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ZeppelinForms

ZeppelinForms (ZF) is a code-first, cross-platform UI framework for .NET 10: the simplicity of WinForms, a few well-chosen ideas from WPF, Avalonia and Flutter, and none of the legacy baggage. One UI runs on Windows, Linux (X11), in the browser (WebAssembly) and on Android, drawn with SkiaSharp.

App app = new(new WindowsPlatform()) { MainForm = new MainForm() };
app.Run();

public class MainForm : Form
{
    public MainForm()
    {
        Title = "Hello";
        Size = new Size(640, 480);

        var name = new TextBox { Watermark = "Your name", Docking = Dock.Top };
        var greet = new PrimaryButton { Text = "Greet", Docking = Dock.Top };
        greet.Click += async (_, _) => await MessageBox.ShowAsync(this, $"Hello, {name.Text}!");

        Content = new DockPanel { Padding = new(16), Children = { name, greet, new Panel() } };
    }
}

The showcase — every control, the styles and the effects — runs in the browser: https://yd359team.github.io/

Contents

Start

• Getting started — packages, the application per platform, the zf-app template, the first form
• Forms and windows — size, position, limits, dialogs, message boxes
• Recipes — close to the tray, commands, confirmations, dialogs, loading, live styles

Building the UI

• Layout — measure and arrange, sizes, alignment, panels, docking, scrolling
• Controls — what there is, and how to write your own
• Lists and virtualization — list boxes over long data
• Data grid — typed columns, editing, selection, sorting
• Data binding — bindings, data sources, DataSource<T>
• Mobile and navigation — a stack of pages, back, app and navigation bars, sheets, swipes, snackbars, the safe area

Looks

• Styles and themes — style sheets, themes, styled properties
• Graphics and effects — drawing, effects, blend modes, fonts

Behaviour

• Threading and timers — the UI thread, DispatcherTimer, unhandled exceptions
• Accessibility — screen readers, keyboard, high contrast, text scale

Tooling

• Markup, previewer and Hot Reload
• The browser — WebAssembly specifics, fonts, preloading
• Testing — the headless platform, snapshots
• Public API and releases — Shipped/Unshipped, versioning

The changelog lists what changed in every release.