Building Your First Mobile App with C# NET and Xamarin

As different apps required different teams for maintaining and improving the performance of the application, leading to the slower app development process. By using Xamarin, the development can be increased by appointing one team for both the applications. Before Xamarin.Forms came into play, building GUI with the framework was the blind spot where code sharing was practically unattainable. While having all the necessary tools for platform-specific development, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS didn’t really provided much in terms of GUI reusability. If you’re with a development company that has its fingers in many production pies at the same time, chances are you’re already using this language in some capacity.

It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, you get the impression that developers utterly hate using Xamarin and see it as a frustrating, dead end solutiom. Anything complicated probably means you’ll be working in Xamarin.Native… or rather, you won’t. As compared to the plethora of cross-platform technologies available, Xamarin got its special place due to its versatility and offering an efficient solution. We believe in offering the best that can help businesses and individuals grow. For this, we offer services and solutions in every industry to help them thrive.

In the past, if an app needed to be cross-platform and run on multiple operating systems , there was little, if any, code that could be reused from the initial development project. Essentially, each device required its own mobile app development project with its own code base. Modern cross-platform tools use common languages such as C# and JavaScript to share code across projects; more importantly, they integrate well with application lifecycle management tools, such as Jenkins. This enables developers to use a single codebase for Apple iOS, Google Android and progressive web apps . PWAs are built to take advantage of native mobile device features, without requiring the end user to visit an app store, make a purchase and download software locally.

Although these tools are limited in their functionality and can’t be used to create a game with no-code apps, the no-code approach will meet most organization’s needs. Developers can deploy changes to the source code for all platforms in one go in case of any changes required. The maintenance cost is also drastically reduced because of a single code base in C# by taking advantage of existing code, tools, and teams. The development process will require substantially reduced resources and time.

Why I Choose Xamarin to Build Cross-Platform Apps

You can also build applications where some parts of their user interfaces are made with Xamarin.Forms and the others are engineered using the native UI toolkit. As the name implies, cross-platform mobile development refers to “the creation of a mobile application that are compatible with multiple mobile course mobile operating systems”. Even though, cross-platform app development suffered major setbacks in the past, it has re-emerged as a powerful methodology in the recent times. In fact, there are a number of cross-platform frameworks available, such as Xamarin, Qt, Phonegap, Ionic and React Native.

The sender parameter is the object that called the method, allowing it to be reused by multiple components. In this case it is only called from a Button element so the sender will be Button. EventArgs allow you to pass data to the method; in this case you don’t require any, so this parameter can be ignored.

A legitimate mobile strategy reduces developer frustration and allows for code reusability. If you are invested in web technologies, modern mobile web, hybrid or JS native apps are the way to go – you have rich tooling and plethora of native API access. A great app idea, an outstanding technology used for converting an idea into reality, awesome use of UI for UX, timely bug fixing & updates, marketing, what else?

Solutions

Thus, finding an experienced Xamarin developer could be a challenge. C# is a mature language with strong safety-typing that prevents code from unexpected behavior. As C# is one of the .NET framework languages, it can be used with a number of useful .NET features such as Lambdas, LINQ, and Asynchronous programming (async/await).

• Originally based on the Mono project, Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 and since then has been integrated into the .NET platform.
• C# is a mature language with strong safety-typing that prevents code from unexpected behavior.
• The application also caters to data confidentiality which has become a major concern for consumers in this day and age.
• When considering iOS or Android app development, most of us think about Objective-C vs Swift, and Java first of all.
• Developers get to combine the same UI controls and APIs that are used for developing native mobile applications in their respective platform-specific programming languages.
• The Community package is also good for teams that are new to Visual Studio.

What I love about Xamarin.Forms is the ecosystem of libraries and controls that have been created by the community and by amazing companies that I have been using for years such as Syncfusion and Telerik. You will have noticed in the code you entered earlier that you make some changes to the font and color using attributes available on the components. This is the most common and “original” way of changing the appearance of your app.

Costs of developing a mobile app

Another popular game that leverages Xamarin’s cost-cutting benefits to be playable across multiple platforms and consoles. With it, the process of maintenance is also easier, effective, and efficient resulting in reducing the cost. APX manages fieldwork and thus created an app with Xamarin for overcoming the limitation to deskless workers or on the field workers. The workers on the field can manage https://wizardsdev.com/ a lot of things along with operating things via speech and hand-gesture language. Thus, the app made for The World Bank is created using Visual Studio and Xamarin collecting lots of individual data on tablets while keeping the confidentiality high. With the improvements made to the Forms, Xamarin now allows developers to share visual elements too using a UI toolkit making a familiar interface.

If you need high-end performance and a perfectly adjusted UI, it’s worth going for native apps. Xamarin.Forms is a separate product designed to create prototypes or mobile apps sharing up to 100 percent of the code across iOS and Android. You can use this reusable code written by someone else to accelerate your development of a mobile app. A PWA is a website that looks and behaves as if it is a mobile app. These applications are developed with web technologies such as Facebook React.

Nearly everyone these days has a mobile phone, and most of these are smartphones. Everyone downloads apps, from social media to games to fitness. The move to replace Xamarin Forms with MAUI seems to be a move on Microsoft’s part to compete with newer, friendlier and easier to use modern development frameworks. Insightly is targeted for businesses operating in different verticals and is a one-stop solution. This business-centric application is powered by Xamarin and is compatible with iOS and Android .

Switching from Android Studio or Xcode to Visual Studio

Then last year I was given the opportunity to work with some members of the Xamarin development team to transform this concept into a core part of the Xamarin platform. After a few months and a lot of late nights of coding we launched Xamarin.Essentials that provides core cross-platform API for iOS, Android, and UWP developers. The great thing with Xamarin.Forms is that you write the UI once and it is compiled to the native language for whatever platform you are deploying to, just like Xamarin.Native. As mentioned previously, it will look identical to the non-Xamarin native apps, so you will not know how it was made, and will have the time-saving benefits of a cross-platform UI.

So you don’t need to learn Java, Objective-C or Swift to build apps if you already know C#. If you are a beginner, then taking the Xamarin path instead of the conventional learning process can actually teach you app development for more than one platform. The great set of features provided by the entire toolset makes sure you don’t miss out on any functionality. Xamarin lets you call existing code written in other platform-specific languages such as Java in Android. But that is only when you are building something very specific which cannot be implemented on different platforms.

Why Xamarin

The app is presented on multiple platforms with access to 170 countries. By offering access to reuse code for Android and iOS app version, Xamarin helps in reducing the cost of app development. Consider it a benefit of Xamarin or how does Xamarin help in reducing app development cost, it highly provides tried and true solutions to a major number of brands and organizations.

So, if you already have an app, you can port its code to a different app through Xamarin, given that this code supports .NET embedding. This significantly improves code interchangeability and versatility. Maintenance also means keeping up with each platform’s versions and updates, and here Xamarin has got you covered, too.

How does Xamarin Helps in Reducing App Development Costs?

Once the app passes these tests, it’s time to roll it out to users for official beta testing. This process includes multiple rounds of review and incorporating user fixes prior to creating a deployable version of your app. The following is the complete code for a simple Android application.