Introducing Xamarin.Forms 2.3.3: Native View Declaration and Platform Specifics

Pierce Boggan

Today, we released Xamarin.Forms 2.3.3 to stable. In addition to a plethora of bug fixes, this release includes exciting new features, such as native view declaration and Platform-Specifics, which make it even easier to add platform-specific controls and functionality to your Xamarin.Forms apps.

Native View Declaration and Bindings

Xamarin.Forms already provided many different ways for you to add native controls to apps, from custom renderers and effects to native embedding. Native view declaration allows you to add bindable native iOS, Android, and Windows 10 controls directly to XAML, without requiring any additional configuration.

Platform-Specifics

Often, developers want to add functionality that is only available on certain platforms to their Xamarin.Forms apps. Exposing this functionality within Xamarin.Forms isn’t tenable, as issues arise on platforms where the behavior isn’t implemented. To solve this issue, we’ve created something we call Platform-Specifics, which allow you to take advantage of awesome native functionality from within shared code via a fluent code API or XAML. Today, five Platform-Specifics are built into Xamarin.Forms, with even more to come in future releases.

Try Xamarin.Forms 2.3.3 Today

You can grab Xamarin.Forms 2.3.3 by updating your Xamarin.Forms NuGet in all projects, including platform projects and PCL (if applicable). Be sure not to “Update All”, as this updates all NuGets, and can break Xamarin.Forms’ compatibility with the Android Support Libraries. Updating the Xamarin.Forms NuGet will take care of this for you, if compatible updates are available.

Pierce Boggan Senior Program Manager, Mobile Developer Tools

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