Closed anawishnoff closed 3 years ago
mdtauk
commented
3 years ago Can you possibly detail how extensive the "Sun Valley" design refresh for Windows will be?
oh and another confirmation Acrylic wont be too far away from 3.0's release (I always ask this question!)
huoyaoyuan
commented
3 years ago It's 2021 now. What's the progress of open source?
skullbrb
commented
3 years ago Are the Fluent System Icon set on Figma planned to come to Windows soon?
saint4eva
commented
3 years ago When do we expect the open source, and when is the support for dotnet and UWP coming?
saint4eva
commented
3 years ago Tell us more about the tooling. And be open to provide answers to people - even if it means shipping the features next year.
TheJoeFin
commented
3 years ago It seems like Windows Ink has been largely unchanged for years now. Is there any plan to bring some of the "rich inking" experience (like in Microsoft's apps Whiteboard and OneNote) into WinUI?
wbokkers
commented
3 years ago I really want WinUI 3 to succeed, since it will bring many benefits for our app's users. Unfortunately, I still can't get these features to work:
wbokkers
commented
3 years ago I don't understand all the fuzz about open sourcing, fluent design, theming and other gold plating features when there are so many issues in getting LOB features to work on WinUI.
mveril
commented
3 years ago I really want WinUI 3 to succeed, since it will bring many benefits for our app's users. Unfortunately, I still can't get these features to work:
- Use protocol activations on desktop
- Get WebAuthenticationBroker to work on desktop
- Drag/drop (using custom bitmaps)
- Open the app using an execution alias Without these features, we can't migrate our UWP app to WinUI 3 Desktop. Are these features on the roadmap?
Hello @wbokkers For protocol activation it's independent of the UI framework. you can normally do this with the MSIX manifest and by calling the AppInstance.GetActivatedEventArgs static function. I have already used it for file activation but I have not tested it for protocol activation. You can also take a look at the App Lifecycle Project Reunion issue on GitHub that aim to port the UWP App Lifecycle to desktop Apps For the desktop app execution alias it's also already available in MSIX but be careful this doesn't use the CommandLineActivatedEventArgs but the LaunchActivatedEventArgs. So you can use the classical Win32 method to get the command line arguments.
mdtauk
commented
3 years ago I don't understand all the fuzz about open sourcing, fluent design, theming and other gold plating features when there are so many issues in getting LOB features to work on WinUI.
The idea is to decouple the WinUI framework from the OS version. Once WinUI has been lifted out of the Windows codebase, then it allows them and the community to update, add features, fix bugs, and move the framework forward, rather than being tied to the twice yearly OS updates, and ensure new features be available for the other supported versions of Windows 10.
The delay comes from problems found with the Windows code, and it requiring re-writing, or some negotiating with OS capabilities which will not be open sourced, but which WinUI will rely on, or closed source code that the current Windows.UI.Xaml relies on.
wbokkers
commented
3 years ago @mveril Thank you, Mickaël. I couldn't get it to work using the MSIX manifest for desktop, but I'll look into it again.
See also this issue: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/3441
huoyaoyuan
commented
3 years ago I've mentioned that new members introduced in WinUI 2.5 (InfoBar, NavigationView.FooterMenuItems) not available in WinUI 3 Preview.
When will they be ported? When can we switch to WinUI 3 as default branch?
mveril
commented
3 years ago @mveril Thank you, Mickaël. I couldn't get it to work using the MSIX manifest for desktop, but I'll look into it again.
See also this issue: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/3441
@wbokkers Sorry I have tested it this weekend and effectively it's not working for WinUI 3 desktop contrary to WPF
eleanorleffler
commented
3 years ago Hello! I have three questions:
Will there be a WinUI Preview 4? If so, when?
Is there a fix for the DataGrid (Windows Community Toolkit) crashing when scrollbars are needed? If so, will it be in the Preview 4 or will there be a new Windows Community Toolkit release (preview or regular) that will have a fix?
Will there be a public release of Win2D (preview or regular) that supports WinUI 3 before the WinUI 3.0 release (either with WinUI Preview 4 or stand-alone)?
mrlacey
commented
3 years ago Is it true that WinUI3 isn't going to work on Windows Insider builds until it goes GA? (source)
alvinashcraft
commented
3 years ago My editors are hoping to sync up my book's release as close as possible with RTM.
mdtauk
commented
3 years ago At the moment the roadmap has a bunch of things listed as Post-3.0 (3.x releases)
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md
Will we be getting the Roadmap updated with specific lists for 3.1 and 3.2 etc - and possible dates these releases will be aiming for?
