.NET 7 Features Your Website Should Have for Great User Experience

Your company’s website is pivotal to its success because it is the primary identity of your brand in today’s world. It is also the main asset that helps build brand credibility with your target audience, with 75% of people believing that their first impression of a business comes from its website. 

What’s more, it only takes 50 milliseconds for users to form that impression of your website, and by extension, your business. What this means is that your web design and development process should be impeccable to gain and retain a large market share. Fortunately, technology has given rise to tools that can be used to create bespoke websites that can stand out and engage users in many ways. .NET is one of those, with .NET 7, its latest avatar, having many unique features for web development. 

This blog details why you should use .NET 7 for your website development/revamp. It also demonstrates the need to hire .NET developers through dedicated service providers to get the most out of the development process. 

.NET 7 Features That Improve Your Website’s UX

.NET 7, as a web development framework, has a lot to offer compared to its predecessors. It has been designed to help make web development easier, while also giving developers a plethora of features they can add to the website they’re building. These upgrades make website development a rewarding investment for the business that commissioned the project.

Below are the details of those features, and how they can make your website’s user experience exemplary.

Also Read: UI vs UX – Are They Same or Different & their Impact on Website

Updated C# Language 

C# is a programming language created by Microsoft to run exclusively on the .NET framework. The language has multiple asset development uses, such as mobile applications, desktop applications, web applications, games, database applications, web services, etc. Its versatility, combined with its simplicity, large community support, open-source nature, and object-oriented structure that helps reduce development costs due to the reuse of code has made it a popular tool to use for web developers. 

.NET 7 has C# 11 as its mainstay, which is a step up from C# 10 in terms of features. One of those changes is the “Auto-default struct” feature. In simple terms, the compiler that runs the programs now adds default values to the “struct” data type. This ensures that the code runs smoothly during development and use, and developers needn’t worry about the web program getting misled with wrongful data. 

Some others on the list include Generic math support, UTF-8 string literals (for incorporating different keyboard type support), File-local types (that makes it easier to store and retrieve a particular data file from the database), List patterns (helps with matching patterns of different elements, making backend data pattern interconnectivity better).

These improvements make C# an even better option for web development, along with the other .NET 7 features. 

General Performance Upgrades

The .NET framework is known for providing high-performing web assets, and .NET 7 takes it up several notches due to the added performance upgrades. These upgrades are a key factor behind the release of .NET 7. Here are some of the modifications aimed solely at performance improvement: 

On-Stack Replacement

Programs typically run without the ability to modify them while they are running. OSR changes give developers the ability to make changes to code during runtime. Even long segments of code can switch to their more optimized version midway through execution. This means developers can easily update websites with new features or iron out bugs while the website is up. So, no compromise on website reliability means no loss of revenue. 

Improved ARM64 Code Generation

ARM64 is the hardware architecture that is used by nearly all mobile SoCs (system on Chip). It is popular for providing great performance with little battery consumption, making it a clear choice over the x86 architecture chips used in desktops and laptops. With improvements, ARM64 is seeing use in devices that used to be the sole domain of x86. 

This means that web development should happen for the ARM64 architecture not only in the front end but also at the backend as those chips can be present in servers too. .NET 7 has done just that by providing a better ARM64 code generation environment. 

Since the uptake of ARM-based servers and desktop/laptop chips is still picking up, .NET developers who can manage this type of coding, especially supporting interoperability between x86 and ARM64 architectures, can be hard to find for in-house development. Going with a .NET development company can ease that problem since they are likely to upskill their developers or hire new ones who can do the job. 

Improvements to Mono Runtime

Mono is an open-source software development platform that works on the .NET framework. It helps developers build cross-platform applications, meaning apps that can be used on any platform/OS, like Android, iOS, a variety of web browsers, etc. 

Cross-platform coding is difficult because they each vary in how they fundamentally use the hardware resources, even going so far as to be incompatible with certain hardware types. This means there must be some sort of conversion to enable the code of an app to work across these platforms. If it isn’t optimized, then there won’t be a universally good user experience for your website. 

With improvement to mono runtime, however, .NET 7 reduces the problems associated with cross-platform code generation, thus ensuring uniform user experience no matter what device the user is viewing the site on. 

Profile-guided Optimization

PGO is used to optimize and instrument certain parts of code, like delegates, which are reference data types that point to certain sections of code. Optimizing them means they can fetch the required data quickly, enabling faster load and response times for the website. 

With .NET 7, PGOs can work with OSRs for performance enhancement reasons and are easier to enable for developers, making the development process less time-consuming. 

There are many more such performance-oriented optimizations embedded in .NET 7 that can turn your website’s sluggishness around for the better, making it load faster and interact quickly irrespective of the content present on it. 

Generic Math

.NET 7, in combination with C# 11, includes enhancements that enable the calculations of mathematical operations to occur generically. What it means is that there is no longer a need to know the exact type that you’re working with. This makes code more optimized as there is no need to write segments repeatedly with slight modifications. 

A generic segment whose parameters are restricted to numerical data types can be written and its modified version called whenever required using the right parameters. What this means is that .NET developers can now make crucial mathematical operations run quickly, making the site perform better when handling large calculations. For example, pinch-zoom for magnifications varies numbers quickly, and the new generic math operations can help scale the different elements of the website being seen quickly. 

Visual Studio 2022 version 17.4

This new version of Visual Studio is a side release that coincides with the release of .NET 7. While it may not be a direct upgrade to the framework like the others, this new Visual Studio version plays a role in helping .NET 7 generate better websites. 

First off, VS 2022 is a 64-bit application, unlike its predecessors which are only 32-bit. This means that it can now utilize the full potential of the chip present in computers, which exclusively operate using 64-bit architecture. More operations can be run in a given time by using the 64-bit architecture, which for a graphic-intensive application like VS, makes a big difference. It cuts down development time and costs. 

It also contains better development tools for .NET that improve cross-platform development and runtime application modification. These improvements, along with a more simplified user interface, have made it easier for developers to use the platform’s many features, so much so that even beginners can make good use of it. 

Conclusion

The mentioned features upgrades to .NET 7, along with other ongoing ones, provide a more clear pathway for web development. It produces websites that can work across platforms without compromising on any aspect of their user experience. With the right developers for the job, which is best achieved by approaching a dedicated .NET development company, you can ensure that your brand value will not get marred by poor web design and development, helping to stamp your identity in a crowded market firmly and create a robust sales funnel.