Xamarin’s forms and controls did not overlap with our offering at all. As Nat Friedman (Xamarin’s CEO) mentioned, the Xamarin Forms will appeal only for novice developers who are building very simple apps.

If your goal is to build great cross-platform apps that last for years, you will need to design your apps with solid design pattern. My blog post above will help you understanding that. With regards to common controls list, virtually all the controls you can find in the iOS and Android toolbox are the Crosslight controls list itself. That’s because Crosslight provides data binding support to all these controls without requiring subclassing.

Some advanced controls, like Facebook-style master detail navigation, can be found in the following links:
http://developer.intersoftpt.com/display/crosslight/Crosslight+UI+Components+for+iOS
http://developer.intersoftpt.com/display/crosslight/Crosslight+UI+Components+for+Android
http://developer.intersoftpt.com/display/crosslight/Crosslight+UI+Components+for+Windows+Phone
http://developer.intersoftpt.com/display/crosslight/Crosslight+UI+Components+for+Windows+Store

All in all, Crosslight is more than just building forms. The comprehensive tooling support, project wizards, Visual Studio integration, thoughtfully designed UI controls built with native user experiences, are only a few example of what Crosslight offers. I suggest you to join our 3-day webinar and learn more about building enterprise-grade apps with Crosslight 2. Here’s the registration link: https://intersoftpt.com/promo/jun14webinar

Now that Xamarin 3 is out, it offers a feature that I had been trying to see how it will work.
Here was my original question:

“Jimmy, a question that I brought up a few months ago and you said you will cover it in future blogs and it was never covered.
The question was, what components are offered in XLight for developers at design time to use, i.e. Grid, Treeview, TabPage, and etc.
I need to know to see what components are available to cover my design need.”

Then you answered:

“You will find out that the new mobile platforms introduce different UI paradigms. Everything is typically a list, and the list can be customized into a grid-style appearance if preferred. Although keep in mind that mobile users do not really expect complex UI, so we’ve provided best practices and design guidelines that adhere to each platform.”

But I’m not sure how this direction could affect the results that developers are looking for and are accustomed to, until I saw the feature list of Xamarin 3:

“Xamarin.Forms allows you to build native user interfaces for iOS, Android and Windows Phone using 100% shared C#. Xamarin.Forms includes more than 40 controls and layouts, which are mapped to native controls at runtime.”

And this was the answer that I was looking for. But now my question is, since Xamarin (as the base platform for Xlight) has the new form design and controls, do you think you will adopt this direction (Forms and control) to XLight rather than the direction that you previously had described to me?
Secondly, someone might ask, “What does XLight offer that Xamarin base doesn’t offer?”
My limited answer would be, “All the additional services like database access, security and etc. that XLight adds to Xamarin”.
My suggestion is, with the introduction of Xamarin 3, it would be great to show What advantages XLight brings to Xamarin base platform and how Xamarin 3 forms and controls can be used with XLight system.

Hope this helps Jimmy!
..Ben

As far as support for Windows 8.x (desktop), I didn’t know you had support for that. Most of the marketing materials point only to “Mobile” and I’m afraid others may get the same misunderstanding that Windows 8.x desktop is not supported. You should add that to your list of platform.
Similarly, if there is support for Windows 8.x support, what about many components that are available for desktop? I’d like to see a video of a Mobile app running on Windows 8.x Desktop. Perhaps a short video would serve the purpose. This way I can see what you mean.

I’m reading through the guide now to see how I should design my app based on your framework.

Hint: all that work and investment you made in SL, is now rolling nicely into this product. I’m glad SL investment wasn’t a loss for you as it was for many, many developers including myself. Now MSFT is begging for those developers to come back and develop for Windows 8…

Regarding the desktop strategy, are we talking about legacy desktop or the new Windows 8 apps?

Just a bit sharing on how our enterprise customers use Crosslight in their go-mobile strategy. Most of them switched to Windows 8 apps when it comes to full-scale desktop app requirements, including mouse and keyboard support. It makes sense, because that’s where the technology is going to.

Crosslight addressed those challenges perfectly, since it supports not only iOS, Android and Windows Phone — but also Windows 8 and 8.1. Our enterprise customers have successfully built their apps on 4 platforms, which allow them to support their operations the way they desire. Executives who use iPad will find the iOS apps appealing, while back-office guys will prefer a Surface for faster data entry. Ultimately, the company only needs to maintain the latest mobile platforms, while periodically leaving the legacy platforms.

Stay tuned for an upcoming press release that discovers a success story of our enterprise customers using Crosslight 2 to empower the company’s mobile strategy.