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  Jonathan Guizar May 19, 2020 1:43 pm 0

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  Nice! thank you very much for your hard work! 😁

  Let’s hope we can start porting our third party controls dependant WinForms applications to .NET 5 later this year

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    Olia Gavrysh May 19, 2020 2:11 pm 0

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    Thank you! Which control vendor are you using?

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  Mark Ping May 19, 2020 4:43 pm 0

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  Wait, I was under the impression that Win Forms was in maintenance mode. When did that change? What is the future roadmap?

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    Olia Gavrysh May 19, 2020 5:32 pm 0

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    Last year we open sourced WinForms and brought it to .NET Core. Now it is available in .NET 5 preview and reviewing new features (like Task Dialog) and lots of PRs from the ole source community. You can check out the repo and the roadmap here: https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/blob/master/roadmap.md

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  DW May 19, 2020 8:11 pm 0

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  Thank you for your hard work!!
  If you can provide a few examples of creating and running WinForm/WPF programs, or if a link exists, please leave me a comment.I will study hard.We are currently using a third-party Devexpress vendor and are considering cross-platform support.
  Thanks again.

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    Olia Gavrysh May 19, 2020 10:36 pm 0

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    Getting started with WinForms and WPF on Core:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a66wsCRSgDk
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pthq_zGvI&t=6s

    Differences between .NET Framework and .NET Core for desktop apps
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pthq_zGvI&t=6s

    Porting from .NET Framework
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-3-for-windows-desktop/

    Advanced porting cases for WPF apps
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/migrating-a-sample-wpf-app-to-net-core-3-part-1/
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/migrating-a-sample-wpf-app-to-net-core-3-part-2/

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  Stuyvenstein May 19, 2020 11:27 pm 0

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  Hi. I don’t see anything about cross-platform use. Since it says Windows Forms, is it safe to assume that this is Windows only feature? And that it will not be available on Linux?

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    Davi Bertozo May 20, 2020 6:43 am 0

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    Thats the point! Waiting for MS’s Reply too. Dont make any sense for me if its not a cross platform option when it’s compete against all web technologies. Why use a tecnology thats anchor in an specific OS?

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      Jorge Morales Vidal May 20, 2020 8:10 am 0

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      Hi, you can read more about the rationale about porting Windows Forms from .NET Framework to .NET Core in this link:
      https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-3-for-windows-desktop/

      Basically the reason is to bring the benefits that .NET Core has to the broader Windows Forms community which has a lot of developers, specially in developing countries. Besides that, Microsoft already open sourced Windows Forms and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) libraries.

      They will remain Windows-centric as they depend on Windows APIs, but they will benefit of all new NuGet libraries and features that are based on .NET Core.

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        Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 2:58 pm 0

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        Thanks Jorge! You’re absolutely right, Windows Forms will be Windows only. Of course if we were to create a new desktop platform from scratch right now, we’d design it as a cross-platform. But Windows Forms was designer long time ago, and built completely on Windows API, so making it cross-platform would be close to rewriting it completely.

        Windows Forms still has lots of users and with supporting it in .NET Core and .NET 5 we are making sure those users can benefit from from all the performance improvements and new features. This platform is fully supported and will receive all the updates in the future.

        If you need a cross-platform solution, we just announced .NET MAUI – .NET Multi-platform App UI: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-multi-platform-app-ui/

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        Vincent Thorn May 23, 2020 4:33 am 0

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        Sorry, what exactly “benefits” Core has, which is unavailable (and VERY needed!) in .NET FW world?!

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          Warren R May 31, 2020 11:37 am 0

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          Windows Forms + .NET Core allows you to ship your UI framework with your application, independently of the version of the framework installed with Windows. This puts it in line with Qt, Swing, and most other GUI frameworks.

          The independence helps avoid problems like this one, whereby upgrading a system from .NET 4.0 to 4.5 introduced problems with almost any app that uses a menu MenuStrip, due to bugs in 4.5. Some hard lessons were learned by the team in that 4.5-4.6 time period and Microsoft had to start building .NET Framework in such a way that any new behaviours (including bug fixes!) would need to be opted into on a per-application basis. But that has proven to have its limits, too, because third-party libraries have to understand all the potential variances in behaviour, too.

          .NET Core also has significantly better overall performance than .NET Framework. A lot of those perf improvements cannot be backported to Framework because it might break something and it isn’t worth the risk.

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    Jorge Morales Vidal May 20, 2020 8:09 am 0

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    Hi, you can read more about the rationale about porting Windows Forms from .NET Framework to .NET Core in this link:
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-3-for-windows-desktop/

    Basically the reason is to bring the benefits that .NET Core has to the broader Windows Forms community which has a lot of developers, specially in developing countries. Besides that, Microsoft already open sourced Windows Forms and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) libraries.

    They will remain Windows-centric as they depend on Windows APIs, but they will benefit of all new NuGet libraries and features that are based on .NET Core.

    If you want to know more about cross platform UI development, you can read yesterday’s announce in Build 2020 about .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) which covers developing apps with C# in .NET 5 for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android:
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-multi-platform-app-ui/

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  manish kembral May 19, 2020 11:34 pm 0

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  Hi,

  Will These features would be available on visual studio for Mac

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    Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 2:17 pm 0

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    Windows Forms will remain Windows-only platform, so those features won’t be in Visual Studio for Mac

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  Edward Jason Marin May 20, 2020 12:08 am 0

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  Hello, awesome update thank you. I wish we can deploy WinForms app in Linux and MacOS.

