My career started with green screen VT terminals. VT-52, VT-100, VT-220. I was excited when we got amber text instead of green!
You might imagine my excitement when I started using Visual Basic 1.0 and was able to build smart-client apps. Apps that actually ran on the local device, instead of running on some remote computer and just displaying content locally.
That excitement carried forward through VB 6, then into .NET with Windows Forms, Web Forms (sort of), and then WPF. I was a vigorous advocate of Silverlight, and still shed a tear every time I think about how Apple killed such a promising technology. Similarly, I like Xamarin and its ability to build smart-client apps for mobile devices, though mobile app dev in the enterprise has been fading away due to cost.
Fortunately today we have WebAssembly, with Blazor and Uno being examples of UI frameworks on top of this universal client app platform. I blogged my enthusiasm early on in the emergence of this technology: A Bright Future for the Smart Client.
You won’t be surprised to find that I’ve continued to be focused on WebAssembly and the Blazor UI framework. To this point, I recently published a book on Blazor.
The first 6 chapters of this book are all about Blazor and how you can get started with this very cool UI framework:
- Introduction to Blazor and WebAssembly
- Server-Side Blazor
- Client-Side Blazor
- Components, Data Binding, and Other Features
- Authentication and Authorization
- Multi-Headed Blazor Solutions
This content will take you from zero to productive with Blazor, so you can build server-side and client-side Blazor apps that run on any modern browser, regardless of the underlying operating system or device type.
The last 2 chapters focus on how Blazor and the open source CSLA .NET business logic framework fit together extremely nicely.
- Blazor and CSLA .NET
- ProjectTracker UI Using Blazor
The Using CSLA 5: Blazor and WebAssembly book is available now.
Note: Client-side Blazor for WebAssembly is currently in preview. I plan to update the book as necessary when Blazor WebAssembly is complete, and that update will be available to anyone who’s purchased the book in the meantime.