LuanVSO
commented
3 years ago will there be an update with the newer fluent icons for the "Segoe MDL2 Assets" font in windows?
StefanKoell
commented
3 years ago There are still many reasons for WPF apps and sometimes it is the only choice due to technical constraints (controls ecosystem, embedding ActiveX, compat., running as Admin, etc.). When do we see some investments in WPF? Better, faster rendering, compiled bindings, etc.
harvinders
commented
3 years ago @ranjeshj It would also be great to try out our apps with the new styles for controls (through preview releases of 2.6). This way we would be able to give any feedback we may have using it in real world apps.
marcelwgn
commented
3 years ago @harvinders You can already test the news styles with this snippet:
<XamlControlsResources xmlns="using:Microsoft.UI.Xaml.Controls" Version="Latest"/>Note that this API is still a WIP and might change.
niclar
commented
3 years ago What's the status of the wysiwyg editor for XAML (for winui3/c++) ?
stevenbrix
commented
3 years ago Tell us more about the tooling. And be open to provide answers to people - even if it means shipping the features next year.
@saint4eva, do you have more specifics? I just want to make sure we actually answer your question, because I could probably say a lot about this :)
Tropix126
commented
3 years ago âIs there a plan to update UXTheme styles to match WinUI controls on windows?
mrlacey
commented
3 years ago For future calls: as you record via MSTeams, please can you enable live captioning to help those of us who have difficulty hearing
anawishnoff
commented
3 years ago @mrlacey - That's an excellent suggestion, thank you! I'll look into that for the next call.
Noemata
commented
3 years ago First, I'd like to qualify the following remarks as a personal view only, I don't pretend to speak for the wider WPF or UWP dev community. I still find the communications associated with WinUI bewildering. Community calls seem to be devolving.
The messaging around WinUI needs to change dramatically; because WinUI timelines have become opaque; because the premise of WinUI has become even more opaque; because the work being done on WinUI is being done behind a curtain (so much for all the Open Source bravado); because deliverables keep getting whittled down to a feature set that is deficient for a minimally viable alternative to what WPF and UWP both offer today.
A version 0.5 product designation, if we're going to be honest is really an alpha stage release that has all the bugs stripped out. Giving the October 1.0 release a 1.0 designation isn't honest either since it will be missing significant capabilities relative to present day features of WPF and UWP and is not likely to be as stable or as performant as UWP is today.
Remarks about client side development being defunded by Microsoft don't help either.
Hard questions seldom get answered, beyond a "we'll get back to you."
What's also mystifying is the premise that Microsoft is listening to its customers. Apparently lots of folks were clamoring for XAML Islands to ease modernization efforts, yet this capability will be missing from WPF .Net 5 "by design"? I sincerely doubt any WPF devs will pick .Net Core 3.1 over .Net 5 as their preferred path forward, and will bypass using XAML Islands altogether. Especially given options like: https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf
None of the developers I know that use WPF (myself included) are moving their large apps to UWP simply because it is still missing critical LOB capabilities that make the port too painful to consider. Only fresh start efforts might get such a consideration (to which corp managers say no as we've seen with current UWP adoption rates). Hence, WinUI is unlikely to entice WPF developers to adopt a UWP dev paradigm despite the sandbox free execution context. XAML Islands was supposed to be the baby step path forward to modernization. Yet that path is now a dead end with .Net Core 3.x.
Microsoft could have ported Winforms and WPF so they ran on top of the UWP compositor and given WPF/Winforms/UWP an unrestricted execution mode in addition to a sandboxed execution context. WPF and Winforms would be way faster running on top of UWP's compositor. Yes, that leaves out the MFC/C++ devs. With better tooling and OS support, C++ UWP could have been a viable option for MFC/C++.
The WinRT API was initially sold as the great new thing and the future of Windows. What happened?
It's ok to say WinUI will be available in 2022 provided the wheels on UWP and WPF keep getting lubed. At the moment, it looks like WinUI is taking all the oxygen away from the world we, your loyal developer community, live in.
