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Introduction to Blazor
What is Blazor ?
Blazor is an experimental web UI framework using C#, Razor and HTML, running in the browser via WebAssembly.
Blazor runs in any browser and allows you to build single-page applications (SPA) without using JavaScript. No plugins or transpilation are needed, Blazor runs in the browser on a real .NET runtime implemented in WebAssembly that executes normal .NET assemblies. So you literally code your web UI using C# ... It sounds like in your dreams, doesn't it ?
Blazor will have all the features of a modern web framework including :
- A component model for building composable UI
- Routing
- Layouts
- Forms and validation
- Dependency injection
- JavaScript interop
- Live reloading in the browser during development
- Server-side rendering
- Full .NET debugging both in browsers and in the IDE
- Rich IntelliSense and tooling
- Ability to run on older (non-WebAssembly) browsers via asm.js
- Publishing and app size trimming
Is Blazor ready to go in production ?
The response is clear : NO. Blazor is just a start and there isn't anything you can download nor any project template you can use yet. Moreover, most of the planned features aren't implemented yet so it's not ready to be used in production, neither in development by the way. For the moment, the only thing you can do if you are intreprid is to clone the repository and play with it to see how it works and contribute if you want to.
A JavaScript Killer ?
It's way too soon to affirm this, there were so many JavaScript killers in the past but JavaScript is still alive, and not just a little bit. That said, Blazor is very interesting and seems very promising so it may allow in a few month .NET developers to develop good web UIs fully in C# and HTML.
Open Source
Like most of the last ASPNET projects Blazor is a fully Open Source project so you can browse the source code and contribute. This happens on GitHub.
Resources
For now, there are not much resources available and most of them are already obsolete. You can check these few links though, in which you'll find interesting elements :
- GitHub repository
- Microsoft's annoucement
- Steve Sanderson’s prototype demo at NDC Oslo
- Live Blazor app sample