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Syncfusion Essential Studio Release Adds .NET MAUI Controls, .NET 6 Support for Blazor/ASP.NET Core
Syncfusion's Essential Studio 2021 Volume 4 has shipped with many new controls for .NET MAUI, also adding .NET 6 support for ASP.NET Core and it's red-hot Blazor component.
The company is one of several third-party tooling vendors that Microsoft mentions in its documentation for Blazor, used to build web projects with C# instead of JavaScript. The others are Telerik, DevExpress, Radzen, Infragistics, GrapeCity and jQWidgets.
On Jan. 11, Syncfusion announced v4, the final Essential Studio release of the year.
"We are very excited to debut 10 new controls for the cross-platform .NET MAUI framework," said Syncfusion CEO Daniel Jebaraj. "We want to make the transition from Xamarin.Forms to MAUI as smooth as possible for our customers. This release is an important step for us in achieving full component parity between our Xamarin and MAUI offerings."
.NET MAUI has been described as the evolution of Xamarin.Forms because it adds desktop app support in addition to Android and iOS. Unfortunately, it "slipped the schedule" and wasn't included in the Nov. 8, 2021, debut of .NET 6, so it's now on track to reach general availability in the second quarter of this year.
[Click on image for larger view.] .NET MAUI Updates (source: Syncfusion).
Included in the new .NET MAUI controls are a Badge View, ListView, Range Slider, Scheduler and file-format libraries for working with Word, Excel, PDF and PowerPoint files. The company said the new support for .NET 6, meanwhile, lets Blazor and ASP.NET Core developers leverage the latest .NET features, including the ability to host Blazor components within .NET MAUI apps. Other features include Hot Reload, ahead-of-time compilation (AoT) for WebAssembly apps, and more. Both Hot Reload and AoT were popular, long-requested features in the .NET ecosystem, especially Blazor WebAssembly, the client-side component of Blazor.
Other highlights of the release include:
- Adaptive view for the TreeGrid on mobile devices for JavaScript, Angular and Blazor.
- Excel, Word, PDF, and PowerPoint file-format libraries for WinUI.
- Tile rendering and encrypted document loading in Flutter PDF Viewer.
- Selective annotation exporting in Xamarin PDF Viewer.
"Volume 4 also represents a significant landmark for us as a vendor that has provided .NET components since the framework launched," added Jebaraj. "We take pride in being able to say we support .NET 6 in our Blazor and ASP.NET Core suites. The .NET Framework revolutionized possibilities and productivity for Windows developers, and today we're privileged to witness and participate in that same revolution for developers beyond the Windows ecosystem."
The new offering is detailed in a What's New page and a blog post.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.