Please don't tell us React Native is the new way forward unless you wish to accelerate retirement plans for XAML diehards. I'd rather be lied to.
huoyaoyuan
commented
3 years ago Thanking for asking my both questions. I'll do some explanation about them.
Currently I'm unsatisfied with the preview experience:
You have many works and can't change your workflow. Please be more active on GitHub with the issues. Make a comment for you are investigating, getting fixed in internal preview, or even investigated but feels too complex. Let us know more about progress of fixing bugs recorded on GitHub.
carmineos
commented
3 years ago Is "Multi-window support for Desktop apps" included in March release coming with Project Reunion 0.5?
JanRajnoha
commented
3 years ago Some people mentioned here bugs, that, maybe, will be fixed next preview version, but some developers, who loves testing new features, including myself, are stopped with current preview 3 and insider builds on without any option to develop again their apps, because of some bug in Windows insider versions. No workaround, no further information, just message, we must wait to next release, which will be in March. It needed two issues to be reported we get some response (#3815 and #3954). Many people believe(d) WinUI 3 will bring new options of developing, new possibilities, modern UI and many more things, but it still looks like some alpha version. Another problem was with content dialog. The first thing, that I tried on WinUI 3. In just few days I found 2 bugs, which one of it was critical so it was unable to use this control (#3804). Funny is, terminal team found this bug and only workaround was: Don't use it, we don't do it neither.
I could work without xaml designer, i could work without some functions and controls, but this isn't just controls, this is much more wider problem.
gavinwilliams
commented
3 years ago Some people mentioned here bugs, that, maybe, will be fixed next preview version, but some developers, who loves testing new features, including myself, are stopped with current preview 3 and insider builds on without any option to develop again their apps, because of some bug in Windows insider versions. No workaround, no further information, just message, we must wait to next release, which will be in March. It needed two issues to be reported we get some response (#3815 and #3954). Many people believe(d) WinUI 3 will bring new options of developing, new possibilities, modern UI and many more things, but it still looks like some alpha version. Another problem was with content dialog. The first thing, that I tried on WinUI 3. In just few days I found 2 bugs, which one of it was critical so it was unable to use this control (#3804). Funny is, terminal team found this bug and only workaround was: Don't use it, we don't do it neither.
I could work without xaml designer, i could work without some functions and controls, but this isn't just controls, this is much more wider problem.
Have to agree with this, coming from Swift when Apple make a development decision and do pre-releases, we're in a position to not just build MVP's but know that in 12 months it can be production ready and released to market.
I was at WWDC when Apple announced Swift, there were grumbles after the announcement, but everyone knew on that day that Swift was the future and everyone had their hands on the latest macOS and iOS releases to get their hands dirty. I don't have that same confidence with WinUI 3. That's just my opinion, and may be jaded by not knowing what to build my apps in right now, i.e. UWP, WPF, WinUI or just roll with the punches in Flutter, Electron or React Native for Desktop.
I don't want to dishearten anyone on the team, I know a lot goes into this work, I'm on insiders dev channel so obviously haven't had the opportunity to experience it.
For people just getting into Windows development it can be off putting and disheartening when they go through the effort of installing everything and can't even get their app to run and their only option is to wait several months or re-image their machine. Even now the documentation hasn't been updated to let people know that it won't run on insider previews.
JanRajnoha
commented
3 years ago I remember days, when was Windows 8 introduced and Microsoft had great plans to merge mobile and desktop platforms together. OneNote for Windows 8 was great app with, in my opinion, revolution radial context menu. MS has great concepts, great plans, but sometimes many of them fail, because ... it is hard to make it real? i don't know, but progress last years is extremely slow to compare to effort on Android. Launcher, keyboard, all other apps. I hope one day I will see same effort in desktop. Many people are hyped for Sun Valley, because it could bring this hope to reality and make Windows modern and user friendly. Yeah, phones are bigger and bigger part of our lives, but desktop won't disappear, because of phones. I use Windows 16 hours per day, maybe more. I use it in work, at home, in bed during learning for exams, for presentations, for everything in my life. I always my phone nearby, but many times i sent links to PC, continue on PC, because it is better. Bigger screen, bigger keyboard, much bigger performance, multiple screens.