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    Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 4:42 pm 0

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    I totally understand that desire. Unfortunately, we cannot do it because WinForms has too many dependencies on Windows APIs. There are other solutions like XAMARIN and .NET MAUI that might help.

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  Nawfal Hassan May 20, 2020 1:30 am 1

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  Great work, thanks a lot.

  May I ask, if ever WinForms designer will support forms with generic base class?

  We have a bunch of forms that inherit from a common base class like FormBase{TViewModel}. For us the FormBase{TViewModel} does a lot of heavy-lifting and it is essential to our existing infrastructure. But the WinForms designer crashes for inherited types. Eg. cant open the designer of Foo where `Foo : FormBase{FooViewModel}`. There are certain hackish workarounds available on the internet but they all work only maybe at best 50% of the times.

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    Kirsan May 20, 2020 2:23 am 1

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    Yes, visual inheritance in designer definitely must be improved! Especially important that, is when you in x64 configuration current VS designer can’t handle it 🙁

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    Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 10:02 am 0

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    Yes! We will definitely support it, this is our next item on the roadmap after completing third-party controls and data binding scenarios! Sorry for your struggle now, we are working hard on getting it all done!

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      Nawfal Hassan May 22, 2020 2:12 am 0

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      I have added tickets for these: https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/issues/3328 https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/issues/3329

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  Paul Cohen May 20, 2020 3:56 am 0

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  With the preview released today Visual Basic designer support is completely broken for core projects (null reference Dialog if you try to open any form in designer). They do work in release version at least for supported controls.

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    Kathleen Dollard May 20, 2020 2:40 pm 0

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    Could you report that bug in the designer. If you could also include the code of a simple form that illustrates the problem it will help us get it fixed quickly.

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      Kathleen Dollard May 20, 2020 2:40 pm 0

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      Reporting via Visual Studio feedback tool (upper right corner) is probably best.

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    DevDot_Studio May 23, 2020 5:22 am 0

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    I have the same problem . I updated visual studio to lastest version (16.6) ,created new winforms .Net core project but when I clicked the form to open the designer an null reference message box appeared .I’m not sure why but I had not this problem in .Net Framework.

    Thank you so much .Net team and Microsoft for your hard work you are the best

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  thomas woelfer May 20, 2020 3:58 am 0

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  hi Olia.

  i just installed 16.6 and created a new forms app (core). In the toolbox, there are quite a lot of controls. but the button is missing. Whats up with this? Known problem?

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    Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 2:45 pm 0

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    Button is there. Looks like issues with your machine. Try to clean VS toolbox cache: delete (save a copy somewhere just in case 🙂 ) file C:\Users{your user}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_{***}\privateregistry.bin that has the latest edit date.

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      Menahem Larionov May 21, 2020 1:50 am 0

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      Hi, also in my machine button control is missing, Visual Studio 16.7 Preview 1

      But cleaning VS toolbox cache resolve this.

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      Hans Christian Falkenberg May 21, 2020 10:47 am 0

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      Simply deleting privateregistry.bin did not work for me, but also deleting the toolbox files did. Only deleting the toolbox files led to them not being recreated.

      Note that you will also reset UI customizations (theme, position of windows, code styles, etc), which is a pain. But seeing as how that Button control is kind of important, I guess it just has to be borne.

      These are the files I deleted (in the directory mentioned by Olia):
      privateregistry.bin
      privateregistry.bin.LOG1
      privateregistry.bin.LOG2
      toolbox.tbd
      toolboxIndex.tbd
      toolboxIndex_reset.tbd
      toolbox_reset.tbd
      ToolboxItemDiscoveryCache.7036b125-fa82-3aba-acb8-bdbc97782a06.dat

      Also, don’t have a tab with the designer open. Visual Studio froze when I tried to start it with opening such a solution and I had to delete the .vs directory.

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        Olia Gavrysh May 21, 2020 6:27 pm 0

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        We’ve created an issue for that and investigating, I’ll get back once it’s resolved, thanks you for reporting.

        For now another way to try to fix it:
        1. right-click on the Toolbox > Choose Items…
        2. In the Choose Toolbox Items dialog “Reset”

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          thomas woelfer May 22, 2020 12:33 am 0

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          That worked.

          WM_THX
          -thomas woelfer

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  hassan hilaly May 20, 2020 7:35 pm 0

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  Hi; When i double-click on the form in the Solution Explorer i have this warnig message : The object reference is not defined to an instance of an object.
  please what to do to resove this probleme.

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    Olia Gavrysh May 20, 2020 8:55 pm 0

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    That’s weird. Could you please report the problem via Visual Studio feedback (described in the end of this blog post). Would be great to have a sample app you’are trying to open, and to know if that is for any app or for some specific app

    Things that I’d try to resolve it:
    * Close and reopen VS. Give it time to load everything before opening the form
    * Go to Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features and make sure the “Use the preview Windows Forms designer for .NET Core apps” is selected. Maybe uncheck and check it again 🙂
    * Check what your application is targeting, and ensure you have the required SDK installed on your machine (for example if the app you’re trying to work with
    targets net5 your need .NET 5 SDK)
    * Reinstall VS

    I hope you’ll be able to fix it

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      Rajnai, Zoltan June 25, 2020 9:13 am 0

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      We are facing the same issue…
      I would really like to avoid reinstalling VS.