Xamarin Mobile Application Development: Cross-Platform C# and Xamarin.Forms Fundamentals

by Dan Hermes

Mono Project that brought .NET to Linux, the Xamarin platform is a port of .NET to the iOS and Android operating systems with support for

Underlying Xamarin.Android is Mono for Android, and beneath Xamarin.iOS is MonoTouch.

However, iOS developers still frequently use the Xcode Interface Builder, and Android developers (less frequently) use XML editors such as the Android Development Tools (ADT) plug-in for Eclipse.

Some Xamarin developers are opting to code UIs by hand in C# for all platforms with no designer use whatsoever.

platform-specific code requiring a separate UI project for each platform with little code reusability.

Most of the components running in a mobile business application are there to support the visible user interface.

Xamarin.Forms applications are inherently cross-platform, running on all three major platforms using the same code base.