People in MS are doing great work, no doubt, but I see it work many times in other parts of main products and technologies, like WPF, UWP and so on. I made framework for quick creating information systems based on modules. All in UWP, it works and with some touches could be used for production apps, but future of UWP is uncertain. Everything is PWA, but performance is there horrible and UX same.
Why wasn't UWP brought to perfection as WPF? Why UWP miss many capabilities compare to WPF? But okay, move on. Now we have here WinUI 3. Something, what i see as combination of both. For my master thesis I select Win UI 3 as option to create great modern apps with capabilities, which developers know. New UI based on Fluent, that from day, when was it introduced as Project Neon, I saw as new modern wind to windows. Many apps still don't fully implement it and if so, it still has specific UI differences.
MS now has great opportunity to show, they know how to do great apps, great OS and great tools for developers, who could use it in their apps, and their own system is something, want they want to do. Many people, and not just developers, but users too, expecting you bring this year something unbelievable to us. And with WinUI 3 we could participate in it too. Many developers are waiting and want to help you to shape it to perfection. Together we could make it available to all and make many people happy again from using Windows.
marb2000
commented
3 years ago We've read a lot of thoughts, suggestions, and opinions here. And we are grateful for all of them, even the criticism, because we can learn from them and serve you better. Sometimes we have the time to respond to the community, others we don't have the bandwidth to give you a proper answer on time, my more sincerest apologies for that. Please, continue giving us your feedback; there is always room for improvement. Luckily, the good news is that we are already addressing some feedback, but it requires some steps first before being there.
Answering some questions:
Is "Multi-window support for Desktop apps" included in March release coming with Project Reunion 0.5?
The March release will include Multi-window support in Desktop WinUI 3 apps. However, it will allow only one Window per thread. We won't support multi-window on the same thread because we are not happy with the current quality of the bits. I demo'ed it several times in some public events, but we found several scenarios where the current implementation is not reliable. So we have postponed it.
WinUI3 apps not running on Windows Insider build 21292.1000
The team is trying to support the Windows Insiders' latest bits, but it is not always possible. Remember, we need to support the older versions of Windows, and the matrix of testability is enormous, as the cost of maintenance. So we decided to prioritize final releases of Windows first (given they are the ones that will be in the production environment), and then the rest. Windows Insider bugs are lower than Windows Releases in our ranking list.
Please ship preleases much more frequently. The quality of Preview 3 is still far from GA. There must be a Preview 4.
We want to do it, and we are planning to do it. This is one of those things that will be accelerated when we made WinUI 3 open source. But even without being open source, the new release cycles, with previews and supported versions, should help give you bits more frequently.
ContentDialog Input not working for TextBox
Ugly bug. This is the type of bug that looks simple, but it is complicated to fix. Fortunately, I believe it has been fixed in the main branch, so it should be part of the March release.
saint4eva
commented
3 years ago @marb2000 Thank you Miguel for providing answers to some of the questions in a more sincere and open-manner - we appreciate it. One more question, please could throw more light on the state of UWP app model on WinUI and the status of the .NET support for UWP/ WinUI.
Thank you in advance.
mrlacey
commented
3 years ago Sometimes we have the time to respond to the community, others we don't have the bandwidth to give you a proper answer on time, my more sincerest apologies for that.
We know you can't always give a quick answer to every question but this response could easily be interpreted as implying "we're to busy to engage with the community." For a project that wants lots of community engagement and intends to eventually be fully open-source, this doesn't send a good message.
Also supporting the need for more communication is that (from my perspective) a lot of questions that are being asked (on this thread and the wider repo) are about clarification or due to a lack of information. For example, on the call 3 days ago, we were told the roadmap has changed and new dates added. But the documentation has still not been updated.
Similarly, you acknowledge that there are issues with using Preview3 on the latest Windows Insider Preview builds but the homepage explicitly calls out that Windows Insider Previews are supported. At best it's not clear that that message only applies to 2.*? Is this another example of where you (collectively--I'm not picking on an individual) don't have the time to keep the community informed or up to date?
shaheedmalik
commented
3 years ago It's better to release a huge RTM than a half baked or a stable, feature incomplete WinUI3.0 that doesn't have feature parity with WinUI2.5.
