Introduction To Xamarin.Android Using C# - Part One

Xamarin.Android will create native Android applications using modern language (C#), .NET Base Class Library Visual Studio. Xamarin is a cross-platform development tool. It solves dilemmas many developers face when developing cross-platform apps: separate coding languages and UI paradigms. With Xamarin, you can use C# for iOS, Android, and Universal Windows apps. And with Xamarin Forms, interface design for all three platforms can be accomplished within its XAML-based framework.

Xamarin 2.0 was released in February 2013 . Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS make it possible to do native Android, iOS and Windows development in C#, with either Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio. Developers re-use their existing C# code, and share significant code across device platforms. The product was used to make apps for several well-known companies.

Xamarin supplies add-ins to Microsoft Visual Studio that allows developers to build Android, iOS, and Windows apps within the IDE using. Xamarin for Visual Studio also has extensions within Microsoft Visual Studio that provide support for the building, deploying, and debugging of apps on a simulator or a device.

In late 2013, Xamarin and Microsoft announced a partnership that included customer programs to make it possible for their joint developer bases to build for all mobile platforms. In addition, Xamarin now includes support for Microsoft Portable Class Libraries and most C# 5.0 features such as async/await. CEO and co-founder of Xamarin, Nat Friedman, announced the alliance at the launch of Visual Studio 2013 in New York.

On 2016 Microsoft announced that they were merging all of Xamarin's software with every version of Microsoft Visual Studio including Visual Studio Community, and this added various Xamarin features to come pre-installed in Visual Studio such as an iOS emulator.

Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned software company founded in May 2011. Deliver even more amazing apps with Xamarin and Microsoft.

The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure provides a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything you need to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device.

Xamarin has more than 15,000 customers in 120 countries. Through Xamarin Test Cloud, all types of mobile developers—C#,Objective-C, Java and hybrid app builders —can also test and improve the quality of apps using thousands of cloud-hosted phones and devices.

Here are two application developments in the Xamarin approach and those are Xamarin traditional application development and Cross platform mobile application development.

Cross Platform Mobile Application Development

This application development is the same as Xamarin Traditional Application Development, the only difference is we don’t require separate technology to develop UI based on the platform. We can use Xamrin.Forms to develop UI for all platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows). Xamarin.Forms can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows phones.

Xamarin Tradition Application Development

In this Xamarin application development, we use the same technology (C#) for business logic development and different technology to develop UI based on the platform. We use Xamarin.Android for Android UI development, Xamarin.iOS for iOS UI development. Xamarin traditional application development will not support to develop UI for windows, but we can call this business logic from UWP (Universal Windows Platform). The main advantage of this application development is we can share business logic code across all multiple platforms. That means if we did any change in business logic will affect on multiple platforms. The main disadvantage with this application development is, we still need to use multiple technologies to develop UI based on the platform.

Xamarin approach is the best way for mobile application development among Silo approach, Black Box approach.

Download the Xamarin unified installer.

Click Here>>