This week, Uno Platform released version 4.10 of their framework for building native mobile, desktop, and WebAssembly apps. Developers can now easily integrate .NET MAUI-specific controls from top 3rd-party vendors, extending this capability across iOS, Android, MacOS, and Windows, ensuring a native experience. Additionally, Uno Platform enables iOS app debugging with Hot Restart Support simplifies control customization through Lightweight Styling, and more security support with Browser CSP for WebAssembly.
Uno Platform has introduced a notable addition with its 4.10 release. Developers can now embed .NET MAUI-specific controls from leading 3rd-party vendors such as Syncfusion, Grial Kit, Telerik, DevExpress, Esri, Grape City, and the .NET Community Toolkit, which will result in over 150+ UI components available for embedding. The Uno Platform team also listed the sample projects for 3rd-party vendors on their GitHub which developers can explore and try out.
To utilize MAUI embedding, developers can employ Uno.Extensions packages, offering solutions for navigation, state management, dependency injection, and more. Uno Platform provides an option in its Visual Studio extension to facilitate the integration of MAUI embedding. Further details are available in Uno Platform's documentation for developers looking to implement this feature in their Uno Platform applications.
Furthermore, the Uno Toolkit now includes a new feature called ShadowContainer. This addition, powered by SkiaSharp, allows developers to apply inner and outer shadows to their content. The ShadowContainer can host multiple Shadow objects, each with customisable properties like Color, Offset, Opacity, BlurRadius, and Spread. In order to demonstrate its capabilities, the Uno Gallery's Shadow Builder sample provides a practical example.
Other notable changes in the 4.10 release include the introduction of Lightweight Styling. With the arrival of Uno Themes and Uno Toolkit, all supported controls can now undergo customization through resource overrides without the need for redefining styles. This user-friendly method of customization, referred to as Lightweight Styling, simplifies the process of tailoring the appearance of apps, pages, or individual controls.
Another significant addition is the Hot Restart Support, which enables developers to debug iOS apps without the necessity of developing on a physical macOS machine. This feature improves the development and debugging experience workflow for iOS applications within the Uno Platform.
Furthermore, to maintain security on the web and mitigate potential threats like JavaScript injection and Cross-Site scripting attacks, the release introduces Content Security Policy (CSP) support. This protective measure aligns with .NET 8, offering additional layers of security. Notably, SkiaSharp 2.88.5 also joins the security efforts by removing all unsafe evaluations from its internal JavaScript support code.
In the addition to official release post, the X (formerly Twitter) thread delivers a very positive comment from Allan Ritchie, .NET OSS evangelist Microsoft & Xamarin MVP, who wrote the following:
This is a great addition to Uno and actually one of the most important things for me to use it going forward
Lastly, developers interested in learning more about the Uno Platform can visit the official website for very detailed documentation which contains how-tos and tutorials about the platform, alongside the official GitHub repository, and a more detailed full list of improvements is available at the release changelog.