This second Preview Edition ebook, now with 16 chapters, is about writing applications for Xamarin.Forms, the new mobile development platform for iOS, Android, and Windows phones unveiled by Xamarin in May 2014. Xamarin.Forms lets you write shared user-interface code in C# and XAML that maps to native controls on these three platforms.

Learn to build cross-platform mobile apps using the latest features in Xamarin.Forms 4 with the help of a series of projects including apps for real-time chatting, AR games, location-tracking, weather, photo galleries, and much more Key FeaturesDevelop mobile apps, AR games, and chatbots of varying complexity with the help of real-world examplesExplore the important features of Xamarin.Forms 4 such as Shell, CollectionView, and CarouselViewGet to grips with advanced concepts such as AR and VR and machine learning for mobile developmentBook Description Xamarin.Forms is a lightweight cross-platform development toolkit for building apps with a rich user interface. Improved and updated to cover the latest features of Xamarin.Forms, this second edition covers CollectionView and Shell, along with interesting concepts such as augmented reality (AR) and machine learning. Starting with an introduction to Xamarin and how it works, this book shares tips for choosing the type of development environment you should strive for when planning cross-platform mobile apps. You’ll build your first Xamarin.Forms app and learn how to use Shell to implement the app architecture. The book gradually increases the level of complexity of the projects, guiding you through creating apps ranging from a location tracker and weather map to an AR game and face recognition. As you advance, the book will take you through modern mobile development frameworks such as SQLite, .NET Core Mono, ARKit, and ARCore. You’ll be able to customize your apps for both Android and iOS platforms to achieve native-like performance and speed. The book is filled with engaging examples, so you can grasp essential concepts by writing code instead of reading through endless theory. By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to develop your own native apps with Xamarin.Forms and its associated technologies, such as .NET Core, Visual Studio 2019, and C#. What you will learnSet up Xamarin.Forms to build native apps with code-sharing capabilitiesUnderstand the core aspects of developing a mobile app, such as its layout, UX, and renderingUse custom renderers to gain platform-specific accessDiscover how to create custom layouts for your apps with Xamarin.Forms ShellUse Azure SignalR to implement serverless services in your Xamarin appsCreate an augmented reality (AR) game for Android and iOS using ARCore and ARKit, respectivelyBuild and train machine learning models using CoreML, TensorFlow, and Azure Cognitive ServicesWho this book is for This book is for C# and .NET developers who want to learn Xamarin.Forms and get started with native Xamarin mobile application development from the ground up. Working knowledge of Visual Studio will help you to get the most out of this book.

Explore Xamarin.Forms to develop dynamic applications Key FeaturesExplore SQLite through Xamarin to store locations for various location-based applicationsMake a real-time serverless chat service by using Azure SignalR serviceBuild Augmented Reality application with the power of UrhoSharp together with ARKit and ARCore Book Description Xamarin.Forms is a lightweight cross-platform development toolkit for building applications with a rich user interface. In this book you'll start by building projects that explain the Xamarin.Forms ecosystem to get up and running with building cross-platform applications. We'll increase in difficulty throughout the projects, making you learn the nitty-gritty of Xamarin.Forms offerings. You'll gain insights into the architecture, how to arrange your app's design, where to begin developing, what pitfalls exist, and how to avoid them. The book contains seven real-world projects, to get you hands-on with building rich UIs and providing a truly cross-platform experience. It will also guide you on how to set up a machine for Xamarin app development. You'll build a simple to-do application that gets you going, then dive deep into building advanced apps such as messaging platform, games, and machine learning, to build a UI for an augmented reality project. By the end of the book, you'll be confident in building cross-platforms and fitting Xamarin.Forms toolkits in your app development. You'll be able to take the practice you get from this book to build applications that comply with your requirements. What you will learnSet up a machine for Xamarin developmentGet to know about MVVM and data bindings in Xamarin.FormsUnderstand how to use custom renderers to gain platform-specific accessDiscover Geolocation services through Xamarin EssentialsCreate an abstraction of ARKit and ARCore to expose as a single API for the game Learn how to train a model for imageclassification with Azure Cognitive ServicesWho this book is for This book is for mobile application developers who want to start building native mobile apps using the powerful Xamarin.Forms and C#. Working knowledge of C#, .NET, and Visual Studio is required.

Xamarin Mobile Application Development is a hands-on Xamarin.Forms primer and a cross-platform reference for building native Android, iOS, and Windows Phone apps using C# and .NET. This book explains how to use Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS to build business apps for your customers and consumer apps for Google Play and the iTunes App Store. Learn how to leverage Xamarin.Forms for cross-platform development using the most common UI pages, layouts, views, controls, and design patterns. Combine these with platform-specific UI to craft a visually stunning and highly interactive mobile user experience. Use Xamarin.Forms to data bind your UI to both data models and to view models for a Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) implementation. Use this book to answer the important question: Is Xamarin.Forms right for my project? Platform-specific UI is a key concept in cross-platform development, and Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are the foundation of the Xamarin platform. Xamarin Mobile Application Development will cover how to build an Android app using Xamarin.Android and an iOS app using Xamarin.iOS while sharing a core code library. SQLite is the database-of-choice for many Xamarin developers. This book will explain local data access techniques using SQLite.NET and ADO.NET. Build a mobile data access layer (DAL) using SQLite and weigh your options for web services and enterprise cloud data solutions. This book will show how organize your Xamarin code into a professional-grade application architecture. Explore solution-building techniques from starter-to-enterprise to help you decouple your functional layers, manage your platform-specific code, and share your cross-platform classes for code reuse, testability, and maintainability. Also included are 250+ screenshots on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and 200+ C# code examples with downloadable C# and XAML versions available from Apress.com. This comprehensive recipe and reference book addresses one of the most important and vexing problems in the software industry today: How do we effectively design and develop cross-platform mobile applications?

