In Syncfusion’s most recent webinar, “Create Beautiful Mobile Apps in 20 Minutes with the New Xamarin UI Kit,” the Essential UI Kit’s project leader, Prabakaran Ramasamy, gave an overview of this new, free product for Xamarin developers. He showed attendees how to use these XAML pages to speed up their app creation. If you missed the webinar, or would like to watch it again, check out our YouTube page, or watch it here:
The following is the Q&A portion from the webinar.
I heard him say it supports MVVM and related frameworks—but he just deleted all the view models.
I just removed the dummy view model that was added to the pages, but I’ve already built my view model into a separate core project.
Will you guys bring out a set of custom controls that we can use for making our own layouts faster?
Yes, we are already using some Xamarin UI controls. Would you like to have any specific controls?
Could you guys make easier flex layouts and templates to use in flex layouts?
Sure, we will update some screens with flex layouts. We use list views for virtualization now.
Could you please include a theme creator for creating new themes or multiple themes in existing applications?
Yes, we will update the theme support in our upcoming releases.
The custom controls I have in mind would be like having a shop item with an image, name, and price as a standalone control or perhaps the subcontrols of the album page.
Can you please put your request on our feedback page?
Can you remove the license agreement freely? Is it configurable?
We have published Essential UI Kit in GitHub with an MIT license. Please find our license details on this GitHub page.
Is there a bundle or discounted rate which includes Xamarin and reporting tools?
Can you please contact salessupport@syncfusion.com. That way we can get your requirements and respond to you.
Are there plans to make this as full as the Grial UI kit?
Yes, there are. Let me know if you have any screen suggestions that we can consider in our future releases. You can create new screen requests on our feedback page.
Is there a discount at the moment for all products (including reporting like Telerik reporting)? I was checking yesterday, and I think your reporting and data tool isn’t bundled with the .NET Core and Xamarin offerings.
Can you please contact salessupport@syncfusion.com.
Is this sample work that you just completed going to be available to us?
Yes, we have published this demo sample in a GitHub repository.
Why should we use this navigation instead of Shell?
Our requirement is to navigate from a single page to a flyout page. This is not possible with Shell. You can find more information on Stack Overflow.
Doesn’t Syncfusion have a Navigation Drawer, why not use that instead of Shell?
We thought it is better to use the latest Xamarin.Forms shell application for showcasing the sample. And the sample will work with Syncfusion Navigation Drawer, too.
What version of Xamarin.Forms are you using?
We have now updated to Xamarin.Forms version 4.2.0.709249.
Is Essential Studio® required to use the UI product?
No, the Essential UI Kit does not need Essential Studio® to be installed. But some of the pages were developed using Syncfusion Xamarin UI controls that you can get from NuGet.
Is this available for Visual Studio 2017, as well?
Yes, the Essential UI Kit is compatible with VS 2017.
The license for this product is MIT?
Yes, we have published Essential UI Kit in GitHub with an MIT license. Please find our license details on our website.
Is there any plan to add “Load More” functionality to the ListView from the top automatically?
Yes, please find more details about the SfListView load more functionality in our documentation. We will use this feature in our screens.
Is there any way to add an image file inside Metro Studio and convert into Font?
We can convert a path in an SVG file to glyph with our Metro Studio, but we are not supporting .png or .jpg files to a glyph.
Do you have plans to support macOS?
No, we do not have support for macOS projects. We also do not have any immediate plans to add this support.
Do you have plans on making a rich text editor with a ribbon for this?
We have plans to include the Xamarin Rich Text Editor in our upcoming release. But we do not have plans for a ribbon control in Xamarin as of now.
Does Essential UI Kit have reports that generate as PDF or print to a Bluetooth printer?
No, we do not have any screens that support report generations. But it will be helpful for us to consider this request, if you could explain to us in detail your requirement in our feedback portal.
Will this code be available on GitHub?
Yes. You can find the source code of the Essential UI Kit on GitHub.
Is this .NET Core 3 compatible?
Essential UI Kit is now targeting the .NET Standard 2.0 framework and it will be compatible with .NET Core 3.
Is the Essential UI Kit extension only available for Visual Studio 2019 on Windows or also for Visual Studio 2019 for Mac?
Sorry, we do not have a Visual Studio extension available for Visual Studio for Mac right now. But we are implementing this, and we will release it by the end of the year.
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