May 19th, 2020

Xamarin Updates From Microsoft Build 2020

James Montemagno
Principal Manager, Tech PM

Today kicks off Microsoft Build 2020. A 48-hour digital experience that is completely free for everyone to attend online! There is something for absolutely everyone. No matter if you are a seasoned developer, building your first app, learning your first programming language, or just interested in what is new. The Xamarin and .NET teams have some exciting announcements, sessions, and interactive experience throughout the event, so let us dive in!

Microsoft Build 2020

Microsoft Build 2020: Image learn connect code

Every Developer Is Welcome Xamarin Tooling Program Manager, Maddy Leger, joins Scott Hanselman during his

keynote. They discuss the latest updates in Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms. Including XAML Hot Reload, Hot Restart, Dual-Screen Support, and a whole lot more. During this session, Maddy and Scott even showed off how to collaborate remotely. They do this using Teams and Visual Studio Live Share to iterate on an app together in real time! Be sure to watch the full keynote.

.NET is Evolving, Xamarin is Evolving During the

Journey to One .NET session, Scott Hunter lays out the plans for how we are evolving .NET. As well as all the workloads in the .NET 5 and .NET 6 wave, we are streamlining .NET for developers with a consistent API, consistent project system, and tooling. With this evolution comes an exciting evolution for native client developers building apps with .NET. That is why we are pleased to announce the next evolution of Xamarin.Forms, .NET MAUI: The .NET Multi-platform App UI framework.

.NET MAUI is the next generation framework for building native cross-platform apps across mobile and desktop. Built on top of the new generation of .NET and project system, .NET MAUI will introduce new ways to build applications. In addition to the XAML and MVVM that you know and love, .NET MAUI will bring first class support for code first development with Model-View-Update (MVU) architecture. .NET MAUI will also simplify building cross-platform native apps by introducing a single-project structure and cross-platform resources. Resources such as fonts and images, powerful hot reload, and hot restart technology built in from the start. Microsoft Build 2020: Image maui bot

Deep Dives Want to go deeper on the enhancements coming for .NET and Xamarin developers? Watch

Scott Hunter’s session and the deep dive session from David Ortinau and Maddy Leger on all things new for building cross-platform apps with .NET. Additionally, be sure to read the full .NET MAUI announcement blog.

Xamarin.Forms 5.0 Roadmap Xamarin.Forms 4 has been a successful release with more cross-platform controls. Controls like CheckBox and RadioButton, CollectionView and CarouselView, and simplified navigation with Shell. Plus so much more! More developers are using Xamarin.Forms and are reporting higher, overall satisfaction than ever before. We are excited to continue this growth momentum!

Today at Build, David Ortinau shared our roadmap for Xamarin.Forms 5. With a clear mission of improving app performance and introducing new controls that solve the more complicated parts of your apps to style. New capabilities include fully customizable tabs and app bar, gradients, and shapes and paths.

Ask the Experts Today,

at 2:00 PM PDT is a Xamarin Expert Q&A with the Xamarin team. Be sure to get your questions ready and ask away during this interactive session. RSVP to get a spot!

Catch a Live Stream Beyond the main sessions at Microsoft Build 2020, there will be a 48-hour, live-stream on the

Microsoft Developer Twitch account. Throughout the event, find a plethora of awesome Xamarin content from team members including: * James Clancey * David Ortinau * Kym Phillpotts * Gerald Versluis * James Montemagno (that’s me)! Be sure to checkout the full Microsoft Build 2020

schedule! Join in to learn all about the new and recent announcements.

Author

James Montemagno
Principal Manager, Tech PM

James Montemagno is a Principal Lead Program Manager for Developer Community at Microsoft. He has been a .NET developer since 2005, working in a wide range of industries including game development, printer software, and web services. Prior to becoming a Principal Program Manager, James was a professional mobile developer and has now been crafting apps since 2011 with Xamarin. In his spare time, he is most likely cycling around Seattle or guzzling gallons of coffee at a local coffee shop. He ...

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2 comments

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  • Jeffrey Gonzales

    Can Microsoft please put more effort into making the Xamarin toolchain more robust, especially with regards to iOS development with Visual Studio for Windows?

    • James MontemagnoMicrosoft employee Author

      Jeffrey thanks for the comment, would love to know more about the issues you are running into to see where we can improve. There are ways of providing feedback in the IDE with report a problem or suggest a feature or feel free to email me (motz at microsoft dot com)