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Microsoft Launches Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 For Windows and Mac; Open-Sources WPF, Forms and WinUI (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-forward dept.

An anonymous reader writes: At its Microsoft Connect(); 2018 virtual event today, Microsoft announced the initial public preview of Visual Studio 2019 -- you can download it now for Windows and Mac. Separately, .NET Core 2.2 has hit general availability and .NET Core 3.0 Preview 1 is also available today.

At the event today, Microsoft also made some open-source announcements, as is now common at the company's developer shindigs. Microsoft open-sourced three popular Windows UX frameworks on GitHub: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, and Windows UI XAML Library (WinUI). Additionally, Microsoft announced the expansion of the .NET Foundation's membership model.

7 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Mixed feelings by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    WPF is actually great, probably the best GUI framework I've come across so far. I'd love to see cross platform support - being able to create say a .NET app with WPF UI that can run under Windows and Mono would be fantastic.

    On the other hand can we please slow down with the Visual Studio updates. Do we really need a new version every two years?

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    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Mixed feelings by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On the other hand can we please slow down with the Visual Studio updates. Do we really need a new version every two years?

      Pro-tip .. you don't have to upgrade to a new version of VS when it comes out, unless .. gasp .. you want to use the new features or fixes

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    2. Re:Mixed feelings by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 2

      1) WPF is called UWP now... it's been since the rewrite. It's pretty nice and while the rewrite never really caught on because WPF was more "nerd friendly", UWP was clearly more user friendly. WPF didn't require a graphics artist, UWP did... etc... That said, if you invest some time in UWP and learning to make more appy type apps as opposed to applications, you'll like it.

      2) Winforms had to go. It was a thin and almost useless replacement for Visual Basic 6. You would never consider writing a new application using standard Windows form controls from the Win32 API. You want something much more flexible... if you need a good reason, high-DPI should be enough. Pixels as a form of screen UI measurement had to go. WinUI is not an old thing... it's the most recent version of UWP and XAML.

      3) Yeh... MS business products are going all cloud... where they belong. And... well replacing their products isn't quite what you may think. Azure is substantially more lock-in for companies than Windows and Office ever was. Same for AWS and Google Cloud. Pretty much every Fortune 1000 company will pay monthly bills (of enormous scale) to MS, Google AND Amazon for many many years.

      4) Microsoft's headcount will almost certainly double or triple with their new business model. Though many of the legacy people are probably on the way out.

  2. Notes and caveats by Daltorak · · Score: 5, Informative

    A lot of people around here don't keep up with Microsoft technology, so here's a few notes and caveats:

    1. The Windows and Mac versions of Visual Studio 2019 are completely separate products built from different code bases. They share compilers and .NET Core stuff, and a lot of work is going into making the editors feel the same. But you can't actually use Visual Studio for Mac to work on classic Win32 / .NET Framework applications.

    2. Windows Forms and WPF are also Windows-only technology, and that isn't changing even though they'll work with .NET Core 3. There are way too many hooks and dependencies on Windows-specific technology (e.g. DirectX, text rendering, themes, handles) for these to be made into cross-platform applications without major rearchitecting work. In other words, don't wait up for them to produce a competitor to Qt....

    3. The source code for Windows Forms and WPF have actually been available as "reference source" for more than a decade, so there are no real surprises to be discovered here.

    4. All three libraries are being hosted on Github and are licensed under MIT. These aren't mirrors -- the teams at Microsoft will actually be doing their everyday work in the open on Github. Unfortunately, the full commit history didn't come along for the ride.

    5. One of the nice little improvements here is the ability to package your own version of Windows Forms with your app, instead of relying on whatever is installed with the system. .NET Core doesn't (currently) support static linking so it'll still have to exist as a DLL file beside the EXE.

    1. Re:Notes and caveats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "M$ going bankrupt and ceasing to exist and taking all their crap software with it"
      Going bankrupt?
      MS continues to transition away from its legacy products that are basically purchased and installed on clients' computers. They are moving towards cloud-based products and services such as its Azure platform and Office 365. They have become the biggest contributor of open source for the past two years. And they are still generating handsome profits.

      They are also merging their proprietary products with Open Source solutions. I am waiting for them to release MSLinux so I can watch peoples heads start exploding.

  3. Re:Telemetry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    And you probably don't know what the word telemetry means.

    Telemetry is what precedes a telemefail.

  4. Re:Telemetry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    There is no Telemetry. There is only Telemedo.