Easier Setup and Fast Development with UI for Xamarin

Enjoy faster development of your cross-platform apps with fewer references and easier setup with the new binaries structure of UI for Xamarin.

With the R2 2017 release of Progress Telerik UI for Xamarin and other .NET products just around the corner, I'm here to give you a quick sneak peak at what's coming up. In the upcoming R2 2017 release, it will be much easier to setup projects with UI for Xamarin.

UI for Xamarin will have new Visual Studio extensions, predefined Visual Studio Templates and a new way to register renders.

Previously, if you needed to customize the Xamarin app for specific platforms—such as UWP, iOS or Android—you needed to refer additional references and add additional code. This is no longer needed!

No Additional References and Code Needed when Registering Renderer

As an example I'll illustrate what you needed to register a special renderer for iOS before—and what will be needed now:

BEFORE

1. You needed to add a reference to Rendered assembly:

   XamarinForms\iOS\

   Telerik.XamarinForms.DataControlsRenderer.iOS Telerik.XamarinForms.Common.iOS

2. You had to add the following lines to the AppDelegate.cs file outside the scope of the namespace just after the using statements.

   C# code

   [assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(Telerik.XamarinForms.DataControls.RadListView), typeof(Telerik.XamarinForms.DataControlsRenderer.iOS.ListViewRenderer))]

3. You also had to create an instance of the renderer in the FinishedLaunching(...) method before the Forms.Init() call which is called right before the TelerikForms.Init() call.

NOW

    ZERO lines of C# code

You will just need to add an x: Name attribute to your xaml definition of component and refer the Telerik.XamarinForms.DataControls and Telerik.XamarinForms.Common binaries from the iOS folder and you are done. Zero additional code required to register your renderer!

What Else Is New?

Excited what else we are cooking in our R2 2017 Release? Stay tuned! We are preparing to improve your productivity when creating Xamarin apps. In the meantime, check out our series on the Telerik Developer Network for more tips on working with Xamarin!

Of course, you can always download a free trial of Telerik UI for Xamarin as it is today – it is packed with productivity features to make your mad ninja skills even better, and even more awesome updates are coming soon.