Microsoft Launches Visual Studio 2017 With Xamarin

Suthahar Jegatheesan
Mar 17, 2017

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Introduction

Visual Studio 2017 was launched on March 7, 2017 with many fresh and exciting features for Visual Studio developers. On February 24, 2016, Xamarin and Microsoft announced that Microsoft signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin. Microsoft at Build 2016 announced that they will open-source Xamarin SDK and that they will bundle it as a free tool within Visual Studio's integrated development environment.

Now, we are celebrating the 20^th anniversary of Visual Studio and one year anniversary and the release of Visual studio 2017 with many features.

In this article, I will share Visual Studio 2017 Xamarin project template, Cloud Storage template, Xamarin Forms preview.

Download and install Visual Studio 2017

Download Visual Studio 2017 from the RL given below by March 14 and get free 60-day access to Xamarin University.

Download Visual Studio 2017 here.
Refer Visual Studio 2017 system requirement here.

Create new Xamarin project

After successfully installing Visual Studio 2017, Go to Run (Windows key +R) > type Devenv.exe or select from Windows Application list and select New project from File menu > New Project (ctrl +Shift+N) or click More project template from VS Start screen.

Visual Studio 2017 has different project templates, so do not worry about a new project Window, which has only 3 project templates. You can follow the steps given below to create new Xamarin forms Application, using VS 2017.

New Project >select Cross -Platform from Template > Cross platform App(Xamarin.Forms or native). It will show the screen, as shown below.

In Xamarin.Forms UI Template, Project template is there for creating cross platform, native mobile apps for iOS, Android, UWP and select Blank UI or master detail menu, using Xamarin Forms UI .

The Native UI, native user interface approach is there to create UI for each platform.

The Host in Cloud, Cross mobile Application is automatically integrated with Azure Cloud storage and create new project for Cloud.

Xamarin.Forms Previewer

Microsoft and Xamarin team made many enhancements to the xamarin.Forms Previewer with Visual Studio 2017 . You can preview cross mobile Application, while designing XAML based Application.

Create New Blank / Master details xamarin form Application and open Forms Preview Window and activate the steps given below.

Step 1

VS 2017 > click View > select Other Windows > select Forms Preview.

Step 2

The project preview needs to be built before previewing the Application

Step 3

With Android Application preview, be sure that you have the latest Java 1.8 x64 installed here.

Step 4

Install Java 1.8 x64 and change to Android JDK path from Visual Studio.

Go to Tools menu> select Options > Xamarin> Android Setting > change Java Development kit location.

Step 5

iOS renderer requires an active connection to your Mac agent for preview.

Step 6

If you are getting any issue while connecting the Mac, please make sure Xamarin version is the same from both the machines.

Step 7

If you get an error like this, this version of Xamarin.iOS requires iOS 10.2 SDK (shipped with Xcode 8.2), when the managed linker is disabled either upgrade to Xcode or enable the managed linker. There are two ways through which we can resolve this issue.

It appears that you have not updated Xcode. Check on your Mac and update xcode.
Another option would be to choose to 'Link Framework SDKs only'. Right click on iOS Project > Property > iOS Build > General tab> Linker Behavior > Link Framework SDKs only.

Step 8

If you're facing any other issue, try closing and re-opening XAML file and it will be resolved.

Host in Cloud

VS 2017 introduced new Cloud Xamarin template with online and offline storage. Just follow few steps given below to create Cloud storage app with iOS, Android and Windows 10 platform. The template includes tabbed navigation, MVVM, settings and more. You can follow the steps gived below for Host in Cloud.