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Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android
Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 31, 2015
I really liked how the book started out with an introduction to the Android platform and some technical insight into the architecture of Xamarin.Android and its integration with the platform. It gave me a nice foundation to build upon during the remainder of the book. The author decided to organize the chapters around a single application, building it from start to finish, while gradually incorporating new features. I found this approach engaging and easy to follow by building that same application while reading.
For a book targeting existing C# developers, it started a bit too slow in my opinion, spending too much time on the basics if IDE. Even though Xamarin Studio is being used, it is similar enough to Visual Studio and shouldn’t require much attention. Once that was out of the way, the chapters nicely focused on individual Android specifics, such as building the UI, handling the navigation and working with sensors. These subjects are what .NET developers really need to transition to the new platform and the book does a good job at it. The book concludes with some basics about application deployment; again very useful for those, not already familiar with the platform.
There were a couple of topics I missed in the book. In particular more information about testing the applications on actual devices and some guidance on how to best take advantage of existing resources for Java Android development when working in Xamarin. It would also be very useful to include some recommended development practices for reusing code between platforms and handling Android specifics.
Nevertheless the book is a great first step into the world of Xamarin.Android for a seasoned .NET C# developer with no previous development experience on Android. It’s definitely enough to get you started and makes it much easier to decide whether this is the right way to build Android applications or not. It certainly convinced me to use Xamarin.Android for my first Android application.
For a book targeting existing C# developers, it started a bit too slow in my opinion, spending too much time on the basics if IDE. Even though Xamarin Studio is being used, it is similar enough to Visual Studio and shouldn’t require much attention. Once that was out of the way, the chapters nicely focused on individual Android specifics, such as building the UI, handling the navigation and working with sensors. These subjects are what .NET developers really need to transition to the new platform and the book does a good job at it. The book concludes with some basics about application deployment; again very useful for those, not already familiar with the platform.
There were a couple of topics I missed in the book. In particular more information about testing the applications on actual devices and some guidance on how to best take advantage of existing resources for Java Android development when working in Xamarin. It would also be very useful to include some recommended development practices for reusing code between platforms and handling Android specifics.
Nevertheless the book is a great first step into the world of Xamarin.Android for a seasoned .NET C# developer with no previous development experience on Android. It’s definitely enough to get you started and makes it much easier to decide whether this is the right way to build Android applications or not. It certainly convinced me to use Xamarin.Android for my first Android application.
August 11, 2016
The book is a nice way to get started with Android development on Xamarin platform. It provides concise overview of the Android platform and has clear instructions for setting up development environment. It also goes through building a small application so the readers build a simple but working application.
However, the book omits too many important concepts in order to qualify for a good book. The most important one is fragments. In order to build even a simplest app you need to have a good understanding of fragments. Fragments are also required for building tablet optimized apps.
The book also gives a bad advice for using configChanges which as explained at http://stackoverflow.com/a/7990543/23... is a bad thing to do in most of cases. Instead the correct approach is to use Fragments and retain an instance.
All in all the book provides a very general overview of Android development and if you are serious about building Android apps (either with Xamarin or other platform) you should also read another book for a better understanding of Android platform.
However, the book omits too many important concepts in order to qualify for a good book. The most important one is fragments. In order to build even a simplest app you need to have a good understanding of fragments. Fragments are also required for building tablet optimized apps.
The book also gives a bad advice for using configChanges which as explained at http://stackoverflow.com/a/7990543/23... is a bad thing to do in most of cases. Instead the correct approach is to use Fragments and retain an instance.
All in all the book provides a very general overview of Android development and if you are serious about building Android apps (either with Xamarin or other platform) you should also read another book for a better understanding of Android platform.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews