Xamarin Studio For Mac

Posted : admin | On 13-05-2021

Xamarin Studio automatically checks for updates of Nuget packages added to project and shows it in the solution explorer, The default template of Xamarin Forms project will create ‘App’ class in the file named after the project.

Xamarin is a cross-platform technology that makes it possible to build native mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone using C# and a shared codebase. Like its younger siblings NativeScript and React Native, it allows development teams to build mobile applications using the skills they already have, and spend less time writing code for each platform.

If you haven’t tried Xamarin yet, now is a great time to get started! Earlier this year, Microsoft bought Xamarin and made it free (and open-source). You can build Xamarin projects on Windows (using Visual Studio), or Mac/Linux (using Xamarin Studio).

I’m excited to dig into Xamarin because mobile apps need authentication and authorization, which Stormpath makes easy. We already have rich SDKs for .NET and ASP.NET, as well as SDKs for iOS and Android separately, but a Xamarin-specific SDK could provide even more value and make it super simple to secure your apps. It’s something I’m currently digging into, so stay tuned!

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use Visual Studio and Xamarin to build a basic app for iOS and Android — even if you’ve never done any app development before!

Setting Up Visual Studio and Xamarin

If you don’t have Visual Studio 2015 installed, download the free Community Edition from Microsoft. If you already have Visual Studio, make sure you have the latest update (Update 3 at the time of writing).

You’ll also need to install some optional components for Visual Studio. If you’re setting up Visual Studio from scratch, make sure these items are selected:

C#/.NET (Xamarin 4.1.1)

Visual Studio Emulator for Android

If you have an existing installation, you can verify that these components are installed by opening the Control Panel, choosing Uninstall or change a program, and selecting Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. Follow the installation wizard to make sure the above items (at a minimum) are checked.

Once you have the tools set up, you’re ready to create a Xamarin project!

Xamarin vs. Xamarin.Forms

The Xamarin SDK provides bindings to the platform-specific APIs on each mobile platform, so you can call Android or iOS APIs from C# code. This allows you to build native apps using C#, but you still need to design the UI separately for each platform.

Xamarin.Forms is an additional layer on top of the Xamarin SDK that makes it possible to build your UI once (in XAML markup) and let Xamarin do the hard work of translating it into the appropriate UI elements on the target platform. You can drop down to the Xamarin SDK level and interact with the platform APIs if you need to.

Should you use “raw” Xamarin, or Xamarin.Forms? It depends on what you are building:

If you’re building an app that needs little platform-specific functionality or custom UI, go with Xamarin.Forms. This is a good choice for straightforward readonly='><?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><ContentPage xmlns='http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms' xmlns:x='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml' x:Class='HelloWorldApp.HelloWorldPage'> <ContentPage.Padding> <OnPlatform x:TypeArguments='Thickness' iOS='20, 40, 20, 20' Android='20, 20, 20, 20' WinPhone='20, 20, 20, 20' /> </ContentPage.Padding> <ContentPage.Content> <StackLayout VerticalOptions='FillAndExpand' HorizontalOptions='FillAndExpand' Orientation='Vertical' Spacing='15'> <Label Text='Enter your name:' /> <Entry x:Name='NameEntry' Text='Jane Doe' /> <Button x:Name='SayHelloButton' Text='Say Hello' Clicked='SayHelloButton_OnClicked' /> </StackLayout> </ContentPage.Content></ContentPage>

<ContentPage xmlns='http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms'

xmlns:x='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml'

<ContentPage.Padding>

iOS='20, 40, 20, 20'

WinPhone='20, 20, 20, 20'/>

<ContentPage.Content>

HorizontalOptions='FillAndExpand'

Spacing='15'>

<Entryx:Name='NameEntry'Text='Jane Doe'/>

<Buttonx:Name='SayHelloButton'Text='Say Hello'Clicked='SayHelloButton_OnClicked'/>

</ContentPage.Content>

This XAML code creates a basic layout containing Label, Entry (text box), and Button controls. The control names (specified with x:Name) will be used to refer to the controls in code.

