Free ebook: Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms, Preview Edition
The final version of this ebook is now available; download the final version here.
Greetings! To help celebrate the Xamarin Evolve conference, we’re happy to release a free ebook today: Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms, Preview Edition : Cross-platform C# programming for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, by Charles Petzold. This ebook was created jointly by Xamarin and Microsoft Press.
This Preview Edition ebook is about writing applications for Xamarin.Forms, the new mobile development platform for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone unveiled by Xamarin in May 2014. Xamarin.Forms lets you write shared user-interface code in C# and XAML (the eXtensible Application Markup Language) that maps to native controls on these three platforms.
This ebook is a Preview Edition because it's not complete. It has only six chapters. We anticipate that the final version of the book will have at least half a dozen additional chapters and that the chapters in this Preview Edition might be fleshed out, enhanced, or completely reconceived. The final edition of the book will probably be published in the spring of 2015.
Here’s an excerpt from the ebook’s Introduction, with greater detail:
Who should read this book
This ebook is for C# programmers who want to write applications for the three most popular mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and Windows Phone with a single code base. Xamarin.Forms also has applicability for those programmers who want eventually to use C# and the Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android libraries to target the native application programming interfaces (APIs) of these platforms. Xamarin.Forms can be a big help in getting started with these platforms or in constructing a prototype or proof-of-concept application.
This ebook assumes that you know C# and have some familiarity with the use of the .NET Framework. However, when discussing some C# and .NET features that might be somewhat new to recent C# programmers, the ebook adopts a somewhat slower pace. In particular, the introduction of the async keyword and await operator in Chapter 3 follows a discussion that shows how to do asynchronous programming using traditional callback methods.
Organization of this book
This book is intended as a tutorial to learn Xamarin.Forms programming. It is not a replacement for the online API documentation, which can be found here under the heading Xamarin.Forms Framework on this page: https://api.xamarin.com/.
This Preview Edition's Chapter 1 discusses Xamarin.Forms in the larger context of mobile development and the Xamarin platform and also covers the hardware and software configurations you'll need. Chapter 2 explores some of the basics of Xamarin.Forms programming, including the use of Label, Button, and StackLayout.
In Chapters 3 and 4, however, I tried to do something a little different: These chapters show the progressive step-by-step development of a small Xamarin.Forms application. Despite the simplicity of this program, it is in many ways a "real" application, and requires essential real-app facilities such as file I/O and application lifecycle handling, both of which turned out to be somewhat more challenging than I originally anticipated. I'm curious to hear whether these two chapters "work" or not. See the section below on submitting feedback to us.
Chapters 5 and 6 return to more conventional API tutorials. My biggest regret is that I wasn't able to get some coverage of XAML into this Preview Edition. However, the Xamarin website has some additional resources for learning Xamarin.Forms including a six-part "XAML for Xamarin.Forms" document: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/xamarin-forms/.
Enjoy!
Comments
Anonymous
October 05, 2014
Thanks a lot ! Will read it asap :)Anonymous
October 07, 2014
Sweet! Thanks!Anonymous
October 07, 2014
Thanks again MicrosoftAnonymous
October 07, 2014
Excellent, seems like worth reading. I am happy that Microsoft has something which is catering successfully with all prevailing mobile OSes.Anonymous
October 07, 2014
Thanks! This is my free book recommendation for next week's DevList: www.dev-list.com/.../110Anonymous
October 09, 2014
it is difficult to configure Xamarin over win 8.1, let me see how the author describe the configuration and installation chapter !Anonymous
October 13, 2014
Thank you MS for providing these free eBooks.Anonymous
October 13, 2014
Thanks!Anonymous
October 16, 2014
Thanks a lot for publishing book.....(free)Anonymous
October 22, 2014
Just in time :) I'm having a talk about xamarin forms next week, this was just what I needed, thnx MS ;)Anonymous
October 22, 2014
Thanks for recommending so many books...Anonymous
October 23, 2014
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 26, 2014
Thank you so much. It's so interesting just by a first glance. ;)Anonymous
October 27, 2014
no epub love?Anonymous
October 27, 2014
@An phu - yes, epub will be coming soon. It's not ready yet.Anonymous
October 27, 2014
Nice book, but i want the rest of the chapters now! :(Anonymous
October 27, 2014
Thank you MS for providing these free eBooks.Anonymous
October 28, 2014
Thanks a lotAnonymous
November 07, 2014
I saw this just a few days ago in #TechEdIndia 2014 and it was just what I wanted. Thanks a lot. Thank you #Xamarin.Anonymous
November 17, 2014
Thank you so much for sharing such a great book for best cross platform C# programmers. please also read about corona sdk clik here : www.sptechnolab.com/.../corona-app-development.htmlAnonymous
January 03, 2015
would be great if other languages were added too, lets say for instance,java and C++ because now this means that i'll have to learn C# to code apps in my case.Anonymous
January 08, 2015
Hi i have some problem in dowmloading would you send to my mailAnonymous
September 14, 2015
good you will always be aweasomeAnonymous
October 16, 2015
how to download this bookAnonymous
October 16, 2015
ubii: You can download the latest edition of this book here: www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ebooksAnonymous
May 04, 2016
HoorayAnonymous
September 10, 2016
I required DS-60 a few weeks ago and was made aware of an online service that hosts an online forms library . If you are searching for DS-60 too , here's ahttp://goo.gl/XbfKwc