README.md

WasmWinforms

Winforms now work in your browser! WasmWinforms is a nuget package that you can install and use your EXACT same code designed for winforms and you get can run it on your browser

Try it online

• https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/ some random controls doing nothing!
• https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/ demo from https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Simple-Calculator-54ec8e4a

How to use

• Create a Winforms application from Visual Studio. Note that winforms are full .Net applications.
• Create an empty .Net Core App and add files from full .net application into it. For example, add Form1.cs,Form1.Designer.cs, Form1.resx, Program.cs .You can add those files as links too.
• Install latest version of Winforms.Wasm nuget from nuget.org.
• Build your project.
• You can debug Win32 (32bit version) of your code in Visual Studio. (Make sure you have 32bit version of dotnet installed! (it should be in Program Files (x86)\dotnet\dotnet.exe)
• Looking at your OUTPUT DIRECTORy\dist\ you will find your index.html to run!

How it works

This project uses mono to run your C# IL code. Also coming with this distribution are System.Drawing and System.Windows.Forms. Winforms implementation required many other c libraries that I also ported all of them into WebAssembly. You can find out about them looking into their submodules!

How to compile/build

This project uses another amazing ( :D ) project of mine: GCCBuild which enables you to use any compiler to compile C/C++ code. Meaning you can have Visual Studio C/C++ project files and use them to compile both for Windows/Linux and also WebAssembly. You need to have Emscripten installed, activated and already accessible from your path. First from Visual Studio build for Release-x86 then build for WasmRel-x86. This way you have all libraries compiled for Win32 and also WebAssembly. Using Win32 compiled libraries are way easier to debug and run your applcation.

Please note that compiling mono-wasm should only be done in WasmRel or WasmDbg targets and it would take a minute or two to complete!

Why is it so slow/buggy?

File issues and submit pull request so it will be faster/less buggy! There are many many bugs and this project/product is not at all recommended for production. It is pre-alpha phase!

We have many better UI frameworks for browsers and web, why use Winforms?!

Well that is a really good question. I dont know. It was fun doing this thing. Maybe call it some useless technology...