Introduction To Xamarin

What is Xamarin?

Xamarin launched in 2011, Xamarin is a framework to develop a cross platform mobile application using C# and Visual Studio.

There are various choices available for mobile development. Xamarin aimed directly at the .NET developer. You can write your code in your favorite IDE, Visual Studio.

Xamarin is different because it offers a single language C# and runtime that works on three mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows). So you need to define the UI in a platform-specific way. In Android, it's defined in an Android XML file, in Windows Phone XAML file, and in iOS you use a write storyboards. Target iOS, Android, Windows and Mac with a single, shared C# codebase. Use the same language, APIs and data structures on every platform.

Advantages

1. Xamarin is the code sharing and the huge amount of available C# Components.
2. It works through the Mono framework to communicate with API of common mobile device functions like geo-location for popular iOS, Android, and Windows operating systems.
3. Xamarin provides tools for monitoring and testing like Xamarin offers unique tools to help test and monitor app performance.
4. Forms includes more than 40 controls and layouts, which are mapped to native controls at runtime.
5. With Xamarin, you write your apps entirely in C#, sharing the same code on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and more. Anything you can do in Objective-C, Swift or Java, you can do in C#.

Disadvantages

1. Xamarin doesn’t allow to create reusable components or modules outside of its own environment.
2. Non portable .Net libraries or do not have PCL version that support Xamarin iOS or Xamarin Android.

Install Xamarin Installer with visual studio

In this article, you will learn how to Install Xamarin with visual studio in different steps.

Introduction

In this article you will know how we install Xamarin with visual studio in different steps. So let’s start.

Step 1

First you will go through the Xamarin website and Register yourself if you don’t Registered earlier as shown in figure 1..

With every account, you get a free 30-day trial of the Business Edition of Xamarin, which provides you with everything you need.

Step 2

After you register go to your Dashboard and click on Downloads button as shown in figure 2.

 When you Click on Download as mention in Figure-2

Step 3

 You get Xamarin Installer and open the installer to begin the installation process:

Click continue to Installation process as shown in figure 3.

Press Next to Continue installation process as shown in figure 4.

The next step in the installation process requires you to accept the license in order to proceed and click Next Button as shown in figure 5.

In the Next Step Xamarin installer Identify the Required Components in System and if any Components Missing you need to be download and Install. as shown in figure 6.

Now click Next button and start download and installation process as shown in figure 7.

It's a completely self-contained installation that will detect the required software and their versions to get started, including the appropriate version of the Android SDK. Once the Installation complete Restart Your System and Start Work on Xamarin application with Visual Studio.

Create an Application in xamarin.forms

First Open your visual studio 2015 and create New Project -> Select Cross-Platform and select Blank App (Xamarin.forms Portable) and click ok as shown in figure 8.

Once you click ok On Figure 8 you may see Different cross-platform Projects loads (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows etc.) As shown in figure 9.

Now when you run the application, you can see the Android, iOS and Windows Phone Application at the same time as shown in figure 10.

Summary

In this article you learn how we install Xamarin Installer with visual studio in different steps. I hope you enjoyed this article.