WebWindow

[maloo]

What is the status of WebWindow? I didn't hear any news at Build. Are there any alternatives? I was looking forward to switching from WPF to Blazor for desktop apps.

[DamianEdwards]

It's still an experiment but we're also investigating how to integrate .NET MAUI (the announced evolution of Xamarin.Forms) with Blazor to allow the creation of cross-platform native apps using Blazor and web rendering. Whether we offer something like WebWindow in addition to that is yet to be determined and will depend on the various factors of each solution and how they compare to the features and trade-offs customers are interested in, e.g. access to OS capabilities vs. download/runtime size.

[rogihee]

See the pinned issue in the repo, it is not actively being worked on at the moment: SteveSandersonMS/WebWindow#86. There are two actively maintained alternatives mentioned.

Note also that the WebView2 component is now in preview for .NET Core as a nuget, making it real easy to roll your own WPF/WinForms app: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

[shaggygi]

Referencing microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml#2499. Understanding not directly related to WebWindow topic, but does fit in with discussion of WinUI, MAUI and such.

[noseratio]

WebView is nice as a thin wrapper around platform-specific HTML rendering engine, IMO suitable for small projects. However, for production-quality cross-platform LOB Desktop apps, I'd be looking for a direct replacement of Electron, where .NET Core and Blazor WebAssembly serve the same purpose that what V8 does in Electron.

[michalczerwinski]

Beg to differ here.

Server side Blazor has many advantages and would feel more natural. For me thin WebView + Blazor Desktop (based on Server side, but via IPC) is a natural way to go.

[noseratio]

@michalczerwinski, just to clarify, are you saying you'd be interested in running Blazor Server and WebView as parts of your multi-process desktop app, and using some sort of local IPC (in-place of SignalR and WebSocket) to maintain a connection between the two?