Microsoft Build 2022: Xamarin & MAUI Recap

Microsoft Build 2022: Xamarin & MAUI Recap

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7 min read

Build is Microsoft's premier developer conference, taking place annually in May. As with the past two editions, Build 2022 was an entirely online conference with live sessions over three days and more available on-demand. Most of the live sessions are now available to watch again so I will highlight and discuss the sessions of interest for .NET MAUI, Xamarin, Blazor Hybrid and React Native developers building cross platform native apps.

Live Sessions

There were two live sessions about .NET MAUI and Blazor Hybrid apps which now have recordings available.

Build native apps for any device with .NET and Visual Studio

Tim Heuer | Maddy Montaquila | Leslie Richardson | Daniel Roth

Build native apps for any device with .NET and Visual Studio

In the initial segment, Tim Heuer discusses the fast adoption of .NET 6 by the community and features that aid with cross platform development like unified base libraries & SDK, Hot Reload support everywhere and Apple Silicon support. He then announces the release of .NET MAUI, providing a summary of its features, and introduces the .NET Podcasts reference application.

.NET MAUI in .NET 6

Starting at 07:30, Maddy Montaquila shows us how to get started with .NET MAUI development. Maddy demonstrates the features of MAUI including the single project solution, creating shared icons and splash images for every platform, XAML Live Preview, the Live Visual Tree and Hot Reload for XAML and C# on Android, iOS and Windows.

Starting at 20:30, Tim introduces Hybrid apps with Blazor & .NET MAUI which allow you to combine web and native UI technology in a native client application. Built on top of .NET MAUI, Blazor Hybrid apps have access to the device to call native APIs, access the file system or use native controls if you want them.

Choose your stack

At 21:38 Dan Roth demonstrates the features of a modern web app built with Blazor using the .NET Podcasts application. Dan then shows us how to get started building a hybrid app with Blazor & .NET MAUI using Blazor components in a native MAUI app. Maddy joins Dan to demonstrate the Listen Together feature in the .NET MAUI version of the podcasts app which is built using a Blazor web view and Blazor components.

Starting at 30:30, Tim introduces Visual Studio 2022 and discusses some of the new features that help with cross platform development including WSL integration, IntelliCode for whole line completions and suggestions for common code refactorings as you type and improved integration with GitHub and Azure. He also announces Visual Studio 2022 17.3 Preview 2 which will natively support building and debugging ARM64 apps on ARM-based processors with Windows 11 and upcomming support for ARM in .NET Framework v4.8.1.

Visual Studio 2022

At 33:14 Leslie Richardson shows us some of the new tools in Visual Studio 2022 including IntelliCode, Hot Reload, temporary breakpoints and the new built-in spell checker. Leslie also demonstrates Port Tunneling, an upcomming feature that makes it easier to debug a backend API from a mobile device. If your organisation uses Azure Active Directory you can signup for the Microsoft Tunneling Private Preview.

Starting at 37:50, Tim discusses how Azure can help you build a backend for your mobile apps using .NET 6. Along the way he touches on Azure Static Web Apps, Azure Functions, Azure Container Apps and using GitHub Actions to create a code to cloud pipeline with Visual Studio 2022. He also demonstrates two new features of GitHub - GitHub Advanced Security with push protection to help prevent unwanted secrets being committed into your repo and Actions Job Summaries which append job information to your workflows such as test results and visualisation.

Visual Studio - GitHub - Azure: Code to cloud

Finally at 49:15 Tim announces the latest .NET 7 Preview 4 release and .NET Conf 2022 on 8th - 10th November.

Ask the Experts: .NET and Visual Studio

Tim Heuer | Mads Kristensen | Maddy Montaquila | David Ortinau | Daniel Roth

Ask the Experts: .NET and Visual Studio

This was a Q&A session on Teams following the session above which summarised the earlier announcements and discussed .NET MAUI, Blazor, hybrid apps and Visual Studio 2022.

There are too many great questions and answers for me to summarise so I suggest you watch it. In particular Dave & Maddy answer questions about moving from Xamarin Forms to MAUI, updating Nuget libraries, testing tool support and what's next for MAUI.

