Xamarin.Forms

Building a XAML UserControl for WinUI, UWP, WPF or Xamarin.Forms (.NET MAUI)

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One of the powerful aspects of any XAML platform is the ability to define your own controls. In this post we’re going to look at building a user control that allows you to reuse chunks of your user experience. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using UWP, WinUI, Xamarin.Forms (.NET Maui) or the Uno Platform, the … Read more

Converting Xamarin.Forms to WindowsUI and Uno: StackLayout v StackPanel

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When moving from Xamarin.Forms across to WinUI, one of the simpler changes to make is to switch out StackLayout for StackPanel. Or so you’d think – unfortunately StackLayout has some quirky behaviour that needs some extra handling to get right. In this post we’ll look at why the StackPanel replacement doesn’t always work, and what … Read more

Converting Xamarin.Forms to WindowsUI and Uno: SafeArea to VisibleBoundsPadding

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Converting a Xamarin.Forms application across to use WinUI + Uno is mostly straight forward as a lot of the XAML is either the same, or has an equivalent. When you’re dealing with platform specifics, one thing you might come across is the SetUseSafeArea call. For example: The Uno platform exposes the concept of safe area … Read more

Simple WinUI + Uno Calculator

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A week or so ago David from the XF/Maui team kicked of a thread on twitter challenging devs to add a simple addition to a simple calculator. I particularly liked the transition animation that Robin added, so figured I’d translate this to a WinUI+Uno platform application. I’m going to try to keep as close to … Read more

Breaking a Developer Ecosystem by Changing a Namespace

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The next 6-12 months are going to be super exciting with both preview and releases planned for WinUI, Project Reunion and Maui (aka Xamarin.Forms). WinUI/Reunion represent a significant decoupling for Windows apps from the underlying OS version. Meanwhile Maui will provide a bit of a reset for Xamarin.Forms which some major improvements to the way … Read more

Thinking Out Loud: Mvvm Navigation for XAML Frameworks such as Xamarin.Forms, UWP/WinUI, WPF and Uno

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One of the things that’s often given me pause for thought is the approach we take to navigation within applications. For the purpose of this post I’m going limit the scope to just XAML based applications (XF/Maui, UWP/WinUI/Uno, WPF). In all of these application platforms there is a built in capability to navigate between pages. … Read more

Don’t Judge XAML Based On Lines of Code

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For those following the on-going discussion around the future of XAML and specifically the use of XAML in DotNetMaui/Xamarin.Forms, this post is a follow on from two great posts discussing the options that are, or will be, available for Xamarin.Forms developers as we move forward with DotNetMaui: Mobile Blazor Bindings – Getting Started + Why … Read more

DotNetMaui (Xamarin.Forms) is Not a XAML Platform

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Yeh I know I’m going to get a ton of abuse about how this title is just click bait but before you start with the comments, hear me out. Firstly, the title is actually just missing a word DotNetMaui is Not JUST a XAML Platform In this post we’ll go through why DotNetMaui/Xamarin.Forms is/is not … Read more

Consuming REST API with Swagger / OpenAPI in Xamarin and Uno Applications

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I still recall the simplicity of standing up a SOAP service and adding a service reference via Visual Studio by simply entering the url to the WSDL – this scenario just worked…. until we moved on. There was a rapid progression away from the overly prescriptive XML based world of SOAP to REST based APIs. … Read more