👩‍💻📞 WinUI Community Call (January 22, 2020)

[jesbis]

Update

Thanks everyone who could make it live! We'll try to get to the rest of the questions here.

Call recording is here:

https://youtu.be/MXTVqgB4rW0

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Hi all -

The next WinUI Community Call will be on Wednesday Jan 22!

Details

Date: Wednesday January 22
Time: 17:00-18:00 UTC (9:00-10:00am Pacific)

Anyone and everyone is welcome - no pre-registration is required.
This will be an informal online call directly with members of our engineering team.

Please leave questions/topics/feedback!

We'd like to spend part of the time answering your questions again, so please leave comments in this issue if there are any questions or topics you'd like us to cover next week!

If you've tried out the WinUI 3 Alpha then we'd also love to talk about any feedback you might have so far.

Agenda

1. WinUI 2.3 release, 2.4 preview
2. WinUI 3.0 Alpha status update
3. New feature discussions / demos - we'll demo some new WinUI 2 and 3 stuff, including some app samples, ProgressRing updates and the Chromium WebView control coming in WinUI 3
4. Q&A - we'll answer your questions from this issue (leave a comment!) and anything that comes up during the call

[robloo]

Can we talk about support for nullable data types in controls and default values? As an example there is DatePicker which returns DateTimeOffset and CalendarDatePicker which returns DateTimeOffset?.

• Why is one of these nullable while the other is not? Is this because DatePicker was developed using earlier API's in the Windows 8 time-frame?
• Should we consider adding a configuration property to allow/not-allow null in controls?
• Should a DefaultValue property be considered for new controls such as NumberBox, should NaN be kept as default, or should we switch to a nullable double with the default null?
• Are there WinRT/OS XAML limitations with returning and supporting nullable values that would prevent making NumberBox's Value property nullable? If so, how was CalendarDatePicker implemented?
• This is directly related to the NumberBox discussions in Numberbox throws StackOverflowException when you clear it and it is TwoWay databound to a Double (using Binding, not x:Bind) #1721 and NumberBox shouldn't default to "0" (especially if PlaceholderText is set) #1708

Also, what is the roadmap for fixing the open issues on the NumberBox that do not depend on WinUI 3.0? It would be great to start using this control around WinUI 2.4 instead of having to wait longer. It's not fully baked yet in my opinion and I'm uncomfortable pulling this into production apps.

[robloo]

Another interesting idea to discuss I've wondered about: What will Microsoft's policy be on breaking changes now that WinUI 3.0 is going open source?

In the past, Microsoft has virtually never made breaking changes. This is generally a good thing until all the clutter builds up after a few (or 10) years. It's also not the standard for open source projects. For example, eventually ListBox should be phased out for ListView and MessageDialog phased out for ContentDialog, etc. I'm sure there are lots of nicer little clean-ups in the API as well.

I know businesses hate changes -- for good reason. There also MUST be a relatively easy (functionally equivalent) drop-in replacement available to make porting to new APIs straightforward. This would need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and a judgement call made.

I'm wondering if we could establish major releases (WinUI 4.0 for example) as allowing breaking changes. This will allow the project to continue to grow without having to live with all past mistakes. Essentially, Microsoft has already decided to do this with .NET 5 by basing it on .NET Core and dropping what was the full .NET Framework.

This might be good to document once it's discussed.

[kmgallahan]

Based on progress made since the last call, when does the team realistically think WinUI 3 will be ready for release:

• Build 2020 (Apr-May)
• Ignite 2020 (Oct-Nov)
• ~2021

Also, how dependent is your work on the .NET team putting together a new AOT solution and .NET 5?

Lastly, is there pressure on the Windows side to have it ready for Windows10X release and/or prior to that for developers to make specialized apps?

[marcelwgn]

Will there/should there be a tool to easily convert WinUI 2.X projects to WinUI 3.0 (since doing this manually might be a lot of work for large projects)?

[jtorjo]

The Elephant in the room - WinRT (#1856)

[mdtauk]

The Elephant in the room - WinRT (#1856)

A non-sandboxed app model is coming - which will run in the same way as WPF (including Win32 APIs), but with access to modern WinRT APIs, and open sourced UI and controls with the new XAML running on Direct X 12.

[jtorjo]

A non-sandboxed app model is coming - which will run in the same way as WPF (including Win32 APIs), but with access to modern WinRT APIs, and open sourced UI and controls with the new XAML running on Direct X 12.

Wow. Wow Wow!!!!

That is beyond amazing! Do we have an ETA for this, will it be discussed in the call?

It's insanely awesome!

[mdtauk]

A non-sandboxed app model is coming - which will run in the same way as WPF (including Win32 APIs), but with access to modern WinRT APIs, and open sourced UI and controls with the new XAML running on Direct X 12.

Wow. Wow Wow!!!!

That is beyond amazing! Do we have an ETA for this, will it be discussed in the call?

It's insanely awesome!

It was the first thing we learned about WinUI. ETA is for this year, I suspect a definite date will be given at //Build/ - but feel free to ask during the call.

https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md