Software Development Updates

1. Introduction

In today’s time where global software innovations are carried out every day, one of the biggest competitions that are going around is between the web app hosting providers. This is for framework cross-compatibility to the desktop, web, and mobile. If the app hosting framework has the capability to support cross-compatibility, it can benefit from the rapid development of software solutions. It can help in resolving business problems quickly and efficiently. And this is the reason why the open-source framework Blazor was developed by Microsoft and is used by .NET development services providers.

Blazor is a multiple hosting model provider that can be the best choice for your new project, this technology is highly secure to use. But as it is a new framework, the majority of the techies have questions in mind like What is Blazor – a new .NET framework? How does blazor work and what does it have to offer? So if you are one such developer and wants to know more about Blazor, the new framework that every .NET software development company has started to work with, let’s go through this blog and understand everything about Blazor, go through its popular hosting models, and see what this technology holds for the future.

2. What is Blazor?

Microsoft Blazor is one of the best cross-platform and open-source web user interface frameworks available in the market. It is a framework that was developed on a flexible component model. This means that Blazor has the capability to enable the developers to create web apps and interactive web user interfaces. Besides, Blazor uses C# instead of JavaScript code when it comes to creating the web user interface. The main reason behind it is that C# can be useful for both client and server-side development. But if any developer wants to use JavaScript, Blazor will allow them to call JavaScript functions and vice versa.

2.1 How do we develop web applications today?

• For server-side development, we tend to use programming languages like C#, Java, PHP, etc.
• For client-side development, use JavaScript frameworks such as Vue, Angular, React, etc. Undoubtedly, JavaScript frameworks dominated client-side development up until recently. 
• To stay in the business as a software programmer and stay ahead of the competition, we inevitably learn server-side and client-side programming languages.
• Now you must be wondering why we should learn and implement two different sets of programming languages and frameworks?

2.2 Can we use C# both for Server-side and Client side Development ?

Well, Blazer combines the older Razor with the latest one so we can say that we can use Blazer as it allows software developers to create both server-side and client-side applications. Both these platforms are written in C# Blazer so you can share code and libraries. Also, developers can reuse their C# skills and learn new JavaScript frameworks because it has a huge learning curve.

2.3 How can a browser execute C# code?

We can surely execute the C# code in the client browser using WebAssembly. As we all know that Blazor runs C# code directly in the browser using WebAssembly.  It is based on open web standards which is a native part of all modern browsers including mobile browsers. This means you’re not required to install any special plugin to initiate the working of the Blazor application.

3. Why Should We Use Blazor?

There are many reasons to use Blazor, the web user interface framework. The developers can use Blazor to run the web apps in any browser and this also includes mobile apps because WebAssembly is part of all major browsers. This means that when a developer is working on Blazor app development, he is not dependent on plugins for creating an app. As with Blazor, a developer can reuse their C# skills. C# is a very popular programming language that is strongly typed, enabling the developers to catch the error at compile time and not at runtime.

Besides this, Blazor is known as a popular framework that runs on the .NET runtime and the Blazor developers can easily use any library that they want to use as long as it is perfectly suitable with .NET Standard. This clearly means that Blazor enables the developers to use their own libraries and also all the public NuGet packages. In addition to this, there are some other strong reasons for choosing Blazor for the web development process. And they are –

• It enables the developers to reuse existing libraries.
• All major browsers are available in the market and support WebAssembly which makes it easier to create Blazor apps.
• With the use of C# for interactive web applications, the developers can create efficient Blazor code.
• The performance of the web applications created using Blazor is almost native.
• Tooling and debugging of the .NET code is very easy with Blazor.

4. Blazor Offers You Three Hosting Models to Choose From

4.1 Blazor

Blazor is a hosting model that enables the developers to deploy a complete Blazor app on the client-side and this doesn’t require server-side components. This is the type of deployment which enables the developers to stable hosting on Azure Blob storage.

Advantages of Blazor

• When it comes to working with Blazor, the developers can easily speed up the web app development process and the reason behind it is that Blazor comes with some basic services like authentication, cache management, HTTP clients, and more for template development which eventually helps in the creation of complex UIs with ease.
• Blazor enables the developers to create applications by writing C# code throughout.
• Blazor comes with a reasonable selection of component libraries and this includes MatBlazor, Ant Blazer, and Telerik UI for Blazor.
• It offers well-defined Blazor documentation to the developers.

Disadvantages of Blazor

• Unlike Angular, Blazor doesn’t offer hot reloading.
• As this technology is new in the application development market, its maturity is not as much as React and Angular.
• With Blazor, latency is a real issue.

4.2 Blazor WebAssembly

As per the documentation of Microsoft officials, a client-side Blazor WebAssembly (Wasm) application is something that directly runs in the browser. This means that when a user opens the web application or a web page of any website, all the When a user opens a web page or web application, the code related to the client-side logic will be downloaded. This clearly means that all the dependencies that are there on the website will also be downloaded. And because of this, the required execution time will be as per the app’s running time.

Basically, once everything is downloaded and then the user wants to connect with the site, it might be a problem. Therefore, Balzer WebAssembly is used as it is the hosting model that enables the user to continue with the app in offline mode and it also allows them to synchronize the changes later.

