CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xamarincross-platformxamarin.forms
shumana chowdhury
shumana chowdhury

Reputation: 1872

What are the key differences between working on Xamarin Form and working on Native mobile app developement?

I have been learning to work on Xamarin Form. However, passing hard time to figure out the key advantages of using Xamarin Form.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1470

Answers (2)

htxryan
htxryan

Reputation: 2961

Xamarin.Forms adds a layer of abstraction on top of Xamarin's native APIs.

Xamarin gives you access to the native API for each platform. But because Xamarin.Forms is an abstraction on top of those native APIs, the Xamarin.Forms API is, by definition, different from core Xamarin.

The key benefit to using Xamarin.Forms is sharing UI code. With vanilla Xamarin, your core application logic is shared across platforms, but your UI code is platform-specific. With Forms, you write your UI in genericized XAML, and Xamarin.Forms translates that to a native UI for you. In the end, for a simple application with no serious platform differences, you can achieve very close to 100% code sharing across the three Xamarin platforms (iOS, Android, Windows).

It is worth noting that though Xamarin.Forms gives you the power to not write a single line of platform-specific code, it also gives you the flexibility to write platform-specific code when needed. In practice, this means that in the areas that the Forms team has not yet provided a common abstraction for a native API feature, you can easily write it yourself.

Upvotes: 2

FredyWenger
FredyWenger

Reputation: 2325

Like Gerald wrote, there are huge differences between the developing environments.
I work with .forms since about 8 months now and are short before ship my app's (iOS, Android and Windows Phone) to the stores.
So the (very!) big advantage with .forms is, that I have ONE project with about 98% identical code and be able to release my app for all three platforms.
Actually, .forms is on the way to (soon) support also WP 8.1 and Windows (whereby Windows is a new platform what brings you additional benefits to work with .Forms).
As I have started, there were various bugs and disadvantages in .forms (as it is a very young platform). Especially with the latest releases it has become better and more stable (so that I can release my apps for production).
The problem is, that actually still some features are missing in the XF-implementation. The good is, that there are some add-ons out there (like XLabs) that you can use to extend the functionality and you also can implement your own platform code (especially to iOS and/or Android and/or Windows Phone).
So the (my) bottom line is:
With .forms you can save a lot of time to develop app's for multiplatform.
As you are on the way to learn XF already, I would go further with it.
Your further have the option to change to the platform-versions (Xamarin.ios / Xamarin.Android) if you should find insuperable obstacles...

Upvotes: 0

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