10 Things You Should Know About Xamarin

Sebastián Pérez — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 15:25:13 +0000

Xamarin is used to create amazing cross-platform mobile applications! Did you know that cross-platform means you can actually share classes across .NET platforms?

Our colleague Seba takes center-stage to explain 10 different things you should know about Xamarin. He shares some core definitions for Xamarin, as well as how to use it in practice:

Here is a summary of the ten points Seba described:

You can create amazing applications using .NET as a platform. You can write C# code, as well as F# code. Basically, you can write everything you want using .NET as a platform.
Creating a library with Xamarin using .Net Standard, means you can share this library with other platforms, such as .NET core. Therefore, you can reuse your libraries.
The combination of the .NET environment and Visual Studio means you can write your application on both Windows and Mac machines.
Xamarin is cross-platform! You can share modals, classes and logic functionality across all the platforms, such as Android, iOS and Windows. In practice, you can share 75% of your code!
Xamarin will compile your application as native: there is no additional layer between Xamarin and your application. Your application will have native controls and native performance! Also, this allows you to use all the functionalities your devices offer.
In the traditional approach, you will have different projects with different views for each platform. However, Xamarin.Forms actually does allow you to share views across platforms as well. In Xamarin.Forms, you can write XAML views. It will still include native controls in the different platforms. Tip: take a look at Xamarin.Forms if you want to work with Xamarin for the first time.
Xamarin Essentials allows you to add device functionality, such as GPS, to your Xamarin.Forms projects. Xamarin Essentials is included with the Visual Studio application you need to install to start working with Xamarin.
Xamarin is open-source: you can find all the code in GitHub! There are more than 60.000 contributors: a real big and active community which we cherish at Xablu a lot!
There is a great community working with Xamarin. There are a lot of videos, blogs and youtube channels to find the information to learn about using Xamarin.
Xamarin is free! It has no licenses for commercial use! If you want to publish your apps, you do have to pay the platform subscription, such as for Apple or Android, but you never have to pay a fee for using Xamarin.

What is your favourite point on this list?

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Looking forward to Google I/O 2017

XABLU HQ — Mon, 15 May 2017 10:32:00 +0000

XABLU HQ

Reminder: RSVP now for Google I/O Extended 2017 Luxembourg!

Every May-June, the annual developer conferences of tech’s big 3 take place: last week was Microsoft Build, this week it’s Google I/O time, and next month Apple follows suite with WWDC.

This year’s Google I/O festival is being held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View for the second time in a row. Running from this Wednesday, May 17th to Friday, May 19th, the three days will be packed with news on Google’s (or Alphabet’s for that matter) product portfolio.

Let’s take a look at the things we’re most excited about:

Android O – Better battery life

Historically, Google has announced the new major version of its Android operating system at Google I/O. This year will see the release of Android O. As all Android versions are named after a dessert it could be ‘Oreo’, but we will only know for sure on Wednesday.

Android O looks like it will be a rather ‘under the hood’ release: there isn’t that much that will get users really excited, besides the usual refinements in certain areas like notifications. The biggest news however can be found ‘under the hood’: once again Google has made a serious effort to reduce the battery usage of mobile phones in daily use. There’s nothing more annoying than a phone that can’t last a day on a full battery. And although Google has improved this situation considerably over the last years, Android O will see another iteration of this point.

Project Treble

The second thing to look out for is ‘Project Treble’. One of the biggest issues in the Android ecosystem is its huge fragmentation: there are devices that run on (very) old Android versions and don’t receive updates anymore.

Especially in light of security concerns, this is a really bad situation and leaves a lot of consumers out in the cold. The main reason for this situation is simple: updating Android devices is an expensive exercise because of the way it’s structured. The biggest issue lies with the Linux kernel being used: silicon manufacturers need to modify a new release for their specific hardware and this requires serious time.

With Project Treble, Google tries to solve this by modularising the Android OS and separating the ‘OS framework’ from the low(est) level hardware layer which is called the ‘vendor implementation’. With this separation, it’s possible for device manufacturers to update the OS framework without the need to change the vendor implementation. Because of this simplification of the update process Google hopes to convince device manufacturers to continue updating devices with the latest versions of Android for a longer period of time.

We’ll need to wait and see how this will turn out in real life: Project Treble is only part of Android O and will not be available for older versions. And due to this existing fragmentation it will take Android O a long time to become the most used version of Android in the field.

Flutter

As Xamarin specialists we’re interested in anything that has to do with cross mobile platform app development. One of the more interesting Open Source projects is Google’s Flutter project: based on the Dart language it provides a framework to develop mobile applications for both iOS and Android from a single code base.

One of the interesting things about Flutter is that it uses its own UI language: it doesn’t use native widgets but instead promotes the usage of fully custom-designed UIs. It’s a different approach to others but interesting nonetheless. This is the first time Google is putting Flutter in the spotlight, so let’s see what they bring to the table!

Google I/O Extended 2017 Luxembourg

If you’re in Luxembourg, be sure to join us at our I/O Extended event at The Office on Wednesday, May 17th to watch the keynote with other developers, and get the chance to discuss what the announcements mean for mobile development.

Get more info and your (free) ticket here!

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

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