Developing New Experiences, Deep Dive

TH12 Deep Dive: Surfing in Maui

06/16/2022

1:15pm - 4:00pm

Level: Intermediate

Sam Basu

Developer Advocate

Progress

You are invested in .NET and Xamarin technology stacks. But there are some pain points in the present reality. Perhaps you crave for cohesiveness, maturity and want to have more confidence in the Xamarin.Forms ecosystem?

Let's look at the future with .NET MAUI – the evolution of Xamarin.Forms slated to run on .NET 6. The promise is exciting with major updates to most parts of the Xamarin developer experience and tooling. Developers would be able to write more cross-platform code from a truly single project to target a wider selection of platforms, across mobile & now desktop with Windows/Mac support.

Architectural changes make app bootstrapping more consistent and allow for supporting the traditional MVVM design pattern, as well as the newer MVU style for additional developer flexibility. .NET MAUI also opens the funnel to invite more developers into the ecosystem by offering choices in the UI stack – web technologies, like Blazor, are welcome towards building native/hybrid apps.

But what if you have existing mobile apps with Xamarin? How much work would it be to migrate to .NET MAUI? Would the Upgrade Assistants help? Would you have to drop Custom Renderers in favor of the new MAUI Handlers? And there are lots of enterprise ‘legacy' desktop apps out there written in WinForms or WPF. What role could .NET MAUI play with app modernization? Could Blazor be brought in to modernize and share code better with web apps? Could your .NET backend APIs be Minimal and more efficient?

All this & more as we take a real-world look at migration strategies and app modernization with .NET MAUI. Catch the right waves & you'll surf into the future with MAUI.

Maui in Hawaii makes most people think of fun and relaxation. .NET MAUI is mean for work, but the tools you know get better, projects get smarter, apps aim to be more performant and developer cycles get tighter loops with Hot Reload. .NET MAUI is a combination of technologies to evolve cross-platform .NET development stack for future – a state of mind for surf & fun. Let's explore!

You will learn:

  • About .NET MAUI from a mobile developer's standpoint
  • Platform reach & code sharing
  • Tooling improvements & design patterns
  • About desktop options for app modernization
  • How to bring in Blazor goodness in existing desktop apps
  • How to migrate Xamarin apps to .NET MAUI