Ultimate .NET 6 Features To Develop Scalable Web and Mobile Apps

Released in Nov 2021, .NET 6 from Microsoft consolidates its plan to create a unified platform to develop applications for any device and operating system. The new version aims to simplify development and gain performance by bringing to life many new features of one open-source, cross-platform development for all types of .NET projects.

Microsoft officially released long term stable version .NET 6 on November 8, 2021. It includes around ten thousand git commits. This is the first-ever release that natively supports Apple Silicon (mac OS Arm64) and provides improved support for Windows Arm64 operating systems. It brings big-bet features along with massive gains in performance and optimization. Let’s have a look at the other enhancements with this version.

Highlights of New features in .NET 6

• Hot Reload allows viewing code changes in real-time without the need to restart the app.
• Open Telemetry and dotNet monitor support.
• Improvements of Visual Basic in the Visual Studio experience and Windows from project experience.
• Ease of render capability for Blazor components from JavaScript.
• WebAssembly AOT compilation for Blazor WebAssembly apps.
• HTTP/3 support
• Support for symbolic links in File IO
• Support for OpenSSL, the ChaCha20Poly1305 encryption scheme, and runtime defense-in-depth mitigations
• Source generators and analyzers
• Performance is greatly improved across the board.
• C# 10 offers language improvements, F# 6 adds new features.

The below table shows the details of .Net Core Versions.

Version	Release Date	Development/Editor Tool	Support
.Net Core 1.0	Jun-27-2016	Visual Studio 2015 updated Version 3	1.0
.Net Core 1.1	Nov-18-2016	Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.0	1.0,1.1
.Net Core 2.0	Aug-14-2017	Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3	1.0,1.1,2.0
Net Core 2.1 Long Term Support	May-30-2018	Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7	1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1
.Net Core 2.2	Dec-04-2018	Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.9	1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1,2.2
.Net Core 3.0	Sep-23-2019	Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.3	1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1,2.2,3.0
.Net Core 3.1 (3 yr Long-term support)	Dec-03-2019	Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.4	1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1,2.2,3.0,3.1
.NET 5.0	Nov-10-2020	Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.8	1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1,2.2,3.0,3.1,5.0
.NET 6.0 1 (3 yr Long-term support)	Nov-08-2021	Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.0	6.0
.NET 7.0.1	Dec-13-2022

We’re attempting to explain what new features mean for your business going forward. So, let’s dive right into it!

Long Term Support (LTS) – 3 years

• The new version is supported on major operating systems like Windows Arm64 and macOS Apple Silicon.
• Supported with Visual Studio 2022 & Visual Studio 2022 for Mac.

Unified Platform Support

• With .NET 6, one can build applications and host them across all major platforms ranging from cloud, browser, desktop, IoT, and mobile apps.
• Being available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, it is a cross-platform framework that provides the ability to re-use code across all the applications to provide a unified view.
• .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is one of the exciting features of this release. It serves as the cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps with C# and XAML. And, by utilizing .NET MAUI, users can develop applications that can run on Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and windows.

Enhanced Performance

• .NET 6.0 surpasses the earlier version .NET 5 in terms of numerous performance improvements across the board and for file I/O, interface casting, PGO, and System.Text.Json in particular.
• The key areas in this updated version are the improved efficiency and speed of both JIT and AOT compilation. This decreases project execution time, improves latency time, and optimizes memory usage.

Hot Reload

• An awesome feature that focuses on developers’ productivity. It enables them to modify the app’s source code while the application is still running.
• Collapses the time spent waiting for apps to rebuild, restart, or re-navigate to the same section where developers were after making a code change.
• Suitable for different app types such as ASP.NET Core, Windows Forms (WinForms), .NET MAUI, Azure Functions, Blazor, Console, WPF, WinUI 3, and others.

Advanced Security

• Added preview support for runtime defense-in-depth two mitigations, “write exclusive execute” (W^X) and Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET).
• Security has also been significantly improved for OpenSSL 3 and ChaCha20Poly1305 authenticated encryption schemes.

C# 10 and F# 6 Introduction

• C# 10 provide code simplification by reducing the amount of code needed to perform a program. Global using directives, File-scoped namespaces, and Record structs are three major improvements in C#.
• F# 6 is all about making code more easier and performant. It contains new features such as task-based async, pipeline debugging, and more.

JSON API

• Microsoft has incorporated a source generator for System.Text.Json in .NET 6. It avoids the need for reflection and code generation at runtime.
• The new source generator comes with improvements such as an “industrial strength” serialization solution and more.

