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Today there was this article in the Insider Newsletter:
The Insider News
And I am like, really Microsoft? You are going to chose JavaScript over .NET for your multiplatform tooling of choice?
But let's be open minded for a little while... apart the fact it uses..yuukk... J.... a... v...a.... script.. phew.. so painful to merely mention. Maybe it's err.... good sh*t?
And now I am curious?
What cross platform GUI tooling would you guys recommend if I want to give it a go?
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We use Ionic frontends (cordova/phonegap) for mobile (pretty much angular and scripting) but all the heavy lifting is still pretty much done via webservices in .net . If I read the article correctly , they are talking about windows to mobile not windows/Linux/Mac which is where Core is targeted. VS2017 used to have an Ionic integration component, think that's changed a bit now with 2019 but we used to code in VS, deploy either to android or remote deploy to a mac to compile IOS. TBH, we didn't like Xamarin a while ago and it seemed quite bloated as a app platform.
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If you want something for .NET your choices are limited I'm afraid, maybe Xamarin, Avalonia or Sciter.
But I haven't tried any of those ...
See overview here: best-cross-platform-gui-toolkits[^]
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That list is incomplete. Remember the movie 'Willow'?
Quote: Which finger holds the power of the universe?
Answer, of course, always your own. I have written my own UI and by accident it also became multi platform later. Lesson learned: If you need something and nobody wants to sell it to you, then it's time to roll up your sleeves and get coding.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Wow, I smell a CodeProject article coming 
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That article has been waiting for years now. I needed a UI that worked together with a 3D rendering, even if the program was actually more UI centric than all about the rendering.
Hosting 3D rendering in a WinForm or WPF control always turned out to be a crude hack, plus the problem that this feels like two separate programs accidentally running in the same window without the needed degree of communication or coordination.
The other way around works better, as the UI becomes a part of the rendering engine. All 'game UIs' I got my hands on were too primitive to build a larger application on, not expandable or custonizable enough, or too expensive, or any combination of these.
So I wrote my own. With multithreading (especially for messaging, UI, rendering and data access), XAML to load scenes into the renderer, XAML to load UI themes and styles, XAML of course also to load the layout of the views, a still small but good set of controls and enormous portability. Believe it or not, but I started out with ASP.Net WebForms, went to WinForms + 3D hack, then WPF plus the 3D hack and finally, when 3D rendering does not want to come to the UI, I brought the UI to the 3D renderer. Due to the MVP pattern, I just had to rewrite the views every time. They are the only classes that are specific to the UI and the rest of the iceberg can stay as it is.
And yes, it also became multi platform because Mickeysoft killed XNA, which I used to get access to DirectX. It was revived as MonoGame, which now compiles for different platforms:
Quote: Cross-Platform
We currently support iOS, Android, MacOS, Linux, all Windows platforms, PS4, PSVita, Xbox One, and Switch with more platforms on the way.
Want to take a look? It's that video which I must have posted a thousand times by now: FoC UserClient[^]
That's also why I started to love Mickeysoft so much. They killed XNA because they wanted us all to come over to Win 8 and I don't like it very much when they stop me dead in my tracks. As I see it, Mickeysoft owes me a new Lamborghini and I will not even take a look at their crap until I have it. 
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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That story makes me think of a colleague who spent several months trying to get a GIS 3D WPF application working hosted inside a Winforms application, you can guess where it all ended: he never got it working without bugs
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The problem is that DirectX needs a Win32 window as a rendering target. WinForm controls are based on Win32 windows, so they can be used for that. Getting a rendering engine to run in a control opens many cans of worms in performance, thread synchronization and communication. That single control is a bottleneck in every respect.
WPF controls are not based on Win32, so you must open a separate window and make it pretend to belong to the UI. The result is almost funny, especially when you move the entire WPF form around and the Win32 window tries to catch up with it to get back into its position. It also can disappear behind the form. And you also get a similar bottleneck, this time with the object that represents the Win32 window.
In the end these are just hacks
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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If you like to try something new, maybe Dear ImGui
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So the one task manager that was useful and worked mobile and desktop - Wunderlist - was purchased by the Borg (MS). I open my task list and am offered any update.. please login. To Wunderlist? to something random. It's the f***ing helicopter all over again...Microsoft and Helicopters Joke[^]
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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And here I expected a post on tennis...
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...and when I read "task manager", I was expecting a post on alternatives like Sysinternal's Process Explorer. Turns out we're only talking about a to-do list.
Interesting how things can take on completely different meanings based on your technical level.
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You just made my post on tennisplayers really sad! 
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I'm more worried about helicopter pilots who have to resort to circling around buildings or get disoriented because of clouds.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Nah ... they are just following Apple Maps navigation.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Helicopters are mysterious and scary. This even happens to those who should know better[^]
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Age is just a number.
I'll be stumbling into 54 next month.
modified 7-Nov-19 23:57pm.
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I don't think as long as you are passionate about to do the job and have required skill set. 
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Give it a go, see how it goes! 
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If you are talking about user level testing: The less you know about the inner workings (such as C++), the better tester you will be. One of my previous employers always hired students part time as testers: After half a year as a tester, they had learned how to operate the program the way it was intended to be operated - not all the crazy, senseless ways that real users do, causing the crash. So, after half a year, students rarely found more bugs. A new group of students did, though...
This is a variant of the "five year old test": Put your 5yo at the keyboard, telling him "Do whatever you want to make this program stop. If you can show daddy how to make it stop, you'll have an ice cream cone!" That technique can revel a lot of issues that cannot be detected in any other way!
This obviously primarily applies to robustness testing, and to some degree usability testing. (Much too easily, users/testers learn to forget about those things not available or not working as they should.) More formal testing, module testing, setting up automated or semi-automated test procedures etc. is a different matter, and it really doesn't make much difference whether the sofware is a game or an accounting system.
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This is a variant of the "five year old test":
My first boss used his 2 Year old to test a thing I finished, found two bugs and covered by keyboard & mouse in (I hope) chocolate...
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While most game players are younger, I know a few who are in their 40s-50s. I have no reason to assume that "old fartdom" would disqualify you.
Try it. The worst that you'll get is a rejection letter.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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