Microsoft releasing unfinished products is a main complaint about Microsoft from people in general. People keep complaining about it but Microsoft keeps doing it and wonder why people aren't using the products and cancels them.
ryandemopoulos
commented
3 years ago I appreciate the many questions here. Beyond what Miguel wrote, allow me to address whatâs been asked so farâand as always Iâll aim to be as transparent as possible:
Will there be a WinUI Preview 4? If so, when?
@eleanorleffler @mrlacey @huoyaoyuan @JanRajnoha Yes, we are planning to ship a Preview 4 in early-mid Feb. We decided to do this after last weekâs Community Call, which is why I didnât mentioned it on the call. Thereâs three motivators for doing this: 1) Fix the issue where we donât work on Insider Builds, 2) start getting into a cadence of shipping Previews faster and more frequently, and 3) Get one more preview in before we ship our first supported release (another opportunity to gain feedback on bugs, things unstable, etc)
Is there a fix for the DataGrid (Windows Community Toolkit) crashing when scrollbars are needed?
@eleanorleffler We're still trying to reproduce this problem on our end; haven't been successful yet but we're exploring it.
Will there be a public release of Win2D (preview or regular) that supports WinUI 3 before the WinUI 3.0 release (either with WinUI Preview 4 or stand-alone)?
@eleanorleffler This is in active discussion internally; I don't have an answer yet but probably will have one soon.
Can you get more specific yet about the WinUI 3.0 release date, or is it still 2021 H1? WinUI timelines have become opaque
@alvinashcraft @noemata There are 3 planned âsupportedâ releases of WinUI 3 this year: one in March, one in May/June, and one in October. Our WinUI roadmap document is in the process of being updated, so I apologize that update isnât out yetâI suspect itâll be a few days and when weâll merge the update. It should give you a reasonable sense of how various features are trending for each of those releases.
Additionally, as I mentioned on the call, weâre also changing how we ship. Weâll be moving to a dual-channel ship cycle, similar to how WinUI 2 works, where we ship a âstableâ set of features and a âpreviewâ set (which include everything weâve done).
A version 0.5 product designation, if we're going to be honest is really an alpha stage release that has all the bugs stripped out. Giving the October 1.0 release a 1.0 designation isn't honest either since it will be missing significant capabilities relative to present day features of WPF and UWP and is not likely to be as stable or as performant as UWP is today.
@noemata Being very transparent: many times I have pondered whether the name âWinUI 3â was the right name for what we work on. We picked that name because it elevates most of the features of WinUI 2 and carries them forward into a new framework, so âWinUI 3â felt very natural as a name. As well, WinUI 3 is intended to replace the WinUI 2 stack eventually, yet another reason why WinUI 3 seemed like the obviously correct name.
However, I do think this name has created some confusion where people think that WinUI 3 is going to be the successor to WinUI 2 the day that it first shipsâand that isnât the case. There will be a period of timeâprobably a year or twoâwhere WinUI 2 and WinUI 3 will both be state of the art, and developed in parallel. The March, May, October, and even beyond October releases will be missing capabilities that WPF and UWP have; in some cases WinUI 3 might never bring some of those capabilities forward. It is a new frameworkâit will have a steadily increasing set of similarities to those technologies that broaden over time, but it is also something different that will grow in its own unique direction. We donât want to wait on using 1.0-style terminology until it has all the capabilities of WinUI 2, because itâs not a goal for it to have all the capabilities of WinUI 2. I hope that helps clear things up.
Regarding the 0.5 release: it is to be stable and free of most/all major bugs in the features that are included. It wonât be an âAlphaâ, or a âBetaâ, or even a âPreviewâ in terms of stabilityâweâre intending it to be fully supported and something that people can start building & shipping real world apps on. Weâre following Semver2 versioning rules, and we anticipate there could be breaking changes between some of the earlier supported versions we ship (0.5, 0.8, 1.0), so thatâs one of the main reasons why weâre starting off with 0.x numbering.
What's also mystifying is the premise that Microsoft is listening to its customers. Apparently lots of folks were clamoring for XAML Islands to ease modernization efforts, yet this capability will be missing from WPF .Net 5 "by design"?
