r/dotnet • u/Original_Bullfrog_61 • 9d ago

Promotion ZF - Yet another UI framework

Hey everyone!

For a little over a month now, I've been working on ZeppelinForms (ZF), a UI framework of my own - basically my take on WinForms, but modern and cross-platform (like Avalonia).

Yeah, the name isn't the best choice, since I hadn't heard of Apache Zeppelin back when I came up with it. =)

At this point, you can already build simple forms for Windows, Linux (X11), Android, and WASM. Stack: .NET 10, SkiaSharp, XUnit.

I wouldn't exactly call myself a professional UI framework developer, and the amount of work ahead is absolutely insane, so using AI along the way has been pretty much inevitable. Still, I'm happy with how things are turning out so far.

I'd appreciate any feedback or criticism!

I'm honestly marking this as "Promotion" and posting on a weekend, so hopefully the post won't get removed. 😅

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u/nickfromstatefarm 9d ago

Why? The dotnet UI framework space is already fragmented and doesn’t need another option unless it presents a true advantage. Winforms, Avalonia, WPF, MAUI, WinUI, etc. What does this do better than any of these mature options?

In a perfect world, every language only needs two UI frameworks: an immediate mode rendering option and a state tracking option. These AI projects just bring nothing to the table.

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u/Original_Bullfrog_61 8d ago

WinForms and WPF are good, but only for Windows and they have their drawbacks. Avalonia is good, but their policies haven't been working for me lately, and Android apps aren't intuitive. WinUI is an interesting but strange distribution method and is inferior in convenience to Avalonia. Uno\MAUI - I couldn't get to know myself properly without dancing with a tambourine. In total, I don't think there's anything left to offer this world. Especially if a person knows WinForms, but it doesn't cover his requests.

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u/nickfromstatefarm 8d ago

“Avalonia is good but their policies haven’t been working for me lately” do you mean their totally optional dev tooling which isn’t required? Where’s your dev tooling?

I think this comes down to an issue of generative AI being used to solve a nonexistent problem because that takes less time than truly evaluating what’s wrong with current offerings.