Support for WPF with Xamarin.Forms

[MonikaLucas]

Hello,

I came across an article that states that Xamarin Forms now has support for WPF in addition to iOS, Android and UWP. WPF Platform Setup - Xamarin | Microsoft Docs 

Is this on the road map for the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for .NET? I would like to use UWP however, many of the clients I am creating an app for do not have machines with Windows 10, and so it is probably wiser to develop using WPF. At the same time, I was hoping to be able to expand support for iOS and Android after developing the WPF app. 

Thanks,

Jen 

[dotMorten_esri · Accepted solution]

While we have looked at it, we have not at this point any specific plans to support it. It's still a community project, and not fully backed by Microsoft, so the support is questionable.

Our experience is also that the app you build for mobile vs desktop is quite often very different, and thus sharing your views between a desktop app and a mobile app is rarely that usable. We've found it's much better to build a common set of models and view models, then bind those to the WPF and Xamarin.Forms tailored views.

Another thing to consider wrt UWP is that Windows 7 has less than a year of support left, so UWP might be a viable option for you very soon, as everyone is scrambling this year to get their machines upgraded (and most seem to be skipping Windows 8.x and going straight to 10).

[MonikaLucas]

Hi Morten,

Thanks for your insight. I see your point about the difference between mobile and desktop views. We are still in the discovery phase in determining all of the features of the application but it appears that most are desktop oriented at this point. It is interesting to hear that Windows 7 is on its way out so if we do decide to support a UWP version, an older OS might not be something to fear. 

Regards!

Jen