Overall Satisfaction with Xamarin
Xamarin is used in my organization to create mobile and web applications that can share the same common logic. This is great for building cross-platform applications for any organization that needs it.
Xamarin is mainly used in the development team as it does require technical knowledge of building software. You can use it to solve many different business problems through applications built on the Xamarin platform.
Xamarin is mainly used in the development team as it does require technical knowledge of building software. You can use it to solve many different business problems through applications built on the Xamarin platform.
- Layouts that can be bind to
- Great community that can provide plenty of code samples and exchanges of ideas
- Provide the ability to share code between various platform such as mobile - Android, iOS, Windows, and web
- Similarly to Silverlight or WinForms, if Xamarin had the ability to drag and drop in the Designer, it would be great.
- The ability to auto translate some of the common native calls from different platform would also be amazing to see.
- Also more help syntax auto resolving abilities is needed. I had to spend a lot of time resolving errors when importing an open source project to try out.
- Allows teams to program cross platform environment using skill sets they may already have with C#. No need to learn a brand new language.
- Using Xamarin will simplify support and maintenance for your team.
- Allows codes to be shared across platform, saving time and money.
Android Studio and IOS SDK are some of the competing programming methods for mobile development that competes with Xamarin. However, these utilize other programming languages like Java, or Objective C. In addition, these methods may be used more directly with Android or IOS programming and are not cross-platform compatible. Meaning, you have to develop different codes/programs for each different platform such as web and desktop apps, etc.
Using Xamarin
2 - Xamarin is great for create applications which are cross-platform. That means your C# programmers can create mobile applications, web applications, and desktop applications using Xamarin without having to learn multiple programming languages to achieve this. Xamarin supports the C# programming language and codes built on it can be re-used across multiple platforms, making it easy to support and maintain.
1 - C# programming language is key to using Xamarin as it uses that as the language to write code. Any bugs that is reported is sent to the development team to analyze, troubleshoot, and fixed. You can start by having one programmer on it and add more as needed to support the growing projects.
- Build Android applications using C#
- Build IOS Applications using C#
- Build Web Applications using C#
- Build Desktop Applications using C#
- Build Tablet supported applications using C#
- barcode scanning
- check-in application
- Future projects includes a check-in application that supports tablets and web
- possible projects includes bar-code scanners to use used in the warehouse for inventory tracking
Evaluating Xamarin and Competitors
Not Sure
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Third-party Reviews
The single most important factor that got the company to using Xamarin as appose to other mobile application's native programming languages to create application is that it supports C#. We are a .net shop and therefore our programmers are expert in this language. They can learn other programming languages to create mobile applications, however, it is most cost effective and most efficient to utilize the core C# language using Xamarin to accomplish the task.
If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't change anything. I think we made the right choice by going with Xamarin and able to push out solid products for the organization to use. In addition, everyone involved on our development team can support it since it uses a language everyone is familiar with.
Xamarin Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was minimal - There were no real change management needed in our case since the applications we build on Xamarin had been small programs with single or few uses. However, because we were able to build mobile applications using C#, we were able to get it going internally fairly quickly and our programmers were able to learn it in a short amount of time.
- errors in the XAML
- lots of research to know how to resolve some of the errors
Xamarin Support
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
None | None |
I never had to contact support for any help. Most of the problems we ran in, we were able to identify and use peer support through blogs and other internet sources to resolve the problems we ran into. There are plenty of sources online which provides tutorials, discuss problems, etc. Example: StackOverflow
Using Xamarin
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Well integrated Convenient Feel confident using | Requires technical support Slow to learn Lots to learn |
- You can write C# code that translate into core native instructions for mobile applications
- the Xaml front end works the same way across platforms
- Have to watch tutorials to know how to get started
- No drag and drop features to help create UI quickly
- Some of the errors from the XAML were not very obvious to help with troubleshooting
Yes - The mobile interface worked surprisingly well. UI built with Xamarin uses XAML and, like bootstrap is responsive to different screen sizes. The platform also supports for camera calls and other hooks into the mobile hardware to control various functions. Just as any mobile applications, you need to set the proper permission requests in order to gain access to these features.