Is it possible to use a Xaml designer or intellisense with Xamarin.Forms?

Question

Xamarin 3.0 introduced Xamarin.Forms, a powerful UI abstraction that allows developers to easily create user interfaces that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

It seems very powerful but I'm facing a few difficulties to create UI as Xamarin.Forms comes with more than 40 controls. Without intellisense or a minimalist designer, it's fairly counter-productive to search for all properties in the official doc or by browsing c# code.

The default Xaml teamplate is like this, and it's clearly not trivial to add new controls without any help.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentPage xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"
                       xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
                       x:Class="App1.Class1">
    <Label Text="{Binding MainText}"  VerticalOptions="Center" HorizontalOptions="Center" />
</ContentPage>

So is there any chance to have intellisense inside Xaml or to use the Xaml designer ?

Answer 1

Xamarin.Forms does not come with a graphical designer (yet ?). As for intellisense there are 2 parts:

• referencing xaml element tagged with x:Name in code behind works in both Xamarin.Studio and VisualStudio
• Xaml completion of elements and attributes works in Xamarin.Studio, and support for completing attributes values is coming very soon. Unfortunately, intellisense for Xaml in VisualStudio does not work for now. But the problem is well known, and solutions are investigated.