Leverage Xamarin.Forms to build iOS and Android apps using a single, cross-platform approach. This book is the XAML companion to the C# guide Xamarin Mobile Application Development. You'll begin with an overview of Xamarin.Forms, then move on to an in-depth XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) primer covering syntax, namespaces, markup extensions, constructors, and the XAML standard. XAML gives us both the power of decoupled UI development and the direct use of Xamarin.Forms elements. This book explores the core of the Xamarin.Forms mobile app UI: using layouts and FlexLayouts to position controls and views to design and build screens, formatting your UI using resource dictionaries, styles, themes and CSS, then coding user interactions with behaviors, commands, and triggers. You'll see how to use XAML to build sophisticated, robust cross-platform mobile apps and help your user get around your app using Xamarin.Forms navigation patterns. Building Xamarin.Forms Mobile Apps Using XAML explains how to bind UI to data models using data binding and using the MVVM pattern, and how to customize UI elements for each platform using industry-standard menus, effects, custom renderers, and native view declaration. What You Will Learn Create world-class mobile apps for iOS and Android using C# and XAMLBuild a XAML UI decoupled from the C# code behind Design UI layouts such as FrameLayout, controls, lists, and navigation patterns Style your app using resource dictionaries, styles, themes, and CSS Customize controls to have platform-specific features using effects, custom renderers, and native views Who This Book Is For XAML and C# developers, architects, and technical managers as well as many Android and iOS developers

New edition of the bestselling guide to building an effective mobile app architecture with Xamarin.Forms 4 that maximizes the overall quality of apps. Key FeaturesUpdated for Xamarin.Forms 4Packed with real-world scenarios and solutions to help you build professional grade mobile apps with Xamarin.FormsIncludes design patterns and best practice techniques that every mobile developer should knowBook Description Discover how to extend and build upon the components of the most recent version of Xamarin.Forms to develop an effective, robust mobile app architecture. This new edition features Xamarin.Forms 4 updates, including CollectionView and RefreshView, new coverage of client-side validation, and updates on how to implement user authentication. Mastering Xamarin.Forms, Third Edition is one of the few Xamarin books structured around the development of a simple app from start to finish, beginning with a basic Xamarin.Forms app and going step by step through several advanced topics to create a solution architecture rich with the benefits of good design patterns and best practices. This book introduces a core separation between the app's user interface and the app's business logic by applying the MVVM pattern and data binding, and then focuses on building a layer of plugin-like services that handle platform-specific utilities such as navigation and geo-location, as well as how to loosely use these services in the app with inversion of control and dependency injection. You’ll connect the app to a live web-based API and set up offline synchronization before testing the app logic through unit testing. Finally, you will learn how to add monitoring to your Xamarin.Forms projects to track crashes and analytics and gain a proactive edge on quality. What you will learnFind out how, when, and why to use architecture patterns and best practices with Xamarin.FormsImplement the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and data binding in Xamarin.Forms mobile appsIncorporate client-side validation in Xamarin.Forms mobile appsExtend the Xamarin.Forms navigation API with a custom ViewModel-centric navigation serviceLeverage the inversion of control and dependency injection patterns in Xamarin.Forms mobile appsWork with online and offline data in Xamarin.Forms mobile appsUse platform-specific APIs to build rich custom user interfaces in Xamarin.Forms mobile appsExplore how to monitor mobile app quality using Visual Studio App CenterWho this book is for This book is intended for .NET developers who are familiar with Xamarin mobile application development and the open source Xamarin.Forms toolkit. If you have already started working with Xamarin.Forms and want to take your app to the next level, making it more maintainable, testable and flexible, then this book is for you.

Tailor your apps to appeal to a global market. Microsoft MVP Chris Miller steps you through the process of enabling multiple language support, while using a single shared set of language resources using the .NET Framework. You will learn to adapt a simple mobile application for the Android, iOS, and Windows platforms, and handle the localization and internationalization on each platform. You will test the application for localization support and to avoid common pitfalls. Using Xamarin Forms and Visual Studio, the app will be implemented for Android, iOS, and Windows 10 UWP, and 99% of the code will be shared across the platforms. What You Will Learn: What localization and internationalization are and why they matter Support multiple languages on each platform Handle cultural differences such as dates and currencies Use tools such as Microsoft’s Multilingual App Toolkit to manage language resources Create a localized, cross-platform app with Android Studio, Xcode, Xamarin, and Visual Studio tools Get help translating the text from the application Who This Book Is For: Mobile app developers currently writing native apps for Windows Phone, Android, and iOS