Small introduction to Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms

1. Evgeny Zborovsky
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evsky/
https://twitter.com/ezborovsky

2. History
- Xamarin Founded in 2011
- Acquired by Microsoft in February 2016
- .NET Core version 1.0 June 2016
- Visual studio for Mac (Preview) November 2016

3. Why Xamarin?
- Open Source (Free)
- Owned by Microsoft
- Truly Native
- Write once, run anywhere

4. How does it work?
Shared BL C#
Android C# UI iOS C# UI
Xamarin Native (Classic)
Shared BL C#
Android C# iOS C#
Xamarin.Forms
Shared UI XAML (C#)
OR
Documentation: Understanding the Xamarin Mobile Platform

5. Source: https://github.com/xamarin/dev-days-labs/

6. When to use Xamarin Native?
- Apps with interactions that require native behavior
- Apps that use many platform-specific APIs
- Apps where custom UI is more important than code sharing
Documentation: Which Xamarin approach is best for your app?

7. When to use Xamarin.Forms?
- Apps that require little platform-specific functionality
- Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI
- Developers comfortable with XAML
Documentation: Which Xamarin approach is best for your app?

8. How to share the code?
- Shared Project
- PCL (Portable Class Library)
- .NET Standard Library
Documentation: Sharing Code Options

9. Where to start?
- Windows:
- Visual Studio 2017
- Xamarin Studio
- Mac:
- Visual Studio for Mac
- Xamarin Studio
Documentation: Getting Started

10. Does Xamarin.Forms really works?
- No UI preview Xamarin Live Player
- Poor XAML intellisense
- Xamarin bugs
- Android / iOS bugs
- Not stable IDE

11. Good practices
- SOLID
- XAMLC
- MVVM
- Use MessagingCenter with care
- Don’t forget that you are on mobile
- Up to you how to write UI code in C# or XAML
- Contribute!

12. Additional resources
- Official resource: https://developer.xamarin.com/
- Channel 9: https://xamarinshow.com
- Podcast: http://www.xamarinpodcast.com/
- MVA Xamarin Challenge available till 17/05/17
- Follow James Montemagno | Blog: http://motzcod.es/
- Github: https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms
- My blog: https://smellyc0de.blogspot.com
- Content Aggregator: Planet Xamarin

13. Questions?

14. Thank you!