The Clicked= attribute on the Button element wires up the button click event to a handler called SayHelloButton_OnClicked, which doesn’t exist yet (but it’s about to!)

Open up the code-behind for the XAML file by expanding it in the Solution Explorer and double-clicking on the HelloWorldPage.xaml.cs file.

Replace the generated C# code with the following:

</div><table><tbody><tr><td><div><div>2</div><div>4</div><div>6</div><div>8</div><div>10</div><div>12</div><div>14</div><div>16</div><div>18</div><div>20</div></div></td><td><div><div><span>using </span><span>Xamarin</span><span>.</span><span>Forms</span><span>;</span></div><div><span>namespace</span><span>HelloWorldApp</span></div><div><span>public</span><span>partial </span><span>class</span><span>HelloWorldPage</span><span>:</span><span>ContentPage</span></div><div><span>public</span><span>HelloWorldPage</span><span>(</span><span>)</span></div><div><span>InitializeComponent</span><span>(</span><span>)</span><span>;</span></div><div><span>private</span><span>async </span><span>void</span><span>SayHelloButton_OnClicked</span><span>(</span><span>object</span><span>sender</span><span>,</span><span>EventArgs</span><span>e</span><span>)</span></div><div><span>var</span><span>name</span><span>=</span><span>NameEntry</span><span>.</span><span>Text</span><span>;</span></div><div><span>await </span><span>DisplayAlert</span><span>(</span><span>'Greeting'</span><span>,</span><span>$</span><span>'Hello {name}!'</span><span>,</span><span>'Howdy'</span><span>)</span><span>;</span></div><div><span>}</span></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Looks familiar, doesn’t it? The <code>SayHelloButton_OnClicked</code> method will run when the <code>SayHelloButton</code> is clicked on the XAML page. First, the value of the textbox is assigned to the <code>name</code> variable, and then the <code>DisplayName</code> method is called to display a modal popup on the device.</p><p>There’s one more thing to do before you’re done: telling the app to use the new page. In <code>App.cs</code>, replace the constructor method with this:</p><table><tbody><tr><td><div><div>2</div><div>4</div></div></td><td><div><div><span>{</span></div><div><span>}</span></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>That’s it! Your new Xamarin app is ready to go.</p><h2>Testing Your Xamarin App on Android</h2><p>If you have the Visual Studio Android Emulator installed, testing the Android version of your Xamarin app is simple. In the Visual Studio toolbar, pick the <strong>HelloWorldApp.Droid</strong> project and choose an Android device to emulate. Then, click the green Play button to start the emulator.</p><p>The Android emulator can be slow to load, so give it some time. If everything builds properly, you should see your app running on Android.</p><h2>Testing Your Xamarin App on iOS</h2><p>Testing your Xamarin app on iOS is a little trickier, because it requires a Mac to provide the emulator. If you have a Mac handy, follow the official instructions to set up the Mac agent and connect it to Visual Studio. Then, pick the <strong>HelloWorld.iOS</strong> project, and switch the architecture to <strong>iPhone Simulator</strong>. Choose a device version and click Play.</p><p>After the project builds, the simulator will launch on the Mac.</p><h2>Next steps</h2><p>This tutorial only scratches the surface. There’s plenty more you can do with Xamarin! Here’s some further reading:</p><p>If you’ve built something cool with Xamarin, let me know in the comments or on Twitter @nbarbettini!</p><p>As a .NET developer, I’ve spent most of my time coding on Windows machines. It’s only logical: Visual Studio is the richest development experience for building C# and VB.NET applications, and it only runs on Windows…right?</p><p>When I joined Stormpath to work on our open-source .NET authentication library, I was handed a MacBook Pro and given an interesting challenge: can a Mac be an awesome .NET development platform?</p><p>To my surprise, the answer is yes! I’ll share how I turned a MacBook Pro into the ultimate Visual Studio development machine.</p><h2>How to Run Visual Studio on a Mac</h2><h2>Download Xamarin Studio For Mac</h2><p>Visual Studio doesn’t run natively on OS X, so my first step was to get Windows running on my MacBook Pro. (If you want an editor that <em>does</em> run natively, Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio Code might fit the bill).