Does Xamarin.Forms have designer support on VS?

Question

I recently downloaded Xamarin.Forms as Microsoft made it free. I am looking around in Visual Studio for a visual designer, that is usually included in Xamarin.Droid and Xamarin.IOS. Is there no such feature for Xamarin.Forms? Surely I must be missing something ?

Answer 1

No, Xamarin Forms does not have a drag and drop design surface. There is a live XAML previewer, but it is still in alpha release.

Answer 2

Xamarin does not have a designer for Xamarin.Forms at this time, but is working on the Xamarin.Forms Previewer which renders a live preview of a Xamarin.Forms page side-by-side with the XAML markup directly inside the Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio IDEs.

You can open the Xamarin.Forms Previewer by clicking on View -> Other Windows -> Xamarin.Forms Previewer in the Visual Studio menu or alternatively just searching for Xamarin.Forms in the Visual Studio quicklaunch box.

In addition to the official Xamarin.Forms Previewer, there is at least one other third party tool that exists in this space as well:

• Gorilla Player by UX Divers is a real time Xamarin.Forms previewer currently in beta that runs in both a simulator and on hardware devices.

Update (2018): There is now also the Xamarin Live Player for Xamarin.Forms that allows you visualize your XAML layouts running live on a physical device as you are developing them.