It\u2019s impossible to ignore Xamarin when talking about the key approaches to mobile application development. Xamarin is a tool used for cross-platform mobile app development that allows engineers to share up to 90 percent of code across major platforms.\n"}},"@type":"Question","name":"Which language is used in Xamarin?","acceptedAnswer":"@type":"Answer","text":"C# language. Xamarin uses a single language, C#, to create apps for all mobile platforms. Unlike interpreted solutions, such as Appcelerator Titanium, Xamarin is natively compiled, which makes it a go-to option for building high-performance apps with native look and feel.\n"] } Email: solutions@altexsoft.com
When considering iOS or Android app development, most of us think about Objective-C vs Swift, and Java first of all. Being considered native tech stacks, they are naturally most often used mobile development tools when it comes to iOS and Android app development. However, there are more ways to build performant and user-friendly mobile apps. And Xamarin is one of them. In this article, we conduct an in-depth Xamarin review and compare it to native and cross-platform mobile development solutions on the market. If you know the basics, consider skipping to the sections you are interested in.
Xamarin Cross Platform Development Cookbook download 13
The platform was built by the developers behind Mono, an open source development platform based on the .NET Framework, led by Miguel de Icaza and first introduced in 2001. The Xamarin company was founded on May 16, 2011.
However, unlike its predecessor, Xamarin was created as a commercial project until the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. Xamarin became a popular cross-platform product for developing mobile apps within the Microsoft ecosystem. This acquisition broke the financial barrier for using Xamarin. As Microsoft made Xamarin SDK open-source, it became part of Xamarin Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (we discuss best IDEs to use for Xamarin development below). What are the main features of Xamarin?
Technically speaking, Xamarin uses C# and native libraries wrapped in the .Net layer for cross-platform app development. Such applications are often compared to native for both iOS and Android mobile development platforms in terms of performance and user experience. Additionally, Xamarin can leverage all native and the latest API access to utilize underlying platform capabilities in Xamarin apps such as ARKit on iOS or Android Multi-Window.
While the code related to business logic, database access, and network communication can be shared across all platforms, Xamarin allows you to create a platform-specific UI code layer. Thus, Xamarin cross-platform apps look 100% native on any device, providing a better user experience, as compared to generic hybrid apps.
Platform-specific code bindings. In most cases engineers will be able to handle development keeping the native look and feel of the respective platforms within the Xamarin environment. However, Xamarin allows you to call existing platform code (e.g. Swift for iOS) if you must reuse some modules or realize some platform-specific functions like barcode scanning, PayPal or Google Analytics integration.
Xamarin uses C# complemented with .Net framework to create apps for any mobile platform. Thus, you can share an average of 80-90 percent of the code across platforms speeding up the engineering cycle. Xamarin also does not require switching between the development environments: You can build all of your Xamarin apps in Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code. The cross-platform development tools are provided as a built-in part of the IDE at no additional cost.
With Xamarin, your solution gets native-level app functionality. It eliminates all hardware compatibility issues, using plugins and specific APIs, to work with common devices functionality across the platforms. Along with the access to platform-specific APIs, Xamarin supports linking with native libraries. This allows for better customization and native-level functionality with little overhead.
Due to its cross-platform application, Xamarin makes maintenance and updates easier. You can simply deploy the changes or updates to the source file and they will be applied to both iOS and Android apps. Thus, it helps you save time and money while keeping your apps up to date.
Native development makes extensive use of open source technologies. With Xamarin, you have to use the elements provided by the platform and some .NET open source resources, facing both developers and consumers. While the choice is not quite as rich as it is for Android and iOS mobile app development, you can use NuGet Packages that now contain everything that was in the retired Xamarin Components.
Although Xamarin is a free open-source platform for individual developers, the framework may cost a pretty penny for enterprise needs. You will spend a lot to purchase a license for Visual Studio. For instance, Visual Studio Professional with the core set of development tools costs $1,199 for the first year and $799 for renewal. At the same time, a Visual Studio Enterprise, which enables experimenting with additional tools, will cost $5,999 for the first year and $2,569 for renewal. The features for both we cover below.
In May 2020, the annual Microsoft Build conference was held. Among other news, it was announced that Xamarin.Forms is going to merge with .NET and evolve into a new cross-platform framework called .NET Multi-platform App UI, or MAUI. MAUI is going to have all native UI and provide access to all native APIs.
As more cross-platform frameworks emerge and develop, it becomes harder for Xamarin to keep its position in the market. Today, a number of frameworks have already outpaced Xamarin in terms of popularity and performance. React Native was voted the top choice of 2020, closely followed by Flutter.
Every cross-platform app framework features different functionality and structure. To get a better picture, check our comparison articles: Xamarin vs Flutter and Xamarin vs React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript. The latter, for instance, despite being less popular, would be especially valuable for those developers who use Angular framework as they are closely interconnected.
When comparing the pros and cons, the listed drawbacks are usually considered to be a collateral damage. Most business owners choose Xamarin mobile app development platform as it decreases the time to market and engineering cost, by sharing the code and using a single technology stack. Yet the purpose of the app and its target audience might be an even more important factor to consider.
In case of consumer-facing apps with heavy UI, the amount of shared code decreases drastically. Thus, Xamarin cross-platform development loses its major benefit and might equal in time and cost to native solutions.
Thanks for your insight, Jan. We appreciate you complementing our post with the details of your experience with Xamarin. Many of your points, such as time spent debugging, the convenience of using Google/Apple tutorials and observation on low performance are definitely very valuable when it comes to native vs cross-platform discourse.
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Today, it is a top-rated cross-platform product for developing mobile apps within the Microsoft ecosystem. Moreover, it is based on the Microsoft technology stack and has a growing community of over 1.4 million developers.
Xamarin is typically used for sharing code and business logic across diverse platforms. Plus, developers can use it for writing cross-platform applications in C# with Visual Studio. Moreover, the platform allows developers to share up to 95 percent of code across platforms.
React Native (aka RN) is an open-source, cross-platform mobile app development framework created by Facebook in 2015. The platform enables developers to use JavaScript and React along with native platform capabilities to curate mobile apps.
React Native is used for writing mobile apps with the performance and look and feel of a native application. The RN team has powerful developer tools, so working with robust tools is a natural part of the development experience. For those looking for a positive impact on the product release cycle, RN is the go-to platform.
If developers want to transfer the application to a cross-platform solution, the existing application can be rewritten in small steps. The approach reduces errors and allows a faster release of the new application. 2ff7e9595c
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