WinUI 3.0 - Try the February 2020 Alpha Release

Earlier this month, at the Microsoft 365 Developer Day event, Microsoft made several important announcements for Windows developers. Among them was an alpha release of WinUI 3.0. This is the second alpha release of the upcoming major update to the WinUI libraries, due to be released toward the end of this year.

The centerpiece of this alpha release over the November 2019 alpha release is the addition of the WebView2 control. This is an updated version of the WebView control, based on the new Chromium-based Edge browser. You can read the GitHub issue with the feature proposal for WebView2 here.

WinUI 3.0 will be a major update over the 2.x releases. Outside of the WebView2, there will not be many new controls. The team is focused on building out WinUI to be a complete UI framework that can be built on top of either the UWP or Win32 platform layer for new app development. Developers can leverage C++ to build Win32 apps with WinUI or .NET to build WinUI apps with the UWP platform. It will also be possible to modernize existing WinForms and WPF apps with XAML Islands and WinUI controls. That's right, WinUI 3.0 will include XAML Islands.

Getting started with the WinUI 3.0 alpha requires Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 or newer. You'll also need to request access to the Visual Studio extension that adds the new project templates for WinUI 3.0.

To read all of the information about the current alpha, including pre-requisites and current limitations, check out this page on MS Docs. Find out even more about the plans for 3.0 by reading the roadmap on GitHub.

Are you new to WinUI, UWP or XAML in general? Keep an eye out for my new book, Learn WinUI 3.0, coming this fall from Packt Publishing. I've just completed a draft of the first chapter, and I'm looking forward to guiding new WinUI developers in building their first Windows apps.

Happy coding!

Learn WinUI 3.0 - My New Book to be Published Fall 2020

Hello WinUI developers!

I want to update you on my WinUI focus for 2020. Most of my spare time this year is going to be spent on my new WinUI side project. I am writing a book for Packt Publishing titled Learn WinUI 3.0. The book is due out this fall. That will hopefully coincide with a final or near-final release of WinUI 3.0.

As I am working on the book, I plan to blog about my experience with WinUI 3.0 through its preview and beta stages this year. If you would like to follow along, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog. I will occasionally cross-post or create summary blog posts on my UWP Tips blog to catch up with my UWP Tips followers. Your best bet to stay informed is to subscribe to both blogs (and WPF Tips, while you're at it).

I am well underway with the first chapter and plan to blog this week about my experience setting up the WinUI 3.0 preview and creating my first project. Spoiler Alert: No issues encountered yet.

I'm looking forward to engaging the Windows developer community this year, and I expect to spend a fair amount of time harassing the WinUI team. If you have any suggestions for the book or things you would like to learn more about, don't hesitate to drop me a line on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading!

Alvin