Welcome to our first devlog!
July has been a busy month for Celer and customIcons. While both projects are being developed independently, they share something in common which is that, both are currently being ported and rewritten from the ground up. Celer is being migrated from WPF to WinUI 3, while customIcons is being ported from WinForms to WPF.
Here’s a quick recap of the progress that has been done.
Celer: Porting to WinUI 3 #
The WinUI 3 port of Celer is still in progress and not yet on par with the last WPF release, but development is active and ongoing. This transition includes a totally new UI and involves rewritting the core of the app and making a new navigation model.
Some of the benefits that we've seen with the porting are the:
- Modern look & feel, thanks to the native Windows 11 design language built into WinUI 3
- Improved performance and responsiveness
- A cleaner, more maintainable base
- Better support for per-monitor DPI, UI scaling, and theming
The internal structure is also being modularised. Each feature is now developed as an independent service and module, allowing you to choose only the components you want to use which improves performance and gives you more control by making the app customized towards your needs.
New Onboarding System #
Celer now includes a completely redesigned onboarding experience, focused on control.
- Clear explanations of what the app does (fig. 1)
- Heavier emphasis on user customization by making all the modules and features opt-in (fig. 2)
customIcons: Migrating from WinForms to WPF #
customIcons, part of the customWin suite, was in need of a serious overhaul. Now officially under the SurfScape umbrella, the project is finally getting the attention it deserves.
The goals of the port:
- Move to the latest .NET platform
- Replace WinForms with WPF
- Fix some of its issues
While progress has been slow, the new UI is already complete (with system theme support) and the core logic for icon loading is now functional under .NET 9!
Other Updates #
- New pages for Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and the SurfScape Gateway for the Celer project
- Dropped Steel for WPF in favour of Fluent 2
- Cleanup of legacy code across both projects and our main website
Looking Ahead #
In August we'll be focusing on:
- Completing the core modules in the WinUI version of Celer (maybe for a beta release 😉)
- Releasing a preview build of customIcons with feature parity with the old WinForms version
- Expanding the SurfScape Gateway service with new types of signatures
- Trying out other ways of packaging and shipping apps (NSIS, MSIX, portable)
As always thanks for following along and for your support 🥰
More exciting stuff is coming soon so stay tuned!
~ Redux