Thanks … looks very promising
This is a perfectly valid criticism. I was first burned by this when Microsoft “merged” with Fox Software in the early 90s. Right after the “merger”, I interviewed the FoxPro dev team with their media handlers present in my capacity as technical editor of FoxTalk Magazine and was assured that the cross-platform strategy started by Fox Software (DOS, Windows, Xenix, MacOS) was, except for the DOS version, intact and so I passed that on to my readers and my own clients. A year later, there was still a “cross platform” strategy, if you count Windows 16 bit, Win32s and Windows 32 bit. Xenix and MacOS were nowhere to be found. I never forgot that lesson.
I have fulminated in this space about the constant churn around RPC standards over the past 25 years. I have pointed out that WPF is now twisting in the wind, and hopes of WinForms coming back from that state are probably people seeing what they want to see.
To the extent MSFT has articulated a desktop / cross-platform strategy it is probably the still-evolving .NET MAUI. For web, it’s a duel between the current (and not 100% backward compatible) version of ASP.NET MVC Core and Blazor. My guess is that in practice, Blazor will see more corporate uptake than commercial development uptake, since ASP.NET MVC Core is more similar / relatable to how most devs build web apps today. Blazor will sink or swim on the benefits of using C# on both client and server as much as possible … I don’t see that appealing to commercial product devs but I can see it appealing to CTOs in larger corporations. Even there, it goes against the current (and in my view, unwise) fascination with “full stack development”. I give Blazor a 50/50 chance of being here and still “hot” in 5 year’s time. If it’s still prospering in 2028, it will probably endure for a long time. I give ASP.NET MVC an 80% chance. Not because I believe it’s the best of the two directions, but just because it should appeal most to the sheeple. I actually like Blazor better but to bet the farm on it … especially any sort of faux-desktop application … doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.
I would probably give Radzen a go if my client insisted I make dev tools available via the web rather than requiring them to buy VPC seats for users. At this point I rather doubt they will make an issue of it though. It’s small potatoes, cost-wise.
1 Like
Its its own full blown IDE that you can use much like you’d use Xojo
You can create, build, & debug in it and never touch VS (thanks for the cmd line tools MS !)
The upside is that it DOES create a standard VS project so you can open it in VS and work there IF thats your preference
Of course you dont get the GUI designer as VS doesnt have one for this type of project - at least not on the Mac. Windows VS may be different
Interesting discussion about all this on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blazor/comments/13wp562/starting_with_blazor_wysiwyg_designer/
Arguments for & against WYSIWYG UI design for the web generally and Blazor in particular.
You said it does rely on responsive row/column layouts so you probably have to be okay with that framework.
Well you CAN make it rely on rows & columns
You arent forced to - at least as far as I can tell you arent
The rows / columns layout seems quite typical for responsive designs so as you move from a large desktop browser layout down to a tablet then to a much smaller phone the same layout just adjusts
Thats nice
The other upside to something like Radzen is you CAN user EITHER the WYSIWYG or code it by hand
Or a mix of both
I wanted to see what it would do if I moved one element in code in split screen mode (so I could see the WYSIWYG layout & code) and it just updated the WYSIWYG layout when I cut then pasted the element from one location to another
Was quite nice to watch
Now dont get me wrong - its NOT perfect but I definitely like the mix & the choice of which way you want to work
And interesting read EVEN I you dont ever try it
The overview & motivation ARE good reads