A few weeks ago, Uno released version 5.3 of their multi-platform UI framework for .NET developers. The highlight of the new release is the official support for JetBrains Rider. Other relevant features include an improved Hot Reload experience, two new UI controls, new font options, and support for SkiaSharp 3 Previews.
The Uno Platform acts as a bridge for WinUI and UWP apps to run natively on iOS, macOS, Android, Linux, and WebAssembly. It is built over different technologies (Xamarin Native Stack, Mono-WASM, and Skia, depending on the target platform), allowing the creation of single-source C# and XAML applications with responsive design and pixel-perfect control and using a single codebase.
With the new release, the Uno Platform introduces official support for JetBrains Rider through a new extension on the JetBrains marketplace. According to the company, this addresses a request from the community, bringing productivity advantages to developers using Rider:
Rider support has been a top request in our recent developer surveys [...]. Starting this release, the development experience Rider developers have is on par with that of Visual Studio and VS Code developers. What this means in practice is that you can enjoy the full set of developer productivity enhancers such as C# and XAML Hot Reload for Uno Platform apps and debugging.
A full list of supported scenarios for developers using the new extension can be found here.
Another relevant feature of this release is the improved Hot Reload experience. "Hot Reload" refers to the ability to instantly see the effects of any code changes in a project. With the new release, a new visual indicator displays new information every time Hot Reload is triggered, helping the developer to monitor any changes in the code. The new feature is available on all IDEs for all targets that Uno Platform supports, except for WinAppSDK (since it has its own Hot Reload indicators).
The new release also introduces the support for a new default font for all platforms, using Open Sans. This is a relevant change since the default font on WinUI is Segoe UI, which is not supported on macOS, Linux, or browsers running in either these systems. Also, as a result of this feature, Uno now supports the use of Variable Fonts through the use of a font manifest. Using a font manifest allows specifying where a single variable font file can be used (the Web) and where multiple files may be used (Skia Desktop).
Other features in this release include two new UI controls: ItemsView (available for desktop applications) and SelectorBar (available for Skia Desktop targets). It also includes support for SkiaSharp 3 Previews.
Uno Platform is open source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub. The list of supported platforms includes Windows, iOS, macOS, Android, and Linux. It can be used with Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio 2022 for Windows (17.8 or later), and JetBrains Rider (2024.2 or later). The new release supports .NET 8 and later (up to .NET 9 Preview 6). At this point, Uno itself is built using .NET 9, which is part of the team's effort to be ready to support .NET 9 on day 0 of its official release.
