Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android

Nathan Sokalski 4,121 Reputation points
2020-11-21T17:53:57.303+00:00

As most of us know, .NET 5 contains a large amount of Xamarin related components, and .NET 6 will as well, along with MAUI. I am working on converting my UWP apps for Android using Xamarin (and ONLY Android, I have no intention of ever converting them for other platforms, including iOS), and have almost no experience with Xamarin (although I obviously have lots of experience with UWP & XAML). My goal is to convert my apps for use on Android (including dual screen & Android 11) using .NET 5 and (once it is available) .NET 6 & MAUI. My question is whether I should be trying to learn Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android. Most of the documentation, examples, and sites that I have found are for Xamarin.Forms, but I have found that the majority of my code ends up needing rewritten in the platform-specific Android project of the Xamarin.Forms solution, and because I intend on creating the app for only Android, I would think that it would be better to use the single Xamarin.Android template. However, because of the many differences between the two (especially the UI & XAML), I am finding this hard(er) to do since so much of the documentation is for Xamarin.Forms. Also, because my ultimate will be converting to .NET 6 & MAUI once available (one of the often mentioned things for MAUI is single file), which one will be easier to convert to that (or should I just wait until that is released before trying to learn anything new?)? I just want to learn as much as possible now, but I don't want to study the wrong stuff, so which one is better for Android-only apps, .NET 5, and .NET 6 MAUI? Thanks.

Xamarin
Xamarin
A Microsoft open-source app platform for building Android and iOS apps with .NET and C#.
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  1. Alessandro Caliaro 4,181 Reputation points
    2020-11-21T18:14:23.073+00:00

    I don’t know if uno platform can help you.

    Otherwise start with Xamarin forms then you should know also some Xamarin android concepts. Maui does not exist now.

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  2. Nathan Sokalski 4,121 Reputation points
    2020-11-21T20:35:52.017+00:00

    I'm definitely not going to be using Uno, but I think you may have misunderstood some of my question. First of all, I understand that MAUI does not yet exist, I just want to be as prepared as possible when it is. Second, what exactly do you mean by concepts? I understand most concepts of apps that use XAML, codebehind, events, etc. The reason I am struggling on which one to look at is because they use very different names in the XAML, sometimes different namespaces or wrappers for certain things, etc.

  3. Alessandro Caliaro 4,181 Reputation points
    2020-11-21T21:21:35.95+00:00
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