</p><img src='https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/mac/media/intro-image31.png' alt='Studio' title='Studio' /><p>There are multiple options for running Windows on a Mac. Every Mac comes with Apple’s Boot Camp software, which helps you install Windows into a separate partition. To switch between OSes, you need to restart.</p><p>Parallels is a different animal: it runs Windows (or another guest OS) inside a virtual machine. This is convenient because you don’t have to restart your computer to switch over to Windows. Instead, Windows runs in an OS X application window.</p><p>I found that a <strong>combination</strong> of both worked best for me. I installed Windows into a Boot Camp partition first, and then turned that partition into an active Parallels virtual machine. This way, I have the option of using Windows in the virtual machine, <strong>or</strong> restarting to run Windows natively at full speed.</p><p>I was initially skeptical of the performance of a heavy application like Visual Studio running in a virtual machine. The option to restart to Windows via Boot Camp gave me a fallback in case Visual Studio was sluggish.</p><p>There are some minor disadvantages to this method: you can’t pause the virtual machine or save it to a snapshot. A non-Boot Camp virtual machine doesn’t have these limitations. This guide will work regardless of what type of virtual machine you create.</p><p>After three months of serious use, and some tweaks, I’ve been very impressed with Parallels’ performance. I haven’t needed to boot directly to Windows at all. (For comparison, my host machine is a 15” mid-2015 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB flash drive.)</p><p>In the remainder of this guide, I’ll detail the steps I took to optimize both Parallels and Visual Studio to run at peak performance.</p><h2>Installing Windows With Boot Camp and Parallels</h2><p>This part’s easy. I followed Apple’s Boot Camp guide to install Windows in a separate partition.</p><p>Then, I installed Parallels and followed the Parallels Boot Camp guide to create a new virtual machine from the existing Boot Camp partition.</p><h2>Tweaking Parallels for Performance and Usability</h2><p>The Parallels team publishes guidelines on how to maximize the performance of your virtual machine. Here’s what I adopted:</p><p>Virtual machine settings:</p><ul><li>2 virtual CPUs</li><li>4096MB system memory</li><li>256MB graphics memory</li></ul><p>Parallels options:</p><ul><li>Optimization: <strong>Faster virtual machine</strong>, <strong>Adaptive hypervisor</strong>, <strong>Tune Windows for speed</strong> all turned on.</li><li>Sharing: <strong>Shared cloud</strong>, <strong>SmartMount</strong>, and <strong>Access Windows folders from Mac</strong> turned off, as I didn’t need these for my workflow.</li></ul><p>I experimented with both of Parallels’ presentation modes, <strong>Coherence</strong> and <strong>Full Screen</strong>. While it was cool to see my Windows apps side-by-side with OS X in Coherence mode, I found that the UI responsiveness (especially opening and closing windows and dialogs) felt sluggish.</p><p>Because of this, I use Full Screen exclusively now. I have Windows full-screen on my external Thunderbolt display, and OS X on my laptop. If I need to use OS X on my large monitor, I can swipe the Magic Mouse to switch desktops.</p><h2>Adjusting OS X and Windows Features</h2><p>I fixed a few annoyances and performance drains right off the bat:</p><ul><li><strong>Function keys</strong>. If you’re using the Mac keyboard, you’ll want to change the function key behavior so the F1-F12 keys work correctly in Visual Studio. From System Preferences – Keyboard, make sure <strong>Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys</strong> is checked. With this turned on, hold Fn to use the Mac functions (brightness, volume, etc.) on F1-F12. With an external non-Mac keyboard, this isn’t an issue.</li><li><p><strong>Start menu</strong>. I’m using Windows 8, and the removal of the Start menu annoyed me. I clung to my old ways and installed Start8 to restore it.