Well, you could look at it this way. Using fragments when using fragments and multiple activities was a real pain. Think Fragment transactions - much pain. Therefore, the NavigationComponent was developed - no more pain. I hate even thinking back to those days. One other thing you've probably never used is a ConstraintLayout. It replaces the need for complex LinearLayouts. The Xamarin.Android Designer has not been updated in the last 4 or 5 years and will soon be removed from VS 2022. Therefore, it is probably time for you to install Android Studio because AS makes it very easy to set up a complex layout using a ConstraintLayout. Once done, you can copy/paste your new layout into a new empty Xamarin.Android XML file and build it. There are more sophisticated/efficient ways of getting it into VS, which I can expand on.

It might be an idea to take this stuff to email because I doubt that SO appreciates these types of answers.