The FAST and the Fluent: A Blazor story

The FAST and the Fluent A Blazor story is a detailed introduction to the Fluent UI Blazor library, which is built on top of Web Components and modern web standards. The library was created by Microsoft's UX engineers and designers with the goal of making it easier to create web components using standard web technologies.

Web Components is an umbrella term that refers to a collection of web standards aimed at creating custom HTML elements. These standards include the ability to define new HTML tags, plug into a standard component lifecycle, encapsulate HTML rendering, CSS encapsulation and parameterization. The Fluent UI Blazor library uses these W3C Web Component standards, making it possible for components built with FAST to function in the same way as built-in, normal HTML elements.

The Fluent design system is another key component of the Fluent UI Blazor library. It was originally developed by Microsoft for its Metro design system and contains guidelines for the designs and interactions used within software. The latest version of the Fluent design system, Fluent 2, was released in 2021.

Blazor is a framework for building interactive web applications with .NET. Developers build interactive UIs using C# instead of JavaScript. Code can be executed both client-side and server-side and, via MAUI, even run natively on iOS, Android, and Tizen devices. The Fluent UI Blazor library is built on top of Blazor, making it possible to use the Fluent design system with this framework.

The Fluent UI Blazor library was initially developed by Microsoft's FAST team as a wrapper for each Fluent UI Web Component. This meant that a Blazor component was created that rendered a web component, using the same names, parameters and enumerations as the web component but in Razor syntax and with the C# language. The first version of the library was released around the end of 2021 and contained about 40 different components.

The Fluent UI Blazor library has been successful since its release, with almost 1.1 million NuGet package downloads as of writing this article. It is not an official part of ASP.NET Core, which means it's not officially supported and isn't committed to ship updates as part of any official .NET updates. However, Microsoft itself believes in its future and is using the library in a couple of projects already.

The Fluent UI Blazor library has continued to evolve and expand since its initial release. The latest version, version 4, was released in November 2021 and includes almost 70 components. These are not only just wrappers of the Fluent UI Web Components anymore, but also pure Blazor components that leverage the Fluent Design System for their user interface, others make it easier to work with Fluent design in your application. The library is now independent from the FAST team and a bit closer to the Blazor team.

In conclusion, the Fluent UI Blazor library is a powerful tool for building interactive web applications using .NET and the Fluent design system. It offers a wide range of components that can be used in any modern browser and is built on top of Web Components and modern web standards. The library has been successful since its release and continues to evolve and expand, with new versions being released regularly.