back to article Last stop before MAUI: Xamarin Forms 5.0 released for cross-platform mobile, new features, new bugs

Microsoft has flung open the doors to Xamarin Forms 5.0, a major new version of its cross-platform framework targeting iOS, Android, and Windows 10. Other target platforms such as macOS and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) are in varying degrees of readiness. However, the company stated that the forthcoming Multi- …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

    Is each new framework written in the preceding one in a chain all the way back to the progenitor Windows 1 primitive scrollbar lurking somewhere deep in GDI?

    I swear Windows is like V’ger in the first Star Trek film. Except much shittier with more layers.

    1. Sandgrounder

      Re: Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

      More like a once independent species assiilalated by the Borg. Free will and a right to self determination may have been lost but there is a rather cool hive API and you can release any 3D shape as long as it is a cube.

      1. NetBlackOps

        Re: Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

        alias amfm1?

    2. Locomotion69

      Re: Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

      I read it too quickly: ... much shittier with more lawyers.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Re: Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

        Also true!

  2. Arthur Kater :-D ☺

    MAUI and WinUI3

    MAUI and WinUI 3 are both in development.

    WinUI 3 will be the successor to UWP and more-or-less WPF and fully enable the Win32 API.

    MAUI will also support development for Windows.

    Why not merge those 2 as well?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MAUI and WinUI3

      Merging these sounds like the technical equivalent of clapping your hands underneath the rear end of your dog.

  3. Warm Braw

    Problems with the first release

    Doesn't really bode well. I was never able to use the previous version because the Forms Designer in Visual Studio wouldn't work. There are lots of references online to it being unusable for many with occasional replies from others saying "works OK for me" - but no suggestion as to what might make the difference. In the end it was quicker just to use the native UI components than try to solve the problem. The Xamarin stuff is very good in principle, but that doesn't help if the tooling is flaky and I wouldn't risk breaking an otherwise stable installation of Visual Studio to see if the new version works better than the last.

    1. HeresJohnny

      Re: Problems with the first release

      There isn't a Forms Designer as such, you might be referring to the iOS Storyboard editor instead?

      1. Warm Braw

        Re: Problems with the first release

        Sorry, the Forms Previewer.

        1. HeresJohnny

          Re: Problems with the first release

          Ahh, not something Ive ever needed to use. I think the previewer can be ignored/deprecated now as Xamarin Forms supports live XAML editing, so you can see the UI changes on device without having to recompile the app. Might be worth taking a look in that case.

  4. tiggity Silver badge

    As so often

    "The transition from Xamarin Forms to MAUI should be smooth, but will nevertheless be a migration and not just a recompile of the source"

    MS love changing things & then not providing tools to auto convert old code to the new variant. Lots of companies cannot prioritise the time and cost to migrate as it needs code changes not just rebuild, so technical debt accrues.

    This is one reason windows mobile failed - lack of apps, as massive breaking changes across different versions of windows mobile such that anything 6.x or earlier needed essentially a full rewrite to work in newer versions of windows mobile, so in many cases it never happened (coders moved to a different platform e.g. Android)

    That's why so much stuff for windows still gets written in winforms / win 32 APIs - because MS (so far...) dare not break those and so you are not playing with an ever moving target working on those "legacy" platforms.

  5. HeresJohnny

    The Xamarin development team do seem to prefer to work on the new and shiny (who doesn't!), but the bug fixing the team does is sluggish as best.

    An example, a label measuring issue reported a year ago has just now finally been 'fixed'. However I managed to break it with another example in about 10 minutes. Should we wait another year for that to be fixed too? Or should we take the jump to other, better supported options.

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