Microsoft has finished prepping and following several release candidates, is now launching .NET 7 in wide release. The latest version of the software framework brings plenty of changes and new features. For example, WinForms, WPF, C# 11/F# 7, ASP.NET Core/Blazor, .NET MAUI, and Web APIs.
In its release blog, Microsoft provides a thank you to the open-source .NET community for feedback and contributions through the development of .NET 7. According to the company, it received 28,000 contributions from more than 8900 different contributors.
Among the changes in the latest package is ARM64 support. As always, Microsoft is rolling out a bunch of documentation. So, I recommend heading to the .NET 7 portal to find all the technical breakdown of the changes in the new platform.
Microsoft says the following about the new .NET:
“.NET is fast. .NET 7 is the fastest .NET yet. Over a thousand performance-impacting improvements went into .NET 7 impacting reflection, On Stack Replacement(OSR), start-up time, Native AOT, loop optimizations and many other areas.”
MAUI
For many users, .NET MAUI is perhaps the most interesting part of RC1. Microsoft says is adding the ability to create desktop apps alongside iOS and Android apps. MAUI is a mobile-focused Xamarin.Forms framework and Microsoft says the new capability allows developers to build single apps targeting multiple devices and platforms:
“.NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI) unifies Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows APIs into a single API so you can write one app that runs natively on many platforms,” Microsoft said. “.NET MAUI enables you to deliver the best app experiences designed specifically by each platform (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Tizen) while enabling you to craft consistent brand experience through rich styling and graphics. Out of the box, each platform looks and behaves the way it should without any additional widgets or styling required.”
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