Rarely does a developer have the luxury of building mobile apps for a single mobile platform. The fact is, the smartphone and tablet space is dominated by three big platforms: iOS, Android and Windows. Traditionally, this means using each platform's provided technology and SDK, i.e. Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android and .NET for Windows, or choosing a write-once/run-anywhere cross-platform toolkit which provides a lowest-common-denominator experience on all platforms, and prevents developers from going "to the metal" on any given platform to take advantage of the native features that make a mobile platform great. With Xamarin, however, this limitation does not exist. Not only do you get a single, modern language (C#) and framework (.NET) across all three platforms, but you also get a native experience on each, giving your code direct access to the underlying SDK and device metal, including platform-specific UI and device capabilities, so that you can deliver a truly amazing native experience on every platform you target.

1. iOS & Android Development in
C# & Visual Studio

2. Nishanth Anil
Developer Evangelist
Xamarin
nish@xamarin.com
@nishanil

3. Native Platform Languages

4. Write Once, Run Anywhere?
!=
!=

5. C# to the rescue!

6. How?

8. What is Mono?
•
Open source implementation of the .NET platform created by Ximian
(ECMA 334/335)
•
•
•
2001: Created to bring Windows applications to Linux
2003: Acquired by Novell with Ximian
Matured at Novell in research mode; now a world-class runtime.

9. C#
IronRuby
IronPython
Visual Basic
F#

10. C# everywhere…

11. Xamarin
•
•
Founded in May 2011
•
Focused on mobile app development
Xamarin has a perpetual license to all Mono IP: Copyrights, patents
and trademarks

12. C#
Write 100% native iOS, Android and Windows apps in C#

13. Anything you can do in Objective-C or
Java can be done in C# with Xamarin.

14. Modern language C#
Shared code
High performance

17. How does it work?
•
•
Mono
“Bindings”
•
C# 5
.NET 4.5
exposes underlying SDKs as C#

19. You
Us
Them

20. iOS Development

21. iOS Development

22. iOS Apps in Visual Studio !?

23. Android Development

24. C# Development Environments
Mac OS X
Windows
Xamarin
Business
Edition
IDE
+
iOS
+ Mac
Android
Mac
Windows/Phone

25. Building for Cross Platform
•
•
•
•
File Linking
Portable Class Library
Conditional Compilation
Other frameworks..

26. File Linking
•
Easy/Avoids complexities
of PCL
•
Can use conditional
compilation

27. Portable Class Libraries

28. Conditional Compilation
•
Pre-defined Symbols
•
•
•
•
#if __iOS__
#if __ANDROID__
#if __MOBILE__
#if __NETFX_CORE__

29. Other Frameworks…
•
MVVMCross
•
•
MonoCross
•
•
•
http://monocross.net
http://ifactr.com
Reactive Extensions / Reactive UI
•
•
https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross
http://www.reactiveui.net/
Vernacular (Localization)
•
https://github.com/rdio/vernacular

30. Maximize Shared Code
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
SQLite-NET
Web Services
Business Logic
Input Validation
File Operations (& caching)
Background Tasks
Localization

31. Links
•
DietCalculator
•
•
•
https://github.com/xamarin/monotouch-samples
Android
•
•
https://github.com/nishanil/DietCalculatorVS
iOS
•
•
https://github.com/nishanil/DietCalculatorPCL
https://github.com/xamarin/monodroid-samples
Pre-built Apps
•
https://github.com/xamarin/prebuilt-apps

32. Cloudy Cross-Platform Apps
Xamarin
C# on iOS and Android
Azure
Parse

33. Azure Component

34. Azure Portal
http:/
/windowsazure.com

35. Azure Demo
Initialize
await a list of data
await inserting a new object

36. Azure Demo

37. Cloudy Cross-Platform Apps
Xamarin
C# on iOS and Android
Azure
Parse

38. Parse Component

39. Parse Portal
http:/
/parse.com

40. Parse Demo
Initialize
await a list of data
await inserting a new object

41. Parse Demo

42. Links
https://github.com/xamarin/mobile-samples/tree/master/
TaskyPortable
https://github.com/conceptdev/TaskCloud (Azure & Parse)

43. Nishanth Anil
Developer Evangelist
Xamarin
nish@xamarin.com
@nishanil