"Native or Forms"? is one of those fundamental questions that almost every team looking to start a Xamarin-based project needs to make a call on. The question implies an either/or arrangement, and the reality is that the majority of Xamarin projects do end up being either 'all Native' or 'all Forms'. In the recently released special .NET Core 3 Focus edition of CODE Magazine, I wrote about a situation in which a project moved from a Xamarin Native architecture to being a hybrid of both Xamarin.Native and Xamarin.Forms using the Native Embedding feature; in a low risk, maintainable manner. The article includes an overview of Native Embedding, how it was applied to the project, and some tips and techniques for approaching an architectural migration of the Xamarin.Forms kind.

The magazine itself includes several other interesting articles, all with a .NET focus. It has both print and online versions, the latter of which can be accessed here:

you can find my article in this issue alongside a very impressive line up of authors 😵

I have to give a special thanks to Kym Phillpotts, whose awesome Xamarin.Forms UI challenges served to demonstrate the sophistication of UI you can produce with the framework, all whilst adding a splash of colour to the article. I was also very fortunate to get a lot of help from David Ortinau, who reviewed and provided feedback on my drafts.

Dave also found a copy of the article in the wild at Microsft Ignite and tweeted to let me know. Thanks Dave!

Having conquered print, I suppose I now need to decide between film and tv next 😎