Smart Components allows developers to add AI features to existing .NET software.
Adding AI can take weeks of development time because developers have to focus on redesigning the UI or exploring machine learning and prompt engineering. Smart Components should change that. To this end, Microsoft has developed AI features that developers can easily integrate into their existing apps.
Initially, this is now an experiment, available for the Blazor, MVC and Razor Pages (.NET 6 and newer) development frameworks. With these tests, Microsoft wants to gather feedback on the usability of the components to discover which features are still needed. Later, Microsoft plans to make similar components available for the .NET MAUI, WPF and Windows Forms frameworks.
What AI features can be added?
With the launch of Smart Components, three AI features will be available. The first is called Smart Paste, which allows an application’s form to be automatically populated with data on the clipboard. The user only needs to click the Smart Paste button, and the fields on the form will be completed with the available data. This AI feature can be added to existing web apps.
The second feature is called Microsoft Smart TextArea. This allows typed text to be completed automatically. It can be customized, such as what tone a sentence should follow and which policies and URLs apply. This allows for faster typing and eliminates the need for users to remember URLs.
Finally, Microsoft is introducing Smart ComboBox. This allows a field to make suggestions based on what a user enters in that field. For example, if a user enters “airplane,” the system can recognize it as something that falls under the category of “travel”.
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