Xamarin is the king

Application development has been growing at a phenomenal rate, which is mostly due to the massive consumer dive into mobility. Multiple carriers, devices and software have all carved their own niche into the daily lives of people all over the world. This has created a huge opportunity for businesses and mobile application developers to strengthen their presence as promoters and facilitators of the mobile revolution. In the world of mobile applications, it is no secret, that native applications warrant no debate. Their advantages greatly overwhelm those of hybrid or HTML5 apps.

Before deciding on which platform to support, a thorough study of the requirements with an end-user focus is necessary. This helps you identify a strategy for the goals that have been set. Appealing to multiple platforms is a great way to ensure user satisfaction across varying devices. You do not want to start coding an app for one platform only to realize midway that you need it for another platform. This approach greatly increases the application development and testing time, which could have an adverse effect on your release cycle.

 

According to another study by Flurry Analytics from January 2014 to March 2014, the time spent on iOS and Android connected devices amounts to 162 minutes per day for the average American. 86% of that time is spent on mobile applications as opposed to 14% on mobile browsers.

It is clear from the above statistics that mobile applications and multiple platforms are here to stay. Businesses need a strategy to be able to deliver applications in times of such high demands. Here we present five core reasons to use Xamarin for cross-platform development of mobile applications.

1.    Native applications

The preferred solution for any application is native design. This is where Xamarin and its unique approach come in. Xamarin Studio (IDE) enables code completion in C#. It provides the advantages of native UI, access to specific-device features, and most importantly, native performance. Code sharing across platforms is a breeze with Xamarin, helping you shorten that development cycle.

2. Shared app logic

Apart from native UI, the way app logic is shared across multiple platforms makes Xamarin a must-use cross-platform development tool. Application logic underlying the UI layer, like input validation, web service calls, database interactions, and backend enterprise integrations are coded once in C#. Developers can share as much as 75% of the code across the varying operating systems. This saves time required to recode and leaves less room for bugs to creep in.

3. API integration

Xamarin binds the same APIs and UI controls that are used to build iOS, Android and Mac apps in their respective platform specific languages. For Windows development, Xamarin with Microsoft Visual Studio offers Windows Phone and Windows 8 applications. Code can be shared between iOS, Android and Windows using Portable Class Libraries (PCL) and appropriate application architecture. With Xamarin, support is always around the corner. Their unique binding technology enables them to provide support for new features soon after they are introduced in the device’s operating system. Click on the respective platforms links for their latest support packages for iOS 8 and Android L (with wearable support).

4.    Xamarin Component Store

The folks at Xamarin clearly believe in collaboration and sharing. This is a testament to their ongoing efforts on the Xamarin Component Store. Developers can choose from a host of free or paid components, which include UI controls, cross-platform libraries, and third party web services to apps with just a few lines of code. The Component Store is built right into Xamarin Studio and Xamarin’s Visual Studio extensions.

5.    Advantages of C#

 

C# is a simple, modern, general-purpose, type-safe, pure object-oriented programming language. Being object oriented from the get-go, it is more than just a modernized version of C++, allowing even simple data types to be treated as objects. The type-safety of C# helps prevent type errors that could result in flawed program behavior, without the need of boilerplate or verbose type annotations. Its simplified syntax also eliminates the use of pointers and headers, while namespace and reference operators are replaced by the period. Along with Microsoft’s .NET framework, developer needs are well taken care of making asynchronous programming a breeze. In short, C# is a great programming language for cross-platform development.

other advantage are :

1. Xamarin Designer for iOS:
   The Xamarin Designer for iOS is a powerful visual designer for iOS, allowing you to quickly lay out sophisticated UIs, intuitively add event handlers, take advantage of auto-layout, and see live previews of custom controls. No more gray boxes—you’ll see exactly what your app will look like, right on the design surface. Integrated into both Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio, we think we’ve created the world’s best UI designer for iOS.

2. Meet Xamarin.Forms:
   Xamarin.Forms is a new library that enables you to build native UIs for iOS, Android and Windows Phone from a single, shared C# codebase. It provides more than 40 cross-platform controls and layouts which are mapped to native controls at runtime, which means that your user interfaces are fully native. Delivered as a portable class library, Xamarin.Forms makes it easy to mix and match your shared UI code with the platform-specific user interface APIs Xamarin has always given you.

3. Major IDE enhancements

• Massive visual update – Xamarin Studio now includes a new welcome screen, hundreds of new icons, improved support for Retina displays, and some nice touches throughout the IDE.
• Streamlined Visual Studio support – We’ve enhanced and combined our iOS and Android extensions into a single Visual Studio extension, streamlining installation and updates for all users, and improving the build and debugging experience.
• NuGet – Xamarin 3 includes full support for using NuGet packages in your mobile apps – in Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio – enabling you to take advantage of the many NuGet packages which are are now shipping with Xamarin compatibility.
• .NET BCL Documentation – Full documentation for the .NET Base Class Libraries (BCL) is now integrated into Xamarin Studio courtesy of our friends at Microsoft.
• F# Support – Xamarin Studio now ships with built-in support for building iOS and Android apps using the increasingly-popular F# functional programming language.

4. Improved code sharing:
   Xamarin 3 introduces two great new code sharing techniques for cross-platform apps:

• Shared Projects
  Shared Projects provide a simple, clean approach to code sharing for cross-platform application developers. Xamarin developers can now use Shared Projects to share code across iOS, Android, and Windows in either Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio.
• Portable Class Libraries
  Portable Class Libraries are libraries that are consumable across a diverse range of .NET platforms. Xamarin 3 can both produce and consume PCLs from both Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio.

5. API integration:
   Xamarin binds the same APIs and UI controls that are used to build iOS, Android and Mac apps in their respective platform specific languages. For Windows development, Xamarin with Microsoft Visual Studio offers Windows Phone and Windows 8 applications. Code can be shared between iOS, Android and Windows using Portable Class Libraries (PCL) and appropriate application architecture.

Quick facts about Xamarin:

1. Mobile development platforms that span iOS, Android, and Windows without compromising the quality and performance as a rule expected from native apps development.
2. Xamarin is one of the most cost- and time-efficient tools used for building apps for different operating systems.
3. Instead of designing an app for each system separately, app developers can share about 75 % of developed code across all major mobile platforms which decreases cost and time-to-market.
4. Xamarin delivers high performance and excellent UX based on native API.
5. Ensure seamless integration Xamarin provides quality assurance and functionality testing on a wide range of devices.

Xamarin is gaining more attention everyday and with good reason. In a world where a variety of mobile platforms coexist, we need a toolset that allows us to support multiple platforms with minimal duplication of work. This is what we get with Xamarin.

When to choose Native(Android/IOS) Xamarin(Form/Native) Targeting only one platform Native makes sense Xamarin if you are planning to release on other platform soon enough Basic enterprise app (more than one platform) No need to waste resource Xamarin Form will be good choice(nearly 100% code sharing) Basic enterprise app (one platform) Native make sense if already have Native Developer Xamarin if C#/.NET developer is there Daily Average App (evenly distributed UI and Non UI code) If only one platform is targeted Xamarin Native will make sense with around 60-70% code sharing Heavy UI based App Native will be always better for best performance and community support in case of heavy customized UI based App Xamarin Native will also do but there will be less code sharing. But good thing is only C#/.NET   will enough

Conclusion

This and a lot more crowns Xamarin as the new king of cross-platform development. The rich features and the resulting benefits of Xamarin all point towards flawless cross-platform native applications. In addition to the above-mentioned five reasons, Xamarin boasts an ever-growing community of 700,000 plus developers who are continuously collaborating and enhancing the software.