Using Visual Studio, you can develop iOS and Android apps natively on your Windows computer. To write iOS apps, you need a Mac or a reasonable facsimile. Xamarin offers the Xamarin Studio (in addition to Visual Studio support), which is a world-class IDE that makes developing, debugging, testing, and packaging applications (and more) a walk in the park. ![]() A good IDE enables acceleration of any development effort. Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Xamarin Studio Using C# allows Xamarin to reach out to millions of potential developers. What about the language? Instead of using different languages for different platforms, a unifying language is needed: C# was chosen because it's easy to learn, and it's the language of choice for many. Xamarin's approach is to let developers create UI that are unique to each platform, and then create components that can be reused easily on another platform. For example, your code for accessing Web services can be reused easily on the iOS and Android platforms.Īlso, database code is also highly portable. Xamarin also recognizes that beyond the surface (user interface), apps have a lot of highly reusable components that can be shared across platforms. On the contrary, it encourages developers to take advantage of the features that each platform offers. Xamarin takes the middle path it respects the uniqueness of each platform and does not force developers to create apps that look the same on all platforms. Xamarin's approach is to let developers create UIs that are unique to each platform, and then create components that can be reused easily on another platform, using the C# programming language. Although this approach sounds enticing, hybrid apps suffer from performance issues, and are not easily scalable as the user base increases. But the upside of using this approach is that Web apps are relatively easy (and less expensive) to build-developers simply need to know HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.Ī third approach to building apps is to take the best of both approaches and combine them: Use native code for portions of the code that need to access specific hardware features of the device and use Web languages (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) for the rest. This limited the usability of the apps, as their UI must be written to the lowest-common-denominator. However, “write once, run everywhere” also means that the app will look the same everywhere. Web apps, due to their ubiquitous access, has the greatest benefits-the ability to “write once and run everywhere,” to borrow the slogan from Sun Microsystems. Web apps tend to be less interactive and are limited in scope and functionalities. Web apps run within the confines of the Web browser, which restricts them from accessing most parts of the hardware. To use them, users have to launch the Web browser on the device and navigate to the correct URL. The second type of apps, Web-apps, are applications that run off the Web browser. For companies that require apps to run on multiple platforms, it's expensive to maintain different code bases for multiple platforms, which are usually not easily ported to the other platforms. This approach, although good, requires developers to learn a specific language for each platform: Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. Native apps are feature-rich and interactive, with full access to the hardware. They make use of the hardware features available on the device, such as a camera and sensors such as an accelerometer, a compass, etc. Native apps run directly on the mobile device. There are three types of mobile apps that developers can write: native, Web apps, and a combination. To understand how Xamarin fits into the developer's roadmap, you have to understand how mobile apps are written. ![]() Two platforms stand shoulder to shoulder: Apple's iOS and Google's Android. While the battles have been fought for the past couple of years, there has been no clear indication of who has ultimately won the platform wars. Along the way, Microsoft also joined in the foray, alleging that Android infringed upon some of its patents. Since Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, Apple and Google (its proxies really: Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc.) have been embroiled in endless legal battles over the ownership of the various patents. In this article, I provide an introduction to Xamarin and its appeal to developers who are building cross-platform mobile apps. ![]() ![]() In addition, Xamarin announced its integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio, allowing developers to continue using their favorite development environment to build mobile apps. In 2013, Xamarin announced Xamarin Studio, a tool that allows developers to build mobile applications using the C# language. Unless you have been hiding in a cave for the past few months, you have heard of a company called Xamarin.
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