Building beautiful, high-performance Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) across multiple platforms can be challenging—but Avalonia makes it easier, and UXDivers is fully embracing this game-changing framework. Avalonia is an open-source UI toolkit that works across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and the Web. It allows developers to craft pixel-perfect interfaces using XAML, the same familiar language from WPF and .NET MAUI, with Avalonia-specific enhancements.
Avalonia's cross-platform capabilities make it a perfect fit for UXDivers’ mission of delivering the most polished, and usable Applications for the .NET ecosystem. The framework is highly customizable, offers a rich control library and the tooling is great, letting developers build UIs that are not only functional but also visually appealing. Whether you’re developing a lightweight desktop app or a more intensive embedded system interface, Avalonia can handle it all.
Avalonia’s integration with .NET and the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) design pattern makes it especially attractive for developers in the .NET ecosystem. MVVM simplifies the separation of UI and business logic, allowing for more maintainable and testable applications. Avalonia supports this architecture enabling well structured codebases.
Its XAML-based approach will also feel perfect if you worked with WPF, UWP, Xamarin.Forms or .NET MAUI in the past. With a robust and flexible templating and styling mechanism, developers can customize every aspect of the UI. This includes everything from button appearances to complex layouts. Avalonia also allows the creation of reusable styles, making it great for building Design Systems that ensure visual consistency across projects.
One standout project where UXDivers used Avalonia is the Ambient Weather app that is meant to connect to Ambient Weather stations and display real-time weather data.
The app originally had a basic user interface, and, by leveraging Avalonia, we reimagined the app’s design getting robust performance across platforms such as Linux, Mac and Windows.
In app modernization projects like this one, we follow a comprehensive design process starting from wireframes and defining UI guidelines, such as a color palette and typography. This process continues through to the creation of fully functional prototypes using tools like Figma. Sometimes, we even use real code when testing advanced interactions, ensuring everything works smoothly on actual devices. This flexible approach adapts to both simple UI redesigns and more complex UX overhauls. Ultimately, establishing a shared visual language keeps development aligned with usability and design goals for a cohesive final product.
Our engineering team's expertise ensures that the final product is a pixel-perfect implementation of the design, faithfully translated into a functional application. In this specific project, we deployed in a Linux embedded environment, leveraging Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation to maximize performance.
Ready to learn more? Explore the full Ambient Weather case study page and let’s start building your next HMI together!
