The choice of tools these days is daunting. I'm starting a rewrite of a legacy VB6 application and as a small team these days, having to deal with Windows, Web, Mobile, and probably Mac is almost to the point of wanting to give up. My dream has been a feature rich Desktop app such as in WPF with DevExpress's suite of controls. But I think most these days want mobile first and regardless, mobile is almost a requirement in this day and age. I thought of just going web and that would cover cross platform but it's not really the standalone mobile experience or really handling offline scenarios. So I'm dabbling in the new project template that just came out in Visual Studio 2022 17.12 which is the MAUI Blazor Hybrid + Web which pretty much covers all platforms.
I enjoy ASP.NET Core and Razor pages so this architecture all based on Razor is exciting. I certainly have a lot to learn with it as it's a bit different from ASP.NET Core Razor (MVC) that I'm used to but it appears exciting. However, it's a very different mindset and you have to re-imagine your app's UI unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know. My dream of an amazing WPF Desktop experience with rich grids, dock panels, etc. is probably a "yesterday" thing and I don't have the manpower to do a separate WPF app. However, maybe using the blazor hybrid to incorporate Razor into a WPF app could be an option but unlikely due to just more stuff to keep up with. I think if a great mobile app is created, that's 90% of it, a web experience is great, desktop on Mac and Windows will be a little different due to the Blazor Hybrid I believe.
My concern is how an app will be accepted in this containerized web view experience. I guess time will tell.
I'm curious what other devs think about creating apps going forward that are containerized in Blazor WebViews? What is your opinion on a new project replacing a legacy desktop app with MAUI Blazor Hybrid?
Gone are the days of just creating Desktop or Web apps!
I enjoy ASP.NET Core and Razor pages so this architecture all based on Razor is exciting. I certainly have a lot to learn with it as it's a bit different from ASP.NET Core Razor (MVC) that I'm used to but it appears exciting. However, it's a very different mindset and you have to re-imagine your app's UI unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know. My dream of an amazing WPF Desktop experience with rich grids, dock panels, etc. is probably a "yesterday" thing and I don't have the manpower to do a separate WPF app. However, maybe using the blazor hybrid to incorporate Razor into a WPF app could be an option but unlikely due to just more stuff to keep up with. I think if a great mobile app is created, that's 90% of it, a web experience is great, desktop on Mac and Windows will be a little different due to the Blazor Hybrid I believe.
My concern is how an app will be accepted in this containerized web view experience. I guess time will tell.
I'm curious what other devs think about creating apps going forward that are containerized in Blazor WebViews? What is your opinion on a new project replacing a legacy desktop app with MAUI Blazor Hybrid?
Gone are the days of just creating Desktop or Web apps!
