Preface

Microsoft released .NET Framework in February 2002 for Windows platform. The Mono Project was released in June 2004, and it brought .NET to Linux and Mac OS. In 2 years, the Mono Project creators saw a potential in C# and .NET, but they progressed slowly and in 2011, the Mono Project version 1.1 was released.

The Mono Project evolved in time and transformed into a huge cross-platform framework, changing its name to Xamarin.

In February 2016, Microsoft announced that it had acquired Xamarin, and later it was made free and open source.

At the time of writing, Microsoft is the biggest company investing in cross-platform development and helping developers to build applications easily.

Xamarin has several components that develop, build, and package projects in order to publish them on stores. A few such examples are Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Forms. Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS solutions are targeting individual platforms such as Android and iOS. On the other hand, Xamarin.Forms targets all platforms in one solution.

In this book, you'll learn how to use Xamarin.Forms to develop cross-platform applications with different page types, layouts, views, and design patterns by using them.