XamGirl

Syncfusion is a UI library of components for WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET WebForms, MVC, Core, UWP and Xamarin. A few months ago they released an Essential UI kit which is basically a set of XAML templates for Xamarin Forms applications.

In this article, I will be exploring this UI Kit and giving my own personal opinion about it.

Let’s start

First, install it by adding the Essential UI Kit visual studio extension

After installing it you will get a new option when right-clicking on a project called Essential UI Kit for Xamarin Forms.

Using it

To use it you just have to choose the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin Forms option and select the pages you want to add to your project

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Exploring the code

When adding a new page, it will add 4 main things to your project:

• The dependencies that this specific UI uses

• A new Views folder with all the XAML/Styles for that page

• A new ViewModels folder with the ViewModel for that page and mock data

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• Assets, custom renderers, behaviors and converters

It will also add mock images (if needed). Also, any behavior, converter, custom renderer that is required.

What I like about it

It just adds what you need

It will only add to your project the elements you need, it won’t add any extra code or dependencies that aren’t needed.

You can modify the UI as you prefer

Since you have full access to the XAML, you can customize the elements as needed.

Adaptive Templates

Checking/testing the templates you can customize the look and feel under different scenarios

The XAML is really good

Yes, it is. Exploring the XAML of some of the templates they have, it uses things like Grids, Converters, Behaviours, Styles, Themes.

Pricing

All the XAML Templates are open source but they use the Syncfusion library elements. This library has different kinds of licenses/pricing starting from the community license which is free for organizations earning up to $1M in U.S. revenue and employing fewer than five developers; and the retail license starting from 995 USD.

You can see more information about it here.

Final thoughts

If you read my tweets probably you should know that I love this library. Why? Because their support is great. I just have a community license and I can get the support for any issue really fast.

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Regarding the Essential UI Kit library, I like it because is simple to use and you can have beautiful UIs really fast. Very convenient for projects that don’t have or it might have a small budget for designers, but it needs some pre-UI done quickly.

If you want to explore it you can check the Syncfusion’s Xamarin Holiday Challenge, by following the guide you will have the chance to Win a $25 Amazon gift card.

That’s all for now if you want to know more about it you can do it here.

Happy coding! 🙂