@noemata Itâs possible someone misspoke here, or perhaps is just using imprecise languageâperhaps what they were talking about was XAML Islands in UWP XAML, rather than WinUI 3âŠ? To try and be clear: Iâm hopeful to have XAML Islands done by our stable Oct releaseâweâre still evaluating our dev plans to see if thatâs possible, but I think thereâs a good chance Islands will land in October. When Islands ships, it will work with the latest .NET (which would be .NET 5 in Oct, and .NET 6 after that). I do apologize if it appears that weâre not listening to customers; the irony is that Islands still requires quite a lot of work (both in runtime and tooling), and was on a path for 2022 at one point, but the chorus of voices asking for us to ship it faster made us re-evaluate and that's why we're seeing if we can get it done this year.
Microsoft could have ported WinForms and WPF so they ran on top of the UWP compositor and given WPF/Winforms/UWP an unrestricted execution mode in addition to a sandboxed execution context.
@noemata WPF lacks many things; a modern compositor is only one of them. If WPF works great for you, then please use itâitâs not a goal of anyone on the WinUI team to convince people that WPF should not be used; itâs solid technology that is more than good enough for many people. WinUI 3 aims to be different: it will be a next-generation UX framework that we build next-generation UX experiences on for Windows. Starting with WPF or WinForms would not achieve that goal.
Please don't tell us React Native is the new way forward unless you wish to accelerate retirement plans for XAML diehards
@noemata React Native is not the way forward since our platform strategy is to embrace several technologies, allowing developers to choose the technology that best suits their needs. React Native is great for developers that want to write apps that look & feel native, but use JavaScript/JSX as the primary way to do it. Traditional XAML developers will likely shy away from thisâand thatâs fine. XAML developers continue to have other great options spanning WPF, WinUI 2, and soon WinUI 3 will be added to that mix.
Since it's not open sourced, we cannot see the progress of bug fixing, nor compiling directly from master to get critical fix
@huoyaoyuan Youâre absolutely right. As soon as we can be open source, we will be. I donât have a specific date and I wish I did; I will say that it remains an important aspiration for the team.
I do hope that helpsâfollow-up questions/dialog welcome.
Noemata
commented
3 years ago @ryandemopoulos , your remarks, more than any others give me a little piece of mind. In particular your "probably a year or two" remark about parallel UWP/WinUI development helps a lot. I still think there needs to be a better answer than obfuscation for managed code developers, else Unity might start to grow even faster. I really dislike how Unity is starting to fragment .Net. I've had similar concerns for XAML land. If it hasn't yet become obvious, I actually quite like where UWP is at now. If there was an answer for Validation, most remaining UWP LOB limitations could be resolved.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions.
llothar
commented
3 years ago Could you please consider publishing at least a few parts of your code as open source? It doesn't need to be compileable into a useable artefact. I just want to see the code of some controls so i can use it aside with the documentation to develop my app. I'm an old time MFC C++ programmer and i don't find the documentation satisfying at the moment. So anything will help.
marb2000
commented
3 years ago Could you please consider publishing at least a few parts of your code as open source? It doesn't need to be compileable into a useable artefact. I just want to see the code of some controls so i can use it aside with the documentation to develop my app. I'm an old time MFC C++ programmer and i don't find the documentation satisfying at the moment. So anything will help.
@llothar you can find the source code of some WinUI 2 controls which are very similar (identical?) to WinUI 3 at here. For example, the NavigationView control has a complete implementation in WinUI 2.x.
Also, you can find a couple of WinUI 3 samples in C++ that used on my demos here.
Hope this helps!
StefanKoell
commented
3 years ago @Noemata WPF lacks many things; a modern compositor is only one of them. If WPF works great for you, then please use itâitâs not a goal of anyone on the WinUI team to convince people that WPF should not be used; itâs solid technology that is more than good enough for many people. WinUI 3 aims to be different: it will be a next-generation UX framework that we build next-generation UX experiences on for Windows. Starting with WPF or WinForms would not achieve that goal.
This alone, shows how little MS understands what the dev community really needs. I have talked with many devs who do desktop development and really everyone, without any exception agrees that the issue is not that we WANT to use WPF, the issue is that we MUST use WPF because UWP doesn't work for us. That's what's so frustrating.
I want compiled bindings. I want the better compositor and faster rendering, I want all that but what I also need for my app is:
Just to name a few. We rely on many of these components and have existing code which was written decades ago. We simply cannot effort to just rewrite everything from scratch.
