isn't a world in which I don't use popular 3rd party packages found on NuGet.) my worry is more along the lines of... whether MBB sees itself someday among the ranks of Avalonia, Angular, and other such frameworks, or whether it's purely a testing grounds for concepts and code that may make their way into MS-blessed .NET.

MBB does feel stable to me right now (I've encountered missing features, but no outright bugs) and I'm happy using it. I guess I'm just trying to set my expectations for the future. (and it's totally fair if you don't know the answer right now, or aren't willing to commit to one at this time!)

I'm very happy to hear this! Per my comment immediately above, experimental just means there's no guarantee of any kind (or any commitment). It really is meant to be a testing ground, and there have been some large breaking changes between the previews, and whatever we do with it in the future might take a drastically different form, or maybe it stays roughly where it is now.

I know for some individuals and companies having a strong guarantee from the package author is an absolute requirement, but of course that is far from true for many others. So it depends on what you need from the project to decide whether it's suitable to use.

I've personally used MBB to build and publish a native app for iOS that I use all the time: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rezipe/id1529670338 (it even has a 5-star rating out of ONE review 😁).

[Kylar182]

I've been using Blazor WASM since beta 4 or so and all my production side apps are now on that train. I've encouraged my day job (a Super mega giant corporation) to move this route. We've been doing Framework MVC with Ajax and Xamarin for our mobile apps. We're moving to Blazor and Blazor Webview. I demonstrated some to my bosses and we're all quite excited at the large amount of shared code. Keep at it, Blazor is the future.

[Xyncgas]

heros don't wear capes thanks captain Eilon