Advantages of Blazor WebAssembly

The advantages of the Blazor WebAssembly hosting model are as follows:

• Blazor WebAssembly is a hosting model that offers complete leverage for customer resources.
• It enables the .NET developers to use the client machine for the execution of the web application within the browser. After the application is downloaded, the server can be disconnected and there won’t be any loss of data. The application will be able to work as before but will not communicate with the server for retrieving new data from the .NET core application.
• With the help of Blazor WebAssembly, the developers are able to run the same code on the client side which has resulted in fast load times as only the changes in the DOM of the Blazor project are repainted. This proves that Blazor WebAssembly is a type of model that helps in reducing the server load.
• When a developer is working with the JavaScript frameworks like Blazor WebAssmebly, they don’t need to have an ASP.NET Core web server for hosting the application. The reason behind this is that this type of model offers serverless deployment scenarios like serving the web applications from a CDN.

Disadvantages of Blazor WebAssembly

Some of the disadvantages of Blazor WebAssembly are –

• This type of application hosting model requires WebAssembly-compatible client software and hardware. This means that Blazor Wasm is only able to work on the modern browsers.
• The web applications are limited to the capabilities of the web browser. And this is the reason behind the Mono Framework interpreting the .NET intermediate language as the web apps run in the client’s browser.
• With Blazor WebAssembly, the support for .NET development tools and runtime is less developed and this means that there is a limitation when it comes to debugging the application as per the .NET standards.
• Here, in this app hosting model, the download size of the application is much larger and it takes a longer time to load because the Wasm downloads all the necessary .NET DLL assemblies.

How to Create a Blazor WebAssembly Application?

• Open Visual Studio 2019.
• Click Create a new project for creating a new project.
• Select Blazor App, and click Next.
• Type BlazorWebAssemblyAppas is the name of the .NET project, which can be altered.
• Click … for specifying the folder of the project.
• Click Create.
• Select the Blazor WebAssembly App option and then click Create.

4.3 Blazor Server

Blazor Server as the name suggests is a server-side hosting model. Here the Blazor application runs on the server and any change made in the application or any event that happens on the app’s client-side is sent to the server with the help of SignalR communication. Then on the server-side, the processing of events or changes will be carried out and the client-side UI will be updated as per the requirements. This entire process means that with the Blazor server, the UI rendering is carried out on the server side.

Advantages of Blazor Server

• While working with the Blazor Server, the developers can take complete advantage of its capabilities for the Blazor project they are working on.
• Blazor server-side application has the capability to load much faster because it can pre-render the HTML content.
• When it comes to the end-users of any business application, what they require is to use the app in a web browser and as this app hosting model does not have restrictions on the versions of the browser, it is the best-suited model.
• Blazor server offers more security than any other web application hosting model as it doesn’t send the Visual Studio code to the client.

Disadvantages of Blazor Server

• With Blazor Server, the active connection with the server is required for an app to function properly and this means that an app doesn’t work when the internet connection is broken.
• This type of model needs an ASP.NET Core server.
• In Blazor Server, the information is constantly sent to and from the server which increases the latency rate.

How to Create a Blazor Server Application?

• Open Visual Studio 2019.
• Click Create a new project for creating a new project.
• Select Blazor App, and click Next.
• The project name default, Blazer App1 can be altered as per your choice.
• Click … to specify the folder of the .NET project.
• Click Create.
• From the two hosting model options given, choose Blazor Server App.
• Click Create.

Choose Which One?

When it comes to choosing a web app hosting platform from the above-listed three, the choice can be both difficult and easy. Some developers might find this selection procedure difficult as all three platforms are the best in the market for Blazor development. But when seen deeply, the answer to this question of selection is very simple. The choice completely depends on the application that the developer is going to create.

But when the application is too complex and it requires proper SEO approaches, then choosing Blazor server-side hosting model is a must. And if the web application that needs to be created is small and requires the ability to run offline, the best choice is Blazor WebAssembly hosting model.

5. So Why Would You Choose Something Else Over Blazor?

When the app development team lacks the .NET expertise and is not used to working with different types of front-end frameworks, the web app development companies choose something else over Blazor. Besides this, if the application development project doesn’t require the extra performance that WebAssembly has to offer, then usage of Blazor is avoided. There is no specific reason behind any development company dropping this technology besides the lack of knowledge of it. And for that, the developers can anytime start a new steep learning curve. 

In addition to this, some of the .NET app development companies think that though Blazor is an excellent technology to work with, it is still a newborn web framework and it still needs to grow up and develop. Though it is growing at a great speed and has become one of the best frameworks to take on the web development workload, some companies don’t prefer to replace any older technology with it. This means that when it comes to web app development, developers choose older and well-known technologies over Blazor just to be on the safer side. But Blazor is the current most popular front-end framework that has been tested in the web app development market.

6. What is the Future of Blazor?

Microsoft has launched many different types of Blazor web frameworks and all of them are making a big development to modernize the ASP.NET ecosystem. And the recent two versions of Blazor are – 

• Blazor WebAssembly is a version that uses the features of WebAssmebly to run the code of .NET technology in the client web browser. 
• Another version is Blazor Server and it works like React Server Side Rendering. This version has the capabilities to process everything smoothly on the server.

Besides this, Microsoft also plans to release an improved version of three new Blazor in the future. Let’s see what Blazor holds for the future –

• Blazor Hybrid: This is a version that will enable Blazor applications to be packaged into desktop-based apps. Blazor Hybrid is similar to Electron but has a better performance level. 
• Blazor PWA: It is a Blazor version that is designed for publishing sites as an installable Progressive Web App (PWA).
• Blazor Native: It has the capability to replace the web-based UI with an interface of the platform-native. 

This proves that the future of Blazor is very bright and this is because of the features and hosting models it comes with.