In my years as MVP I've heard many promises from Microsoft they failed to deliver. Two years ago, it was promised "it doesn't matter what your project is: WinForms, WPF, UWP. You can simply mix and match all UI technologies freely". Two or three years before that (roughly 4 or 5 years ago) it was promised that you can do anything in UWP what you can do in WPF (hosting legacy components, for example). Well, nothing really happened and it's still chaos.
This whole inconsistent mess, this whole "technology" situation is the reason I really hate to work on a Windows desktop app. For 5 years we got promises and promises and it didn't get better. Our app (Royal TS) is also available on mac OS and sometimes I really wish I can switch with my colleague and work on that. Granted, it is not all perfect over there.
The sad part is, many things I expect to be delivered by the OS vendor's SDK is delivered by 3rd party with far superior support and quality. Look at DevExpress's UI frameworks. Look at SVG support. Look at Avalonia (yes, they have compiled bindings and a much faster rendering pipeline and a good cross platform story).
WinForms got a lot of attention since it has been open sourced. Many great improvements from MS and the community. WPF is just "good enough" and "solid" but doesn't get any love whatsoever? Sure there are PRs related to minor things and ARM64 but what about better rendering and compiled bindings?
Sorry for the rant but I really hope that MS realizes that there's also a big number of devs with existing, large and complex code bases with many 3rd party dependencies who need a way to go forward and modernize their apps without rewriting everything.
JesperTreetop
commented
3 years ago I agree with @StefanKoell but I also think about it differently.
Metro/WinRT started out as its own thing and bifurcated all Windows software, few developers and users were comfortable with how it looked, felt and behaved, and then Microsoft attempted to bring their focus back to the desktop by taking WinRT kicking and screaming into UWP.
As a programmer and as a product developer, I appreciate the hard work that's been done by many people over time to turn UWP into a desktop platform and to improve the design language. But it's just not there, and the experience is just not there either. UWP applications feel terrible. Having control borders show up when you hover over them is a cool effect, but it's horrible usability, what used to be called "mystery meat navigation" when it was an anti-pattern on web sites doing cool things with Flash for its own sake. I understand that WPF would maybe not have been the perfect paradigm for tablet applications, but the same things make Metro and its spiritual successors not perfect for desktop applications.
Does that mean I want every desktop application to look like they did in 2001? No - and if Microsoft is having another go at tightening up what's now called Fluent, I want to give them another chance. I've been waiting for Microsoft to make a coherent move on this front since Windows 7, which cleaned up many of Vista's inconsistencies and brought it forward. But if it will turn out to be one more iteration of the same formula, a lot of developers will still hold back because despite some of the technological advancements in the foundation, they won't see bringing their application over to UWP as a net positive. Microsoft needs to realize that this is the crux of the issue, and get back to formulating a desktop experience that takes advantage of what being on a full-fat PC can give you, rather than standardize on blown-up tablet paradigms in the mistaken belief that they provide a better user experience.
wbokkers
commented
3 years ago Thanks @marb2000 and @ryandemopoulos for answering some questions. Are you willing to answer me as well on the state of these open issues regarding WinUI 3 for desktop:
WebAuthenticationBroker not working https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/3692
Drag/Drop not working https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/2715#issuecomment-733202320
Execution Alias not working https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/3441
Protocol Activation not working Tried both MSIX and registry
This call is now over, but you can watch the recording at the link below! This issue will be closed in a day or two, afterwards feel free to post any lingering questions as an issue on this repo or as a question for the next Community Call.
https://youtu.be/MulUg7iD2-s
Details
Date: Wednesday January 20, 2020 Time: 17:00-18:00 UTC (9:00-10:00am Pacific)
Anyone and everyone is welcome - no pre-registration is required. This will be an informal interactive live stream directly with members of our engineering team.
Format
The community call is a call among the WinUI team that is live-streamed onto YouTube. We present on new updates, share information, welcome guests, and answer your questions. In this month's call, we'll be welcoming one of our community members!
Q&A: At the end of every community call we have a Q&A session where our team and guests answer your questions about all things WinUI. Ask your questions in the comments of this issue! If any questions come up during the call, you can ask them live in the comments as well.
Agenda Intro, background on WinUI - @anawishnoff Community Spotlight - @niels9001 speaking on Fluent Design & WinUI WPF Updates - @predavid-zz WinUI 3 Schedule Updates - @ryandemopoulos Q&A
Leave your questions below as well as general topics you'd like to hear about on the call!