Hi,
My company is evaluating using Xamarin for our next product so we can reuse some existing C# code on an Android port. We use Visual Studio 2012 for most everything, so I was excited about trying Xamarin with Visual Studio Integration.
However, here's a list of problems I've encountered specifically with the layout editor in Xamarin Visual Studio. What is the best way to avoid these? Do I need to use Xamarin Studio for layout editing instead?
a. I can’t drag drop controls on to layouts. This is basic functionality in other android editors that just doesn’t work for me in Visual Studio for some reason. I also can’t drag controls around to reposition them. You can do this in other editors (Eclipse and Xamarin Studio)
b. The document outline is not visible by default, you have to go to “View” menu and select “document outline”. This outline is very useful for Android layout work. You CAN drag/drop a control into the document outline at least.
c. Copy / Paste a control doesn’t seem to work properly, it does not copy the controls settings, like width
d. I got a warning in the layout editor that the “Layout” and “Drawable” and such folders start with Uppercase, when android expects them to be all lowercase. You have to rename them to lowercase, because yes that is correct, Android hates uppercase stuff. Not sure why the Android template has them uppercase?
e. In the control properties window, if you want to use a Relative layout, and then you click the ellipses on “layoutToRightOf” as an example, a dialog comes up which SHOULD allow you to choose another control to layout to the right of. But the list is BLANK. This is incorrect behavior that other editors do not suffer from. I don’t know if it’s tied to the uppercase naming issue or not. But this is VERY annoying. I had to manually type the name in!