This is not a .NET problem.
There really isn't a simple way to do cross platform (Windows/Linux/macOS) UIs with any language. The least bad option is to make it a web page, maybe wrap it with Electron.
There really isn't a simple way to do cross platform (Windows/Linux/macOS) UIs with any language. The least bad option is to make it a web page, maybe wrap it with Electron.
I write Qt GUIs for Linux+Windows, and no Windows user can tell it's not "native" (not that there's a native Windows look anymore, what with MS being schizophrenic about scrapping the UI framework and starting a new one everytime a new PM wants attention, only the classic widget look associated with Windows is still the 2000/XP/7 is recognizable).
Qt apps are super performant, and write once, run anywhere for 99% of GUIs anyone wants to create.
OSX users might be the only one that complain, but they're a tiny minority of users, and it's good enough in most cases, with fantastic performance to shut up the doubters.
Electron apps are hideous, bloated, and slow, relative to the Qt apps I write. I'm only held back by C++ being a shitty archaic language/ecosystem, and if .NET offered an alternative I'd jump ship immediately, that's why I'm so disappointed it's an afterthought.
P.S. Languages designed for "hypertext markup" are not meant to create rich UIs, and can never compete with a native framework. Everything in the JS world to create rich applications is a hack and you can see it in the code and the endless churn of frameworks. When I write something like QML, the intent is clear. When I look at the JS UI frameworks people are hacking hideous HTML templates and conditional logic, list iteration, etc in HTML templates. And nearly every JS UI framework project is written by 1-2 intermediate devs with comparatively little API design talent, who inevitably break backwards compatibility within a year or two.
I might need to look into it once more, at least it won't run out of steam the second I want to do something else than have a standard text box or an input field on the screen - like all those "easy ui" -systems do every time.
It's not from Microsoft but who cares. They don't have a reputation of holding onto new UI frameworks anyway.
While I agree it is hard, there is no one who could rule this space better than .NET if they just would like.
Problem is: this is developer division funding which is not the Windows (which owns a UI stack) or office division (react native actually). DevDiv previous UI toolkits WPF was loved but then abondon because of the duplicity of UI toolkits in Microsoft.