On-Demand Sessions

Several shorter on-demand sessions are of interest to developers of .NET MAUI, Xamarin, Blazor Hybrid and React Native apps. There are also sessions for developers looking to publish Android apps on Windows 11 via the Amazon AppStore and Windows Subsystem for Android or Windows apps on the Microsoft Store.

.NET MAUI - Updates and Roadmap

Maddy Montaquila

.NET MAUI - Updates and Roadmap

.NET Multi-platform App UI has shipped! Maddy Montaquila explains what .NET MAUI is, how to get it, new capabilities, changes from Xamarin and what to look forward to in coming releases. Maddy also demonstrates improvements in Android startup performance versus Xamarin Forms and Xamarin Android.

.NET MAUI Roadmap

Although .NET MAUI is GA the tooling is still in preview so you will require the latest preview version of Visual Studio 2022 on Windows (17.3) or Mac (17.1). On Windows the tooling should GA in August and on Mac in November.

.NET MAUI Roadmap Milestones

This is a really good session to watch, with Maddy's usual enthusiasm and lots of information for cross platform .NET developers.

Xamarin Roadmap

Native client apps with Blazor Hybrid

Daniel Roth

Native client apps with Blazor Hybrid

Blazor is expanding beyond the web to enable support for building native client apps using a hybrid of web technologies and .NET. In this session Dan Roth explains the Blazor hosting model, discusses the latest Blazor improvements in .NET 6 and how to use your Blazor skills to build native apps with .NET MAUI. Dan shows us how to get started building a hybrid app with Blazor & .NET MAUI, using native device APIs and Blazor Hybrid UI support for modernising WPF and WinForms apps. Finally he discusses the new features coming to Blazor in .NET 7.

Blazor in .NET 7

This session is largely an expansion of Dan's segment in the main live session but if you're interested in Blazor & MAUI hybrid apps it is worth watching.

Make your cross-platform apps best on Windows

Maddy Montaquila | Steven Moyes

Make your cross-platform apps best on Windows

Extend your cross platform apps with native capabilities to build more engaging experiences. In this session, Steven Moyes and Maddy Montaquila discuss options for cross platform app development using React Native and .NET MAUI and why you might choose one platform over the other. Many of Microsoft's own apps are built using React Native including parts of Office, the XBox app on PC and Power Apps.

React Native & .NET MAUI Comparison

This session is more of an overview rather than technical but would be a good introduction if you don't know anything about React Native or .NET MAUI.

Bring your Android apps to Windows

Andrew Leader | Hamza Usmani | Mario Vivani (Amazon)

Bring your Android apps to Windows

Hamza Usmani and Andrew Leader discuss publishing your existing Android apps on Windows 11 using Windows Subsystem for Android. They show how to install the Amazon AppStore, which installs WSA in the background, how to install an app from the AppStore and how to debug your app using WSA from Android Studio. Mario Vivani from Amazon explains how to sign up for the Amazon AppStore and get progress updates. He also shows how to identify that your app was installed from the Amazon AppStore when you need to use Amazon specific APIs instead of Google ones. They also discuss best practices and optimisations.

What is Windows Subsystem for Android?

This session is really targetted at native Android developers but if you are thinking about publishing the Android version of a Xamarin Forms or Xamarin Android application on Windows 11 using WSA it is still useful.

Note: Windows Subsystem for Android is currently in preview and only available in the U.S. market. Developer participation in the Amazon AppStore on Windows 11 is in closed beta and only available to a selection of apps.

Finding your success in the Microsoft Store

Pete Brown

Finding your success in the Microsoft Store

Pete Brown discusses tips and techniques for getting your app through the certification process in the Microsoft Store on Windows. Including common certification blockers, a few specialized situations, tips for navigating the certification process itself and what to do if you need support.

Common Certification Blockers

This session isn't specifically targetted at Xamarin or .NET MAUI developers but if you are planning to publish your cross platform app on Windows it is worth watching.

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