A Comparative Study of .NET MAUI and Avalonia in Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development
Omsha, Basil (2024)
2024
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024052013532
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024052013532
Tiivistelmä
The purpose of the thesis was to highlight the differences between .NET MAUI and Avalonia to allow developers to determine which of the frameworks is better suited for cross-platform mobile application development. An expense tracker app was created in the two frameworks. The app implementation helped to highlight the main differences and issues faced as well as assess the documentation quality and availability of the frameworks. The thesis also showed different options available to implement the desired features. The topic was provided by the HAMK research unit, also called HAMK Smart, and chosen by the author as the topic aligned with his interest in learning more about cross-platform mobile development.
The theoretical part introduced software development in general, the different ways mobile applications can be developed, general information about the frameworks, and available third-party tools that can be utilized. The thesis is practice-based as it produced two applications utilizing .NET MAUI and Avalonia to help understand the differences in development and showcase the differences in the results, which served as a concrete example for developers to decide which framework is more suited for cross-platform mobile development.
In conclusion, cross-platform frameworks provide a good alternative to native development as one codebase can produce applications for different devices. With both .NET MAUI and Avalonia, it was possible to create mobile applications. However, MAUI was more suited as it provided better user interface controls for mobile users than Avalonia, which has controls fit
for desktop applications at the time of writing this thesis. Also, MAUI provided a built-in navigation schema, while Avalonia did not. Additionally, the documentation of MAUI was easily accessible and available. Avalonia had one official website that contained the necessary information, with little third-party content to support it.
The theoretical part introduced software development in general, the different ways mobile applications can be developed, general information about the frameworks, and available third-party tools that can be utilized. The thesis is practice-based as it produced two applications utilizing .NET MAUI and Avalonia to help understand the differences in development and showcase the differences in the results, which served as a concrete example for developers to decide which framework is more suited for cross-platform mobile development.
In conclusion, cross-platform frameworks provide a good alternative to native development as one codebase can produce applications for different devices. With both .NET MAUI and Avalonia, it was possible to create mobile applications. However, MAUI was more suited as it provided better user interface controls for mobile users than Avalonia, which has controls fit
for desktop applications at the time of writing this thesis. Also, MAUI provided a built-in navigation schema, while Avalonia did not. Additionally, the documentation of MAUI was easily accessible and available. Avalonia had one official website that contained the necessary information, with little third-party content to support it.