Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework (neowin.net)

Seasons may come and go, but one thing will never change.

Windows and an absolutely baffling array of UI frameworks with various pitfalls, uncertain futures, and no clear winners.

(honorable mention to WinForms though.)

I really hope they do and the rendering engine is decently decoupled, I'll give a try building a framework on top of it.

I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good.

Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.

I'm sure it'll be really user friendly(!)

So, they gonna abandon it soon?

What "UI framework"? Windows is a Frankenstein's monster of different UI elements.

I hope this leads to having a native vertical taskbar, which has been absent in W11 despite being a taskbar feature dating back as early as Windows 98.

Third-party tools have tried to reimplement it but it's either been by bastardizing the native W11 horizontal taskbar to be vertical (eg: Windhawk) or just restoring the old W10 taskbar code (eg: StartAllBack).

Last I evaluated it WinUI3 was a terrible developer experience. The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it, which means you end up with a large number of useless start menu entries, not to mention registry entries and such. Another thing was that the example programs crashed when I clicked on a button.

All I want is something simple to work with to make applications for Windows, and so far I'm still using Win32 with WTL.

open-sourcing it so they can get free labor.

winui3 was abandoned the moment it was conceived.

I already lost count how many UI frameworks are in windows. It looks like complete chaos and mess.

I really wonder what they expect from open-sourcing it. Just to pretend how open they are? Or is there any real benefit to developers who target windows?

I won’t benefit from this. At the same time, I cannot see a single bad thing about it, so I’m surprised about all the negative energy.

So will we be able to have more than 11 programs on the taskbar without them being compacted?

Or a 2 row taskbar?

So I can easily switch between my 40 windows open? What is good for productivity?

How was it implemented? C#? C++?

Even for Windows-only GUI software, it is much safer and sane to use cross-platform frameworks such as wxWidgets and Qt Widgets.

Does this mean that we will be able to get the Quicklaunch toolbar back?

> Alignment with Microsoft Goals

> We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support and impact.

I don't sense any benevolence in their words. They are just pulling off their resources and dumping the framework on the public, hoping passionate losers will contribute.

I am worried about the future of native UI technologies on Windows. Traditionally at least the developers of operating systems have eaten their own dogfood and have at least tried to implement well-performing & visually consistent native applications to serve as an example to others. Windows 11 has largely done the opposite. Windows has had minimal but perfectly functional native email and calendar apps at least since Windows 10 (could have been in 8, never used that). Windows 11 originally shipped with those apps, but they were removed in a later update and replaced with laggy webview wrappers that take seconds to start.

What we wanted: Win7 UI open source

What we got: Win11 dumpster fire, free for everyone to fix

They need to feed it to all the LLMs to get help keeping it from falling apart.

They could go back to Win32 + WinForms and everything would be fine.

Actual - and rather different - title (as borne out by reading the article):

Microsoft is taking steps to open-sourcing Windows 11 user interface framework

If only they'd open source Windows Explorer and the taskbar/start menu, rather than resisting peoples attempts to customise them through other hackery.

"We laid off most of the team despite record profits and need free labor to maintain what remains"

Confused, the Win 11 UI framework, Electron, is already open source.

No one in Windows development community cares about WinUI, other than those with sunken costs that bought into the WinRT/UWP dream and now are stuck with a dead technology.

Too many burned bridges since Windows 8 came out.

If anything, this is Microsoft confirmation that they are unwilling to fix all the broken issues, and hoping the community will somehow still care.

[dead]

Dumb question from somebody who doesn’t do gui stuff: is this like a Window Manager, or more like GTK or QT or whatever?