Dear CSHTML5 dev team.
I've been working with your product (free trial) for some time and I'm quite happy with it. The ability to write web app using the same logic as Windows app is very nice. I have two sites written with a mix of HTML and PHP, and I did my best to port them to CSHTML5 . Here is my feedback.
1. Compilation time is pretty slow, but that's not really a problem. It's just quite noticeable when compared to PHP scripts for which all you need to do is to upload them.
2. My sites aren't particularly big, yet each easily take over 20 Mb of scripts, and they take some time to download. Also, I believe browsers put limits on the amount of script data they will run from a site and it's pretty stringent (100 Mb?). I feel like I could hit this barrier in the future. But I haven't really tested, it's just a feeling.
3. The doc from this site is scattered, and not very reliable. For example, it will state that CultureInfo.InvariantCulture is supported, and indeed you can use it, for example with CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.EnglishName, but when comes the time to compile you'll get the "not yet supported" error. I'm not too sure why the error is delayed, instead of just not including the feature in the class, but now when I try something new I always assume it's in fact not implemented, and I try to compile a small test sample. It takes time, it's annoying. It's my feedback.
4. Trying the various Inlines such as <Bold>, <LineBreak>, <Hyperlink> I have several issues with them:
4.1. For the life of me, I couldn't manage to bind them to data. I can bind a TextBlock with, for example, <TextBlock Text="{Binding MyText}"/> but I can't do the same with Hyperlink and that's a big limitation for me. Perhaps I'm overlooking something.
4.2. There is always a space after the Hyperlink tag. If you take your example 4, "here is a link." actually looks like this: "here is a link .". That's ... weird.
4.3. I haven't been able to put a style on the Hyperlink foreground, so it always has blue text. I wasn't able to use VisualStateManager either, so can't give my links a custom look.
5. I have several pages, and it's quite slow to switch from one page to the other. Perhaps I'm not using the correct way to do it? Each page inherit from Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Page, and I switch with "Window.Current.Content = NewPage;"
6. I've noticed that Google Chrome (for example) saves my site in a cache after the first download. That's fine, until I make a change. In that case, the change will be visible only after the cache is explicitly cleared. It's problematic! I hope there is a way to work around this, I haven't really looked yet.
This was with 1.2 beta 6. I see beta 7 is out now, keep the good work.