Here's how a Raspberry Pi, iPhone, Surface Duo, and Linux device can use the sam...

What you need to know

• Uno Platform allows developers to use code across multiple platforms, including Windows, iOS, Android, the web, and macOS.
• A recent update to Uno Platform added support for MediaPlayerElement when targeting the web and Linux.
• MediaPlayerElement is a control that developers can use to play media within apps.
• Uno Platform allowed developers to use MediaPlayerElement on iOS, Android, and Mac Catalyst before this month.

Uno Platform just announced an update that will make it easier for developers to make web and Linux apps that stream media content. The update to version 4.9 adds support for MediaPlayerElement to those platforms. MediaPlayerElement is a control that devs can use to stream and render media content in Windows Forms or WPF desktop apps, but thanks to Uno Platform, it's possible to use the same tech on a variety of other platforms.

If you're an everyday user, the announcement from Uno Platform may look like a lot of jargon. The main takeaway is that apps have a new option for media playback. Developers can use code that they've already worked on and figured out and then bring it to new platforms. MediaPlayerElement was available in Uno Platform on iOS, Android, and Mac Catalyst. Version 4.9 adds support for Linux and the web.

The CTO of Safe@AllStar, Mike Aleckson, shared how being able to use MediaPlayerElement across platforms helps both developers and users:

“Over the last three years, Uno Platform has been critical to our cross-platform mobile solutions built to protect thousands of child athletes.  Without Uno, there’s no way our small development team could’ve built and delivered our technology as quickly as we did to both the IOS and Android environments”

 “And the Media Player component now available for the Web Assembly environment is going to be a big positive in re-using our existing codebase for our youth organization training and certification app now in development.  The end result will be more and more young people being protected, in part, through the wise use of innovative technologies like the Uno Platform.”

Uno Platform shared an example of an app using MediaPlayerElement on a Raspberry Pi, iPhone, Surface Duo, PC, and the web.

The update to Uno Platform 4.9 also added support for WebView2 control for Android, iOS, and Mac Catalyst. This addition makes it possible for developers to add external web content within apps.

Uno Platform summarized the rest of the biggest changes in its blog post about version 4.9:

• Indexer and MVVM toolkit support for x:Bind expressions 
• UIElement.ActualOffset support 
• ms-appdata support for SvgImageSource, to load app packaged SVGs 
• Many performance improvements for WebAssembly using JSImport/JSExport 
• Many performance and memory improvements in the XAML Generator 
• Performance improvements in TextBlock rendering for Skia heads 
• DEPRECATING Uno Platform Solution Templates for Visual Studio 2019