XAML Tools for Xamarin

The advantages of XAML are:

• Declarative as opposed to procedural reduces coding effort

• An XML hierarchical format similar to HTML that is easier to visualise

When you are developing visual presentations there will be many cycles of reworking especially when you are targeting multiple platforms with required customizations, and so the above advantages are compounded.

However in Visual Studio when you are editing a Xamarin XAML page there is currently no editor other than the standard XML editor so unlike coding in C# there is no intellisense. This disadvantage can be more than offset with the following tools:

• Xamarin Studio has a XAML editor that will edit XAML and has intellisense. You can have Xamrin Studio and Visual Studio open the same solution at the same time.

• Mobile Essentials Form Player with this tool every time you save a XAML page in development you can see that page displayed almost instanly on one more more simulator devices including iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows Tablet.

• Mobile Essentials Xamarin.Forms XAML Intellisense is working to enable Xamarin.Forms XAML support in Visual Studio 2015 Update 1. Also available from the Visual Studio extension gallery.

• gui innovations translator Translates MS XAML to Xamarin XAML, useful perhaps for early design.