xamarin-forms-book-samples

Sample code for Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms. The book can be downloaded from http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/xamarin-forms/creating-mobile-apps-xamarin-forms/.

Notes

Loading the NuGet Packages

The Xamarin.Forms NuGet packages are not part of these projects. They must be downloaded for each project.

To avoid hassles, download the NuGet packages for the solutions in the Libraries directory first. You'll want to load each library solutions into Visual Studio, right-click the solution name in the Solution List and select Manage NuGet Packages for Solution. A notice should appear at the top of the Manage NuGet Packages dialog that says "Some NuGet packages are missing from this solution. Click to restore from you online package sources." Click the Restore button and then the Close button. Build the library.

Do the same thing with the other library solutions in the Libraries directory.

You can then load any of the application projects. For each project, again right-click the solution name, select Manage NuGet Packages for Solution and go through the same process.

The Projects

These solutions contain five application projects:

iOS: iPhone and iPads
Droid: Android phones and tablets
UWP: The Universal Windows Platform, targeting Windows 10 tablets and desktop computers, and Windows 10 Mobile
Windows: Windows 8.1 tablets and desktop computers using the Windows Runtime API
WinPhone: Windows Phone 8.1 devices using the Windows Phone API.

You can deploy the UWP project to devices or emulators. However, you must select the correct platform for the deployment target. You generally do this by selecting a platform for the solution in the Solution Platform dropdown on the Standard toolbar. Or, you can invoke the Configuration Manager dialog form the Build | Configuration Manager menu item, and select an item from the Active solution platform dropdown at the top right.

The six possible Solution Platform options are listed below. Each is associated with a particular platform for the UWP project. This platform refers to processor architectures:

Any CPU: UWP platform is x86
ARM: UWP platform is ARM
iPhone: UWP platform is x86
iPhone Simulator: UWP platform is x86
x86: UWP platform is x86
x64: UWP platform is x64

These reflect the only three possibilities for the UWP project. As you can see, x86 (32-bit Intel architecture) is considered to be the default.

Currently, you can deploy the UWP project in several different ways based on a selection in the dropdown on the Standard toolbar.

Select Local Machine to deploy directly to the Windows 10 desktop. The UWP platform must be x86 or x64.
Select Simulator to deploy to a Windows 10 simulator window. The UWP platform must be x86.
Select one of the items beginning with the words Mobile Emulator 10.0 to deploy to a Windows 10 Mobile emulator. The UWP platform must be x86.
Select Device to deploy to a Windows 10 Mobile device. The UWP platform must be ARM.

Android AppCompat and Material Design

The appcompat branch of the sample code repository contains Android projects that have been modified to use AppCompat and Material Design. The modification is the same as that described in the article Adding AppCompat and Material Design. The two F# samples in Chapter 2 do not build in this branch. These are the only two samples that contain F# startup code.

Version upgrades

As of August 12, 2016, all sample code has been upgraded to Xamarin.Forms version 2.3.1.114.