Minimal APIs

• Supports minimal APIs that are introduced in ASP.NET core to streamline the getting started experience and improve the performance of HTTP services.
• Reduces complexity by enabling developers to build a fully working web API app with minimal lines of code.
  Blazor Components
• Blazor apps built using Razor components can now be rendered from JavaScript and integrated with existing JavaScript-based apps.

Single-page Apps

• Provides a more flexible pattern for single-page apps that can be built using Angular, React, and other front-end JavaScript frameworks.

HTTP/3

• Includes preview support for the new version of HTTP – HTTP/3
• The new version solves some existing functional and performance challenges by using a new underlying connection protocol called QUIC

File IO Improvements

• System.IO.FileStrem has been completely rewritten in the latest version .NET 6. It provides better performance for all operating systems but majorly Windows.
• Makes async operations allocation-free

Crossgen 2

• .NET 6.0 introduces the successor to Crossgen tool that provides ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation
• Empowers to generate and optimize code in a newer way.

Dynamic Profile Guided Optimization (PGO)

• A native compilation technology where JIT compilers create more highly optimized code.
• .NET 6 introduces dynamic PGO for improved performance by runtime information that can be utilized for greater throughput, speedier startup, and smaller binaries.

.NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI)

• A cross-platform UI toolkit that enables to deliver of native modern client app experience  for desktop and mobile operating systems with a single codebase

SDK Workloads

• The new workloads of .NET 6 – NET MAUI and Blazor WebAssembly AOT workloads support new kinds of applications –mobile and WebAssembly without enhancing the size of the SDK
• Allows developers to install only necessary SDKs.

OpenTelemetry Support

• A collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs that assists web developers to analyze software’s performance and behavior.
• .NET 6 brings improved support for OpenTelemetry through which apps can seamlessly interoperate with similar systems.

Writeable Document Object Model (DOM)

• The new DOM supplements the pre-existing read-only DOM. This new API provides a lightweight serialization for cases where old CLR object (POCO) types are not desired.
• Facilitates efficient modification of a subset of a large JSON tree.

IAsyncEnumerable

• System.Text.Json now supports serializing and deserializing of IAsyncEnumerable<T> instances.
• Asynchronous serialization lists any IAsyncEnumerable<T> instances in an object graph and then serializes them as JSON arrays. Though synchronous serializations methods do not support IAsyncEnumerable<T> serialization and result in a NotSupportedException.

IL Trimming

• Improved self-contained deployments trimming.
• TrimMode=link which was an opt-in feature in previous versions is now enabled by default in .NET 6. It adds trimming of unused types and members too.
• A warning pops up whenever a trimmer is unable to understand the code pattern.

Custom Guards

• CA1416 platform compatibility analyzer identifies platform guards utilizing the methods
  OperatingSystem/RuntimeInformation by OperatingSystem.IsWindows and OperatingSystem.IsWindowsVersionAtLeast.
• NET 6 introduces two new attributes – SupportedOSPlatformGuard and UnsupportedOSPlatformGuard to annotate fields, properties, or methods for custom platform guards.

Windows Forms

• Includes better accessibility for controls that sets default font across the application with Application.SetDefaultFont, template updates to support the new application bootstrap, and others.

Source Build

• Helps build the .NET SDK with just a few commands.
• It enables IT companies like Red Hat to build their own version of SDK from a source and offer their own builds to their users.

Target Framework Monikers (TFMs)

• .NET 6 TFMs provide access to each cross-platform APIs that .NET offers.
• Reliable option if you are writing console apps, ASP.NET Core apps, or reusable cross-platform libraries.

NuGet Package Validation

• This tool enables NuGet library developers to verify the consistency and working of their packages.
• Helps determine any breaking changes across package versions, the same set of public APIs for all runtime-specific implementations, and target-framework or runtime applicability gaps.

Date, Time, and Time Zone Improvements

• Two structs added in .NET 6 includes System.DateOnly and System.TimeOnly. It represents the date part and time part of a DateTime respectively.
• DateOnly – Ideal for birthdays and anniversaries and business days, TimeOnly – Useful for recurring meetings, alarm clocks, and weekly business hours

The features and functionality would enable development teams from around the world to create enterprise-grade applications that are secure in every manner. As an experienced ASP.NET web development company, we can utilize .NET 6 to help you build robust, user-centric applications that cater to your business needs – whether you’re a startup, small company, or a large enterprise. Our certified .NET developers demonstrate high-end technical competency and a unified strategic approach to build custom ASP.NET Core-based solutions.