Xamarin Forms Development

What is Xamarin?

Xamarin was a Microsoft framework that enabled developers to build cross platform mobile applications for iOS, Android and Windows using a single codebase. Designed to streamline mobile development, Xamarin allowed developers to share core business logic across platforms whilst still accessing native APIs and performance. It offered two main approaches - Xamarin.Native for platform specific UI development and Xamarin.Forms for shared user interfaces. Although Xamarin has now been succeeded by .NET MAUI, it played a foundational role in bringing cross platform development into the .NET ecosystem.

What Are Xamarin.Forms?

Xamarin.Forms allowed developers to build applications for Android, iOS and Windows using a single shared C# / XAML codebase - including the user interface. Whilst it significantly reduced development time and effort by allowing for shared UI code, it has now been officially retired by Microsoft (we miss you Xamarin.Forms!) and replaced by .NET MAUI which offers similar capabilities with a more modern architecture and wider platform support.Is Xamarin.Native Cross Platform?

What is Xamarin.Native?

With Xamarin.Native, the user interface was written separately for each platform using their respective native tools such as UIKit for iOS and Android.Views for Android, whilst the core business logic was shared in C#. This approach provideded full control over the app’s look and feel on each platform and allowed developers access to all native APIs and features whilst still maintaining efficiency through shared backend code.

Use Cases

1. Code Reusability: One of the core benefits of using Xamarin was that developers could reuse a significant chunk of their codebase across different platforms which helped to reduce the development time and effort required, thus, reducing costs.

2. Access to Native APIs: Xamarin allowed access to native APIs and platform specific features and functionality. This meant developers were able to integrate with functionality specific to an individual device without loosing access to the many advantages of cross platform development.

3. Visual Studio Integration: Because they were both part of the same technology family, Xamarin integrated very well with Microsoft Visual Studio. This was advantageous for developers who were already using this IDE. Essentially it provided the developer with a familiar environment to build, test and remove bugs in their mobile apps.

4. Development for Wearables and IoT devices: Xamarin wass not limited to building apps for smartphones and tablets. It was also used to create applications for wearable devices such as Fitbits and Apple watches as well as for IoT devices.

5. Community and Support: Xamarin still has a significant ecosystem of tools and libraries with an engaged, global community although this is now shrinking as you would expect with a technology that is no longer supported.

How Can We Help?

Here at Cool Code Company, we have extensive experience in building applications in Xamarin and more recently, migrating them to alternative platforms. We can help you maintain your existing Xamarin apps to keep them running smoothly and securely or, if you’re ready to move on, we can help migrate your projects to more modern platforms that are still supported including .NET MAUI. Our focus is on making the transition simple, minimising downtime and keeping costs under control.

Your questions answered on Xamarin

Q) What is Xamarin used for?

A) Xamarin is predominantly used for cross-platform mobile application development. It allows developers to create mobile apps that can run across multiple platforms including Android, iOS and Windows all using a single piece of code.

Q) Is Xamarin Hybrid or Native

A) Xamarin is primarily used for native development however, it does provide some hybrid functionality when developers use Xamarin Forms to create a shared User Interface.

Q) What is the Microsoft replacement for Xamarin?

A) Xamarin has been replaced with MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) meaning, MAUI is generally a good choice for mobile application development in C# although there are other alternatives to consider as well.

Q) Can I use Xamarin without Visual studio?

A) Yes, a popular alternative is JetBrains Xamarin SDK. This is a customised build of Xamarin GitHub sources with some tweaks, improvements and additional code.

Further Reading

Xamarin Discontinued: What This Means for App Developers