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Xamarin.Forms 4.4 Adds CarouselView
Microsoft announced Xamarin.Forms 4.4, with a new CarouselView heading a list of new features and functionality for the open-source, cross-platform mobile UI library and development framework.
Although the update also introduces several other new views, Microsoft highlighted the CarouselView in its announcement post last week.
"We were speaking with a customer last year that builds dozens of mobile applications every year," said David Ortinau, senior program manager, Mobile Developer Tools. "They said, 'We cannot remember the last time we made a mobile app that did NOT include a carousel view.' "Many of you have expressed almost identical sentiments to us. So, we are very pleased to introduce a new CarouselView control in Xamarin.Forms 4.4.0."
Microsoft also announced an IndicatorView used to display pages or items in a carousel, along with SwipeView used to provide contextual actions to any element in a CollectionView (introduced in Xamarin.Forms 4.3), such as swiping in any direction to reveal context buttons for common actions like edit or delete.
Ortinau also detailed how developers can use the new IsAnimationPlaying property to quickly enable and display playback of GIF animations, a new capability that he said is best for smaller images and when using fast renderers on Android devices.
"GIF animations are a great and simply way to add animation to your app for better user feedback, calling attention to some action or detail," he said. "It's also great for cat GIFs, of course. The Image is all you need along with the new IsAnimationPlaying property to enable and disable playback. Animations will loop by default. To stop an animation, set IsAnimationPlaying to false."
More detailed on all of the above and much more can be found in the release notes.
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David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.