Foreword

Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder why Xamarin.Forms continues to rise in developer satisfaction ratings, winning more fans than ever before in its 6-year history. A developer recently said to me, "It's like you listened to our complaints and requests, and just fixed them." While that's an over-simplified summary, I get what they meant. Our program managers and engineers constantly feed their curiosity to figure out how we can delight those using our software. This has led to a faster build and deploy loop, Hot Reload for instant XAML changes in your running app, and Hot Restart for developing on your iOS device directly from Visual Studio on Windows.

Today, Xamarin.Forms ships with more controls "in the box" than ever before, largely thanks to an ever-expanding community of faithful contributors. And what about tomorrow? As I write this, we have just finished Microsoft Build 2020, where we announced our long-term plans for Xamarin.Forms and .NET 6, taking our roadmap all the way into 2022. What a great time to be a Xamarin.Forms and .NET developer! Your investment in .NET for building multi-platform apps will continue to pay off for years to come.

In my role at Microsoft on the .NET team, I'm frequently asked by developers where to find guidance to build Xamarin apps just like those presented in this book. I completely understand why! I love to learn by doing, playing, fiddling, and hopefully not banging my head too hard on the keyboard. Daniel and Johan bring many years of experience to this formula, to lead us down the path of success. I recommend this book to you, whether you are new to Xamarin.Forms or a grizzled .NET veteran. You'll find some lessons that are worth your while.

David Ortinau

Principal Program Manager, .NET

Microsoft