Xamarin Mobile Application Development for iOS

by Paul F. Johnson

Overview

Before the release of monotouch, development on iOS was purely in Objective C. There was nothing wrong with that except for one thing – it’s very unpleasant to write code in! The release of Xamarin changed all of that, and with it brought cross-platform development to the mobile world.

Xamarin Mobile Application Development for iOS is not just your normal everyday book on iOS app development. Everything is written for a point and not for effect, and therefore you will learn everything you need to know quickly and efficiently without getting bogged down in needless information. The code has been taken from fully tested apps, so you can just drop it into your code and it will work out of the box.

In this clear and informative guide, you will be taken on a whirlwind tour of iOS application development with Xamarin, from setting up a development environment on your PC or Mac to testing and distribution through the Apple Store with plenty of practical examples along the way.

The book begins by discussing the installation of the IDE (for both PC and Mac) as well as how to set up your PC so it can be used to develop for iOS. From there, successive chapters cover the user interface, views, view controllers, customisation of controls, animation, events and event handling, getting the most from your app using threading, creating your own settings system, the internal database system and LINQ, sending texts, making calls, taking photos, videos, and audio recordings as well as using the mapping system. The book culminates by showing you how to test your app using testflight and finally how to release your app on the Apple Store. It is an all-encompassing book that leaves nothing out.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783559183
Publisher:	Packt Publishing
Publication date:	10/14/2013
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Paul F. Johnson has been writing software since the days of the old 8-bit micros in the 1980s, with his first published piece of software being made in 1984 for the BBC Micro. From there, his passion to learn and develop increased along with his love for Chemistry. For many years, he married the two at the University of Salford, culminating in commercial work for RiscStation Ltd. as well as working on the award winning Scribus desktop publishing application.

For many years, Paul contributed a large amount of time to the Fedora Project (a community-based Linux distribution sponsored by RedHat), and in 2002, he started to become interested in the Mono project from Ximian. That was the beginning of the end of his time in education, and over the next 10 years, he learned how to code in VB.NET and C#. Ximian was sold to Novell, who in turn were bought out themselves, and from that, Xamarin was born. The rest is history.

With the advent of a workable .NET system that can be used in a non-Windows environment, the stage was set and the hard work could begin. When Xamarin released monodroid, Paul could see that his years of learning could now be turned into profit and went full-time developing code for the platform. Shortly afterwards, he began working on iOS devices as well. At the start of 2013, Paul along with Andrei and his good friend Scott formed Sporkish; the objective being to produce unbeatable software for the mobile world.

This is Paul’s first foray into the world of books, though he has had many articles published in the Association of C and C++ User’s magazines Overload and C Vu (the latter he edited for over a year). Paul is currently developing mobile applications for Farntrack Pty (Australia) and HelloU (London, UK) and is beginning work on another Packt book for Android development using Xamarin.Android.

Paul is 42, lives with his wife, dog, cats, and son, and drinks way too much coffee!