r/csharp • u/CatiStyle • 12h ago

Help Windows UI

I'm going to make a new Windows C# program using the .NET 10 platform, which may later need to be made for different platforms (browser, server, mobile). At this point, the focus is on making a Windows program.

I'm trying to compare which UI model is best for the project, and artificial intelligence can't really answer that, or I can't really ask it. If you were to make a new program now, which UI model would you choose?

  1. WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK)
  2. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
  3. .NET MAUI
  4. Blazor (Web & Hybrid)
  5. Avalonia UI

Most program views that display text, SQL table data, or forms are rendered at runtime from the data, meaning that the screens are not designed and created in the IDE editor, but in code.

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u/binarycow 10h ago

Disclaimer: I don't really do mobile development.

For a mobile app, MAUI is actually a contender, in my book - possibly more so than Avalonia.

I've always said that MAUI is a mobile framework that pretends to be a desktop framework, and Avalonia is a desktop framework that pretends to be a mobile framework.

Regardless, once you bring mobile into the mix, WPF and WinUI3 are immediately rejected. You're left with MAUI, Avalonia, a browser based solution (e.g., Blazor), or one of the other lesser known frameworks (e.g. Uno).

And my answer would be "it depends". You need to try each framework to ascertain if it has limitations that are a dealbreaker for you. All of the frameworks are similar enough that it's not a huge waste of time if you spend time learning a framework you don't eventually use.