Some ideas for Alternet UI

[neoxeo]

Hi,

Here is some ideas to helps us :slight_smile :

• tool to help to migrate Winforms to Alternet UI. It can take as input, a xxx.designer.cs file, analyze content and convert to UIXML file. Even if it can’t do all the job automatically, it will be useful to accelerate migration
• same thing for Wpf
• use Github issue or Alternet WebSite to ask new components/methods…
• create tutorials to explain how to convert existing simple winforms/wpf soft to Alternet UI
• create tutorials to create a new components and create a community to share them
• add benchmarks to compare Alternet UI with Winforms/WPF/Avalonia…
• have a look to Modern Form (Modern.Forms · GitHub) to see if there is some interesting ideas
• give more information about Professional and Enterprise versions : Productivity Features ? Advanced Controls ? Custom Themes ?
• give more information about Community version : is there a licence ? Never expire ? I can create some softs and distribute them free without doubt that there will be a problem with them in few days/months/years ?
• give us news about the todo list and roadmap of Alternet UI
• create full version .Net6 and .Net7. (And why do you use Framework 4.6 and not 4.8 or 4.8.1 ?)

Thanks to all the team for your job and see you next year with a lot of great things !

NeoXeo

[neoxeo]

No comments for these ideas ?

[dmitry.medvedev]

Hi NeoXeo,

Thank you for sharing these ideas, I will try to address some of them here.

The converter for WinForms/WPF forms was discussed in a different post:

Small tool to help Winforms migration

Thank you very much for your answer. I can post a google doc or send you Excel file comparison between WinForms/WPF/AlterNET UI if you need it. I will have a look for StackPanel as a replacement for FlowLayoutPanel; ColorDialog and Directory Dialo. It is a very good new : “We will definitely look at supporting missing controls” and “first public release (version 1.0), with scrollable control support”. Thanks a lot For conveter tool, I can share with you my progress with my tool and why not, …

Once it’s available, we will certainly create a tutorial for it
.
We have two public GitHub repositories, one with managed source code, and another with examples. You can post issues to both of them:
https://github.com/alternetsoft/alternet-ui

GitHub - alternetsoft/alternet-ui-examples: Code examples for AlterNET UI: a...

In the version we’re working on(and will be releasing as the first public release once we finish with testing), we have added API and a couple of examples of custom controls, here’s a screenshot of an example project:

We would definitely engage with the community and possibly other component vendors to facilitate the development of the new custom controls. This may include advanced controls like charts, grids, schedulers, etc. We will be also creating a cross-platform version of our Code Editor product with AlterNET UI.

Right now our first priority is to release Community Edition, and then we will start working on the Professional one. One of the productivity features we have in mind is XAML-like Form designer for UIXML files, based on our WPF Form Designer control:

Form Designer — AlterNET Software

There’s no license as such for the Community Edition, and it’s not going to expire. Most likely there will be licensing mechanism for the Professional Edition. Please refer to the license agreement here:

License — AlterNET UI

Custom Themes will support a custom look and feel for the standard controls, so they look the same on all supported platforms (similar to how Avalonia UI controls look).

.NET Framework 4.6 is a minimal requirement for Windows and .NET 6 for macOS/Linux.
You can certainly use AlterNET UI with other versions of .NET Frameworks, such as 4.8 and 7.0.

As we go forward, we will be supporting missing standard controls, like Datetime picker, RichEdit, etc., and also will look at supporting AlterNET UI extension for Visual Studio Code and Rider.

Kind regards,
Dmitry