Uno Platform unveils visual designer for cross-platform .NET development

Uno Platform has unveiled the Uno Platform Studio, featuring a suite of developer productivity tools including Hot Design, a visual designer for building cross-platform.NET apps.

Introduced November 14, the Uno Platform Studio is intended to help developers navigate parts of the development life cycle, from design handoff to building the app. Hot Design, one of several tools in the suite, lets developers transform a running app into a design from any IDE or any OS. Another key feature of Uno Platform is a Hot Reload capability, which updates the app with new code during development to confirm that changes were applied. Also highlighted is a Figma plugin for design-to-code functionality. Figma and Hot Reload are available now while Hot Design is expected in the first half of 2025. Developers can join a waitlist for early access.

With Hot Design, any change made in the designer updates the XAML code in real time. Further, any code changes are immediately reflected in the UI, allowing for a consistent design-to-code experience and streamlining the development process, Uno Platform said. Hot Design is IDE-agnostic and integrates with the Visual Studio IDE, the Visual Studio Code editor, and the Rider IDE on all operating systems. Developers with Hot Design can develop applications with a rich UI on every platform supported by.NET, the company said. That includes Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops, embedded devices, iOS and Android mobile devices, and the web (via WebAssembly).

Hot Design supports user-created and third-party UI components, simplifying customization and integration. This feature is crucial for developers working with sophisticated design systems and controls, the company said. Developers also can work with real data via Hot Design. Traditional designers have required creating mock data, Uno Platform said.

Hot Reload lets developers see UI changes without having to rebuild the app. Hot Reload works with Hot Design and provides a visual indicator to help users monitor further changes during development. The Figma plugin can export Figma designs to XAML or C# Markup with one click, allowing the resulting markup to be easily pasted into Uno Platform Studio and Hot Design.