Introduction to Modern Blazor

Blazor’s evolution from a bold experiment to a mainstream enterprise framework is one of the most notable journeys in modern web development. When Microsoft first introduced the idea in 2017, web application development was almost entirely dominated by JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue. Developers who built their back-end services in .NET often faced the challenge of maintaining two separate technology stacks: C# for the server side and JavaScript for the browser. Microsoft’s engineers wondered whether it was possible to eliminate that split by running .NET code directly inside the browser. With the advent of WebAssembly, Microsoft began experimenting with running .NET directly in the browser, an effort that eventually became the Blazor project. The breakthrough that made this feasible was WebAssembly (WASM), a compact bytecode format capable of running at near-native speed within all major browsers without plug-ins. Early Blazor prototypes introduced a streamlined .NET runtime compiled to WebAssembly, enabling developers to execute C# securely within the browser while interacting directly with the DOM. These early explorations established the architectural groundwork for what would later mature into Blazor’s two primary hosting models: Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly.