The Xamarin Studio IDE

Xamarin Studio's Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is similar to other IDEs you might have used in terms of functionality and layout. When you open a project, you will see many familiar components. As seen in the following screenshot, the editor window makes up a bulk of the IDE. This is where you will write and edit your code files, set breakpoints for debugging, and stare endlessly for hours asking yourself why you decided to become a software engineer instead of listening to your mother.

On the left-hand side (by default) the Solution pad serves the same purpose as the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio or the Project Navigator in Xcode. This tool displays your files and project architecture, and provides the visual context for the source control object status. At the top of the IDE is the information window. When you build and run your app, this window will display the build's status and any errors or warnings that are encountered.

Various other tool pads and context windows exist or will appear based on the state of your workflow. These will be discussed in detail later in this chapter. For the most part, each of these units of the Xamarin Studio IDE functions exactly as they would in any other IDE. Before we delve into exploring each component in detail, it will help to have a working environment to poke around in, so let's build a pair of quick and dirty applications for this purpose.