Level: Introductory to Intermediate
Learn how you can build Mobile Apps using the Xamarin toolset
So you need to build a mobile app but have been a C# developer for a long time. What are your options? Should you build a mobile app using the web approach with HTML and Java Script? Or do you need to learn objective C for iOS, or perhaps Java to build an Android app? Do you need to learn all those different languages and frameworks to build mobile apps or are there other options as a C# developer?
Fortunately there are! The option that stands out for you as a C# developer is the option to build Native apps using C#. This is possible by using Visual Studio and the toolset from Xamarin, a company that has been behind the Mono .NET implementation that enables .NET on Linux. With the hype around mobile app development, Xamarin developed a powerful toolset that now enables .NET developers to build native apps in C#. Xamarin makes this happen by providing a language projection of the native platform libraries (android or iOS) to C# and an implementation of the .NET framework that runs on that device. This enables you to write full .NET apps with the native libraries plus the power of C# and the .NET framework. You can now leverage language constructs as async/await, LINQ and libraries as WCF and the Base class libraries and combine that with the native mobile libraries available on the platforms.
In this session I will show you how you can build Mobile Apps using the Xamarin toolset. I will show you the basics of App development for the different app stacks and build a simple application to prove the concepts and the way you can bridge platform differences and share code across the different platforms.
After attending this session you will have a good understanding of what the Xamarin toolset can offer and will be able to start building your own first simple project. I will show you basic mobile application platform concepts like using the GPS sensor and show you how you can abstract the platform differences in such a way that you can share most of your code between the different platforms. In this session I will also incorporate the windows platform, so you know how to target all major platform players in this space.