Vanara VS ModernWpf

I have a lot of C# P/Invoke / interop experience. Almost everything is possible in C#, I swear. Just keep in mind that C/C++ users have Windows.h include (meta-include which references thousands of another useful includes) that contain every single public fuction, structure or enum definition, i. e. you just go ahead and use it (while having to link against necessary libs correctly ofc). When you do the same thing in C# you have to P/Invoke through all this stuff by yourself. Consider taking a look at Vanara.PInvoke (https://github.com/dahall/Vanara), these packages might help you a lot in case you do not want to dive that deep.

Interesting that it was built in .Net and appears to be using WPF with a few improvements[1].

It also refers to Vanara[2] which looks interesting as a safe utility wrapper to the Windows API.

[1]:https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf

[2]:https://github.com/dahall/Vanara

At least there is WPFUI and ModernWPF. :)

Only really works if you or your users are a fan of Material Design, and honestly MD seems to have declined in usage overall, and there are no big apps for Windows using MD. Seems like you'd be better off with either a totally radical design/theme, and have the design resources to do that, or use something that looks like a native Windows app, whether thats the Win32 look, WPF defaults, or something WinUI inspired like https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf

ModernWpf and WpfUI are both great options for making modern looking WPF apps. Combine that with CommunityToolkit.Mvvm and you've got a solid platform for Windows-only desktop apps.

This one looks pretty solid. There are loads of them. The demos I’ve seen all showcase live feedback.

https://superguigui.github.io/simple-color-picker/

Compare to the best I can find for WPF: https://github.com/dsafa/wpf-color-picker - no live feedback, dialog only, no documented support for modern .NET. There are some commercial controls available from syncfusion and the like if you want to pay for such things.

Compare to color dialog in WinForms: https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf/issues/72

WinUI has a decent color picker, but there are other trade offs going with WinUI that make it inferior to the web environment (e.g. broken rendering of SVG/paths).

ModernWpf (whose status is unclear) has it: https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf/wiki/ProgressRing

Neither WPF nor WinUI are using OS controls for most of their GUI. Their GUI is defined by styles and templates in various XAML files. You can make controls look however you like. Microsoft did a great job back then re-implementing UX of WinXP and Win7 on top of WPF, but unfortunately not the newer Windows versions.

Here’s a third-party project with styles and templates implementing GUI similar to Win10: https://github.com/Kinnara/ModernWpf Their approach seems correct, and the screenshots looking nice. I never needed that library BTW, my clients who need good GUI usually provide professionally-made design which is unrelated to Windows controls.

Also, here’s a relevant GitHub issue https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/5793 which currently says “.NET 7.0 milestone”, however the 7.0 is scheduled for November 2022, i.e. in about 1 year, and they may or may not deliver by then.