Blazor is a web technology released by Microsoft during 2020 that was exciting, at the time, because it introduces a new way to develop for the web. And since its release, much of my time was spent developing Blazor applications and Blazor components.
While this site was developed using Blazor WASM, it doesn’t use a Blazor specific component library. Instead, it uses Bootstrap, which may be used with any classic web user interface. However, my management application, which requires more robust features, does use a component library. And for the sake of fairness, that library will not be disclosed in this article.
Keep in mind that many great Blazor component libraries are available. This review, in no way, is a comprehensive review.
Blazor as a Technology
One of the technologies that Blazor features is WASM. And what’s exciting about WASM is the ability to reimagine web development and introduce many new powerful features that currently don’t exist in web development. And that’s true with many other technologies that compile to WASM, include C, C++, Rust, and so on. The Rust community, for example, is exploring web UIs written in Rust. And that would certainly have many novel advantages over other current technologies.
Microsoft has taken advantage of WASM by including a very small version of .NET in Blazor, so developers can include the power of .NET in their Blazor applications. What is appealing about this, as a developer, is the amount of control it gives the developer. The developer doesn’t have to worry about losing state, similar to classic web technologies, and isn’t forced to write everything in JavaScript. This allows Blazor developer to develop rich component libraries with the power of .NET and share them with the rest of the Blazor community.
Premium Blazor Component Libraries
Many premium (i.e., paid for) component libraries exist for Blazor. The reason these are great options for developers and businesses is that they provide high quality components with robust features that enable them to rapidly build a business application without having to do so much work on the user interface. A good web developer, such as myself, could build just about any type of web component a person could imagine using Web UI technology. However, it takes a lot of time to develop high quality web components. So, premium component libraries can save a considerable amount of time and money, and literally cut the development budget in half.
The options listed below are not ranked in any order. What a developer needs to consider when choosing a premium library is whether it meets the needs of the project. Two of the most valuable considerations when evaluating component libraries are: 1) does the businesses already use a premium library; and 2) does the library in question have the specific components required by stakeholders. Some libraries have components that others lack.
Syncfusion
DevExpress
Telerik
The great thing about libraries, such as Telerik, is that they provide the same components for different technologies. Suppose, for example, a manager decided to modernize a WPF application written using Telerik controls. It’s possible to port all of that functionality to a new Blazor application without losing functionality and host it as a web application.
Free Blazor Component Libraries
Developers can certainly find many free Blazor component libraries online. And the list below is not an endorsement of any one component library. These libraries happen to contain some impressive features. Radzen, for example, has a premium product that enables the developer to customize the user interface without having to do so much coding. And that saves a substantial amount of time, money, and stress. However, all of these projects provide gorgeous user interfaces and enable the developer to customize the components to conform to the business theme.
Radzen
Infragistics
MudBlazor
Blazorise
Lastly, Microsoft provides their own component library called Fluent UI. This is a good choice for utilitarian business applications that may require a signature. It’s a gorgeous UI designed to mimic the appearance of a Windows 11 Fluent UI application. However, the elements are not very customizable to maintain a consistent appearance throughout. That’s great from the developer’s perspective because the developer spends less time working on UI and more time building out functionality. If the application, or web site, will be consumed by lots of users, then the developer may want to choose a component framework that offers more customization.
Microsoft Fluent UI
Chart Libraries
The ability to display charts and have a rich textbox are also important features in web development. The premium products tend to include those features. And even free component libraries, such as Radzen, include those features to a limited extent.
One library that has me very excited is LiveCharts 2, which provides gorgeous charts for streaming data as well.
LiveCharts 2
After experiencing frustration with the limitations of some chart libraries, I created GChartsBlazorfied to provide an easy and intuitive way for developers to add Google Maps, Geo Charts, and other Google Charts to a Blazor application. The team at Google Charts does a great job building a high-quality enterprise ready product. And by making it easier to integrate Google Charts, Google Maps, and Geo Charts into a Blazor application, the developer can spend less time customizing charts and more time building a great application.
Github
Demo