This roadmap outlines our anticipated feature releases.
Are there things you don't see here that you feel strongly deserve a spot? Make your voice heard and open a proposal on the Xamarin.Forms Evolution forum.
Primary Focus
Quality is top of the list. This means stability and performance first and foremost. Xamarin.Forms has been swiftly adopted as a preferred tool for delivering production apps in addition to rapid prototypes. Our focus and priorities are to support the Xamarin.Forms community in those areas. In the release schedule below, we've highlighted how and where we are making those investments.
A Note About Bugs
As this thread is primarily about the feature roadmap, we anticipate the important question "what about ___ bug"?! Improving quality by addressing bugs is huge priority and ongoing focus for the team, in addition to improve our communication across the board.
Disclaimer
We cannot predict the future and how everything will shake out. Things will change. Timing may be adjusted due to priority changes, in pursuit of quality standards, or any number of other really good reasons that we will strive to proactively and openly communicate.
The Features Roadmap
| Milestone |
Release Date |
| 2.3.3 |
December 2016 |
| 2.4.0 |
February 2017 |
| 2.5.0 |
May 2017 |
2.3.3 - December 2016
Native View Declaration - Feature
Native view declaration allows you to add bindable iOS, Android, and Windows views directly to XAML. Rather than having to write a custom renderer, you can simply add the control directly to XAML with no additional configuration. This not only works with stock platform controls, but custom controls as well.
Platform-Specifics - Feature
Platform-specifics allow you to take advantage of native functionality that is only available on select platforms that Xamarin.Forms targets from shared code.
UWP Blur Support (3rd party nuget) - Feature
Adds the UWP blur platform-specific.
2.4.0 - February 2017
Bindable Picker - Feature
Adds data binding to the Picker control, specifically the following properties:
https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms/pull/515
Accessibility (A11y) Support - Feature
Proposal
Adds accessibility support to Xamarin.Forms by exposing the underlying accessibility features on iOS, Android, and Windows 10.
CarouselView v1 Stable - Feature
CarouselView was introduced at Xamarin Evolve 2016 and has been in prerelease ever since. v1 brings stability and performance improvements.
Xamarin.Forms for macOS Preview - Feature
Xamarin.Forms is coming to macOS, joining iOS, Android, Windows, and Tizen as target platforms for Xamarin.Forms.
Fast Renderers - Performance
Optimize built-in and custom view renderers to streamline view creation and improve performance.
Startup Time Improvements - Performance
Improve the startup and initialization time for Xamarin.Forms apps.
Compiled Native Views - Enhancement, Performance
Bring native view declaration to XAMLC, so users don't have to opt-out of XAMLC in PCLs where pages use native view declaration.
OnIdiom Support for Desktop (UWP) - Enhancement
Developers have lots of options when it comes to configurability based on operating system (Android, iOS, UWP, etc.), version (9, 10, etc.), and idiom (mobile or tablet). This adds Desktop as an OnIdiom for UWP developers.
https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms/pull/420
XAMLC Enhancements - Enhancement, Performance
Approaching full support for currently supported XAML features. Compile time support for all value providers.
Deprecation of iOS 6/7
Deprecation of WP8
2.5.0 - May 2017
Xamarin.Forms Embedding - Feature
Embed Xamarin.Forms into a native Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android, or Windows 10 app.
Xamarin.Forms for macOS - Feature
Xamarin.Forms is coming to macOS, joining iOS, Android, Windows, and Tizen as target platforms for Xamarin.Forms.
MenuPage - Feature
Alternative to the MasterDetail page, but rendered as a platform-specific menu that makes creating flyouts easy.
Cut down on GPU overdraw for Android - Performance
Try to avoid overdraw on Android where possible to improve performance.
Reduce native views created - Performance
Cut down on backing native views created for Xamarin.Forms, as noted by Miguel in #42948.
Layout Compression - Performance
LayoutCompression allows multiple layers of Xamarin.Forms layouts to be packed into a single native one.
Prism-Like URI Navigation Routing - Enhancement
Navigate to a page using Uri navigation, similar to what Prism does.
NavigationService.NavigateAsync("ListPage/DetailPage?id=1");
Single DLL - Enhancement
Ship Xamarin.Forms as a single DLL to improve startup performance and assist the linker.
Open Source Contributions
As noted above, the Xamarin.Forms Evolution forum is the place to start.
