Xamarin.Forms Previewer

Question

It is really not practical to write a Xamarin.Forms application without a UI previewer. All platforms offer a design preview option, especially if the code needs to be compiled. As far as I know, currently Xamarin only released a previewer for Xamarin Studio for Mac in its alpha channel, which we can't even use in Visual Studio. Why is it that Xamarin still does not provide a previewer? We should not be forced to use a third party tool for this process. (And even the third party tools are in their beta releases.)

Shouldn't there be at least a roadmap or a planned date announced since it is such a fundamental part of the product? It would be nice if someone from Xamarin would answer.

Answer 1

The Xamarin.Forms Previewer is there on Windows (it has been for a few years), but it now contains several improvements in Visual Studio 2019, many focused on making it more reliable.

To show the Previewer, click the design buttons on the bottom right of the .xaml file pane, like chucky mentioned. It's no longer under View > Other Windows, instead now using the same split pane tabbed UI used by the UWP/WPF designers.

See here for more on how to use the Previewer: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-forms/xaml/xaml-previewer/?tabs=vswin&pivots=windows

Answer 2

Using the latest version of Xamarin you can use the following steps:

Use the View > Other Windows > Xamarin.Forms Previewer menu in Visual Studio to open the preview window.