Xamarin is the only framework that gives you the ability to create native apps with full API access and native UI using a single programming language, sharing most of your code between iOS and Android. No web pages masquerading as native apps, no custom rendered UI, no JavaScript – just native apps built with a native API wrapper and native tooling.

In this session we take a look at Xamarin. We start out with looking at Xamarin Classic, looking the wrappers around the native APIs using Storyboards and Android Layout files, showing how to build an app that runs on both platforms with shared business logic. Then we move onto what is one of the most exciting parts of Xamarin – Xamarin Forms. Xamarin Forms started life as an abstraction layer for apps and UIs, allowing you to define your UI once and share it on iOS and Android, still using native controls but coding your UI layer once. Over time Xamarin Forms has grown due to the ease at which it can be ported over to different platforms. It now supports iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Tizen TVs and even Linux! You can build an app once and run it on the widest range of platforms possible, and we’ll see this in action with a live coding demo of a Forms app that will be run on most of these platforms.