</p></li><li><p><strong>Disable Windows visual effects</strong>. I turned off most of the Windows desktop manager visual effects by going to Control Panel – System and Security – Advanced system settings – Advanced – Performance – Settings – Visual Effects and choosing <strong>Adjust for best performance</strong>. However, I left <strong>Smooth edges of screen fonts</strong> checked because it improves text rendering on my monitor.</p></li></ul><h2>Installing Visual Studio and Helpful Extensions</h2><p>Installing Visual Studio is a piece of cake once the virtual machine is set up. I simply downloaded the latest release from MSDN and let the installer run.</p><p>If you use an Apple Magic Mouse (as I do), Visual Studio tends to be overly eager to zoom the text size in and out as you swipe your finger over the mouse. The Disable Mouse Wheel Zoom add-on fixes this annoyance.</p><h2>Improving Visual Studio for Performance</h2><p>I was impressed with how well Visual Studio performed under emulation. With a large multi-project solution open, though, I saw some slowdowns.</p><p>Through trial and error, I found a number of things that could be disabled to improve performance. You may not want to make <em>all</em> of the changes I did, so pick and choose your own list of tweaks:</p><ul><li><strong>Disable hardware-accelerated rendering</strong>. Unchecking <strong>Automatically adjust visual experience based on client performance</strong>, <strong>Enable rich client visual experience</strong>, and <strong>Use hardware graphics acceleration if available</strong> via Options – Environment made the UI feel much more responsive on my machine.</li><li><p><strong>Start up to an empty environment</strong>. Starting up Visual Studio for the first time feels a lot snappier if you skip the default news page on startup. Select <strong>Empty environment</strong> under Options – Environment – Startup – At startup.</p></li><li><p><strong>Remove unused extensions</strong>. Visual Studio ships with a number of extensions that you may not need. From Tools – Extensions and Updates – Installed, remove any extensions you aren’t actively using (you can always reinstall them later). I got rid of six extensions I didn’t need.</p></li><li><p><strong>Disable extra debugging features</strong>. I turned off both <strong>Enable Diagnostic Tools while debugging</strong> and <strong>Show elapsed time PerfTip while debugging</strong> in Options – Debugging – General. I wasn’t using these debugging features, and debugging felt snappier after I disabled them.</p></li><li><p><strong>Turn off the Navigation Bar</strong>. I found the code editor Navigation Bar to be unnecessary if the Solution Explorer is open. I disabled it via Options – Text Editor – All Languages – <strong>Navigation Bar</strong>.</p></li><li><p><strong>Disable CodeLens</strong>. CodeLens is a cool feature for collaboration, but it’s not part of my current workflow. I got rid of the CPU overhead by turning it off via Options – Text Editor – All<br />Languages – CodeLens – <strong>Enable CodeLens</strong>.</p></li><li><p><strong>Turn off Track Changes</strong>. When a file is open in the code editor, Visual Studio will represent recent changes by displaying small regions of green or yellow on the scroll bar. If you can live without this, turn off <strong>Track changes</strong> via Options – Text Editor – General for a small performance boost.</p></li><li><p><strong>Turn off Track Active Item</strong>. Squeeze out a little bit more UI performance out by ensuring <strong>Track Active Item in Solution Explorer</strong> is unchecked under Options – Projects and Solutions – General.</p></li></ul><h2>Visual Studio on a Mac: The Best of Both Worlds</h2><h2>Download Xamarin Studio For Mac</h2><p>With these tweaks, I’ve come to love using Visual Studio on a Mac. The performance is good, and by running Windows in a virtual machine, I get the best of both OS worlds.</p><p>Want to see what I’m building with this setup? Check out our open-source .NET SDK on Github.</p><h2>Xamarin Studio For Mac</h2><p>Do you have any other tricks you’ve used to improve Visual Studio performance? Any must-have add-ons that boost your productivity? Leave me a comment below!</p></p>
								 
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