Book Image

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

By : Peppers
Book Image

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

By: 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 (13 chapters)

Installing Xamarin on Windows

Since Microsoft acquired Xamarin in 2016, Xamarin is included with any edition of Visual Studio. The editions are as follows:

  • Visual Studio Community: This is a free version available to anyone. There are restrictions for using this edition for companies.
  • Visual Studio Professional: This is the general edition companies should use. On the Visual Studio side, it includes features for Team Foundation Server.
  • Visual Studio Enterprise: Contains additional features in both Visual Studio and Xamarin. Xamarin features include embedded assemblies, the live Xamarin Inspector, and the Xamarin profiler.

When first setting up a Windows PC for Xamarin development, there are two choices to consider. If you already have Visual Studio, then you can merely use the Xamarin installer to add the necessary Visual Studio extensions and item templates to your existing installation. If you do not have Visual Studio installed yet, then there is simply an option in the Visual Studio 2015 installer for installing Xamarin.

If you want to install from the Visual Studio installer:

  1. Download your desired version of Visual Studio from https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/.
  2. Run the Visual Studio installer.
  3. Under Cross Platform Mobile Development, make sure to select C#/.NET (Xamarin v4.1.0) (the version number will change according to the version you use). This should automatically select the Android SDK and other components you will need for Xamarin development.
  4. You may also choose to install other useful tools such as Microsoft Web Developer Tools or Universal Windows App Development tools for targeting Windows 10.

Your installer should look something like this before you click Next:

Installing Xamarin on Windows

The second option for installing Xamarin is from Xamarin's website:

  1. Download the Xamarin installer for Windows from https://xamarin.com/download.
  2. Run XamarinInstaller.exe, which will download and install all required components on your PC.

The Xamarin installer is a very similar experience to what you see on Mac OS X, and should be very straightforward. It will add Xamarin to an existing Visual Studio installation if needed and install Xamarin Studio.