UI for Xamarin Q1 2015 is Here, Featuring ListView, SideDrawer and DataSource Wrappers

Three months have passed since the first version of Telerik UI for Xamarin, and what an exciting time it was! Calendar and Chart for Xamarin.Forms were the first controls, and they got a lot of interest and positive feedback. We also received many feature requests. In addition to the two great controls, we released a bunch of continuous updates to support the latest versions of Xamarin.Forms, so you can continue working on your Xamarin.Forms apps using the latest and greatest from Telerik and Xamarin.

One such update brought switching from the monotouch API to the Xamarin.iOS Unified API, so you can release your 64-bit apps to the AppStore as per Apple’s requirements. 

Now, it’s time for the brand-new stuff in this release. Answering your feature requests, Q1 2015 of UI for Xamarin introduces ListView, SideDrawer and DataSource wrappers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. SideDrawer for Xamarin.Android and ListView for Xamarin.iOS come in Beta. The official versions will come in a about month, together with SideDrawer and ListView for Xamarin.Forms.

So, let’s see what these controls can do in a little more detail

ListView

The Telerik ListView for iOS provides the most frequently used functionalities associated with a ListView scenario in the same framework, eliminating the overhead of integrating multiple solutions from different authors. To make working with data easier for developers, the control works seamlessly with the Telerik DataSource control, which serves as a mediator between the raw data that needs to be displayed and the UI component. Here are the features of the ListView at a glance:

• Different layouts
  • Single column
  • Multiple columns
  • Staggered layout (for Xamarin.Android)
• UI virtualization
• Pull-to-refresh
• Load-on-demand
• Grouping, sorting, filtering
• Items swipe behavior
• Items reorder behavior
• Item animations
• Single/multiple selection on tap/hold

For more information about these features, check the ListView for Xamarin product page.

SideDrawer

Telerik SideDrawer for helps you add extra space to your application. It extends the popular slide-out design pattern which is mainly associated with navigational purposes. The control is highly customizable and allows developers to embed any type of content inside the sliding panel. The SideDrawer features:

• Different transition modes:
  • Push
  • Reveal
  • Reverse slide out
  • Slide along
  • Slide in on top
  • Scale up
  • Fade In
  • Scale down pusher
  • Support for custom content
• Section headers
• Ability to appear from all four edges

More about these features you can learn at the dedicated SideDrawer product page.

DataSource

Telerik DataSource is a non-UI component that consumes raw data and processes the data operations for controls such as ListView and Chart. It offers:

• Support for various data sources
  • Arrays of simple/business objects
  • Dictionaries
  • JSON (for Xamarin.iOS)
• Grouping, sorting, filtering

Feel free to get the latest UI for Xamarin bits, and try this great stuff yourself.

Last, but not least, to dive deeper into the mobile development, make sure you attend TelerikNext and the session Building Mobile Apps with Visual Studio lead by our Senior Developer Advocate Michael Crump.

Update: Check out the newly released Telerik Tagit, a cross-platform native mobile Xamarin app. We give you source code and a six-part walkthrough of how it was created. Check out how we implemented the ListView control in that app right here, and the SideDrawer control here!