Book Image

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

By : Jonathan Peppers
Book Image

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

By: Jonathan Peppers

Overview of this book

Xamarin is a leading cross-platform application development tool used by top companies such as Coca-Cola, Honeywell, and Alaska Airlines to build apps. Version 4 features significant updates to the platform including the release of Xamarin.Forms 2.0 and improvements have been made to the iOS and Android designers. Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft so it is now a part of the Visual Studio family. This book will show you how to build applications for iOS, Android, and Windows. You will be walked through the process of creating an application that comes complete with a back-end web service and native features such as GPS location, camera, push notifications, and other core features. Additionally, you’ll learn how to use external libraries with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms to create user interfaces. This book also provides instructions for Visual Studio and Windows. This edition has been updated with new screenshots and detailed steps to provide you with a holistic overview of the new features in Xamarin 4.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Xamarin's Android designer


The default template for Android projects has a little more built-in functionality than iOS, so we will have a few controls to remove later. Android user interface layouts are defined in XML files that are readable by humans and editable. However, Xamarin Studio has provided an excellent design tool that allows you to drag-and-drop controls to define your Android layouts. Let's add some more features to your application and start using the Android designer.

Return to Xamarin Studio and carry out the following steps to add features to your app:

  1. Open the Android project you created earlier in this chapter in Xamarin Studio.

  2. Under Resources | layout in your project, open Main.axml.

  3. You will see the Android designer open in Xamarin Studio.

  4. Delete the existing label and button from the Android project template.

  5. Drag TextView from the Toolbox section on the right to the empty layout.

  6. Type some default text such as 0 into the label.

  7. In the Properties pane on the right, you'll...