Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android

Question

As most of us know, .NET 5 contains a large amount of Xamarin related components, and .NET 6 will as well, along with MAUI. I am working on converting my UWP apps for Android using Xamarin (and ONLY Android, I have no intention of ever converting them for other platforms, including iOS), and have almost no experience with Xamarin (although I obviously have lots of experience with UWP & XAML). My goal is to convert my apps for use on Android (including dual screen & Android 11) using .NET 5 and (once it is available) .NET 6 & MAUI. My question is whether I should be trying to learn Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android. Most of the documentation, examples, and sites that I have found are for Xamarin.Forms, but I have found that the majority of my code ends up needing rewritten in the platform-specific Android project of the Xamarin.Forms solution, and because I intend on creating the app for only Android, I would think that it would be better to use the single Xamarin.Android template. However, because of the many differences between the two (especially the UI & XAML), I am finding this hard(er) to do since so much of the documentation is for Xamarin.Forms. Also, because my ultimate will be converting to .NET 6 & MAUI once available (one of the often mentioned things for MAUI is single file), which one will be easier to convert to that (or should I just wait until that is released before trying to learn anything new?)? I just want to learn as much as possible now, but I don't want to study the wrong stuff, so which one is better for Android-only apps, .NET 5, and .NET 6 MAUI? Thanks.

Answer 1

I don’t know if uno platform can help you.

Otherwise start with Xamarin forms then you should know also some Xamarin android concepts. Maui does not exist now.

Answer 2

I'm definitely not going to be using Uno, but I think you may have misunderstood some of my question. First of all, I understand that MAUI does not yet exist, I just want to be as prepared as possible when it is. Second, what exactly do you mean by concepts? I understand most concepts of apps that use XAML, codebehind, events, etc. The reason I am struggling on which one to look at is because they use very different names in the XAML, sometimes different namespaces or wrappers for certain things, etc.

Answer 3

I suggest to take a look to this @David Ortinau session:
https://app.hopin.com/events/monkeyfestusa-2020/sessions/74ecd468-0056-4630-9ed2-e8c6439d765d