9 ms·

Announcing Xamarin 3

185 points by vdepizzol 12y ago

danabramov 12y ago
Beautiful work. Congrats to Miguel, Nat and everyone on the team. Funny that IB stinks so much they had to basically rewrite it. Also, I like the (minor) redesign. Looks more solid now.
- migueldeicaza 12y ago
  Thank you Dan!
fakir 12y ago
Looks Great! Do you have any plans to integrate this with an MBaaS ( Azure looks like a great fit)?
- natfriedman 12y ago
  We have support for Azure, Parse, and others already: http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-services http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-services http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse
miguelrochefort 12y ago
Awesome work guys! Can't wait to give Xamarin.Forms a try! I'm wondering how well Xamarin.Forms will work with MVVM and bindings.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  Xamarin.Forms is designed to work with MVVM and data bindings: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms
  - miguelrochefort 12y ago
    Thanks Nat! That's awesome news. To what extend is XAML support in Xamarin.Forms? Can I use it to create multiplatform controls/views?
    - natfriedman 12y ago
      Yes, you can use XAML to create multiplatform controls/views with Xamarin.Forms. Xamarin.Forms supports all of XAML 2009 and uses the XAML syntax with its own namespace and types. So, no existing XAML designer will work with Xamarin.Forms. However, the names and properties should be familiar to any experienced XAML developer.
      - bztzt 12y ago
        omg, something finally supports XAML 2009. =O
andyjohnson0 12y ago
I appreciate that this is an initial announcement, but does anyone know what the situation is with upgrades for existing users? Edit: Forgot to say that this new version looks really good - congrats to the Xamarin team! Not having to launch XCode is going to massively improve my quality of life.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  All of these features are available free to existing customers with current subscriptions!
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    Excellent. Thanks Nat!
martinald 12y ago
This looks amazing. Especially Xamarin forms. Surely Microsoft will acquire them soon? They'd be totally nuts not to.
- tonyedgecombe 12y ago
  What benefit would Microsoft get by buying them?
  - runjake 12y ago
    Ownership of a high-quality, viable, cross-platform mobile environment with its own UI frameworks. They could essentially stage a development platform coup on the leading mobile platforms.
    - mariusmg 12y ago
      Yes, because that's exactly what MS wants now. Another UI framework to support.......
      - runjake 12y ago
        Did you not pay attention to Microsoft's BUILD (Microsoft's version of WWDC) conference this year, where they gave Xamarin the limelight and official blessings?
  - untog 12y ago
    A key position in iOS development. They could further the cause of C#-based apps significantly - and while it might look initially like they wouldn't want to encourage iOS development that moment has already passed. If they managed to make it much easier to develop for iOS and Windows simultaneously it could be a big win.
  - sergiotapia 12y ago
    It would go a long way towards providing potential users of Xamarin's long-term existence.
nbevans 12y ago
Is this available to download or what? Even as a beta?
- natfriedman 12y ago
  It's fully released and supported. You can download here: http://xamarin.com/download http://xamarin.com/download
martinald 12y ago
This looks amazing. Especially Xamarin forms. Surely Microsoft will acquire them soon? They'd be totally nuts not too.
thebouv 12y ago
Looking forward to giving this a try. I've built many mobile solutions in various languages / frameworks / platforms, but being new to C#, I'm eager to give this a go.
paulsmith 12y ago
Site looks hosed, is there a summary of what was announced, specifically?
- leorocky 12y ago
  Yep, totally not responding and I have no idea what a xamarin is. EDIT: Looks like the main website is up: http://xamarin.com/ http://xamarin.com/ They let you build apps for other platforms in C# which is cool.
natfriedman 12y ago
Thanks for all the kind words, everyone! This release was the result of a lot of hard work; especially the new visual designer for iOS, which took two years to build. You can read more about our platform here: http://xamarin.com/platform http://xamarin.com/platform http://xamarin.com/studio http://xamarin.com/studio http://xamarin.com/visual-studio http://xamarin.com/visual-studio And our new Xamarin.Forms library is explained here: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms
- freeman478 12y ago
  Any plan to also support Windows 8 in Xamarin Forms ? This would allow the same level of cross platform-ness for tablets. Great work !
  - natfriedman 12y ago
    We don't have a firm date, but adding support for Windows tablets is on the roadmap. It will come in the form of Universal app support.
    - freeman478 12y ago
      Excellent, thanks.
- pat2man 12y ago
  Great stuff! As an IB fan I am excited to try it out!
- runjake 12y ago
  Please, please, how about an affordable option for hobbyist/free app programmers? The current free Starter version isn't it. Edit: Wow, natfriedman. If you could only see the uparrows this comment is getting :)
  - kayoone 12y ago
    This. I have been using C# with Unity3d a lot and love it and i would love to try Xamarin with a sideproject, but $1000 per year/seat (yes i want VS integration) is just too much. Making this more affordable would do wonders for C#s popularity in the mobile space and possibly trickle down to a lot of other usecases.
yawn 12y ago
How well does the new Forms stuff play with existing MTD? How hard would it be to transition from MTD to Forms?
- migueldeicaza 12y ago
  You can mix and match. The transition depends on whether you use MTD just as a consumer, or whether you subclass it extensively (like I used to do on TweetStation). The former is easy, the latter not.
p_papageorgiou 12y ago
Hey Guys, I'm the co-founder of Avocarrot (http://www.avocarrot.com/ http://www.avocarrot.com/) and we were wondering for a while whether to build a dedicated plugin for Xamarin. How easily can you integrate an native Android or iOS SDK with your Xamarin apps? Would it make a big difference for you if a Xamarin plugin was available?
- natfriedman 12y ago
  You have two options: 1. You can bind the native iOS or Android library into C#, which is relatively straightforward: http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/binding_objective-c/ http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/bind... http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/java_integration_overview/binding_a_java_library_ http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/...(.jar)/ 2. Or you could create a single, managed library in C#, which would also make it easier to get Windows support. Option 2 is more work.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
gum_ina_package 12y ago
Now all they have to do is make it free. Seriously though, as a student I can't shell out $299 for a license and even at the $99/year student rate (with proof of relevant course work), I can't see myself paying $99/year to write/maintain apps I've built. Especially considering the $99/year Apple app store fee. Please, Xamarin, show us young C# devs some love! update: not really sure why the down votes. I'm big fan of Xamarin and C# in general. All I was doing was pointing out that there's no way I can afford/am willing to buy their software and that I think I speak for the majority of student developers.
- masivemunkey 12y ago
  I agree. It's a great product, but $300 per year is cost prohibitive for me.
  - swalsh 12y ago
    I think $300 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a huge productivity boost.
    - gum_ina_package 12y ago
      I agree if that $300 was almost as much as my monthly rent lol :)
    - benologist 12y ago
      It's only a huge productivity boost if you're already working with .NET. For everyone else the free trial limitations are so severe you're being asked to pay $299 just to try it out while most alternatives are cheaper, free, or open source.
- hatred 12y ago
  I certainly did not like the lousy words written above which explains the down-votes. But certainly the team at Xamarin can look upon his request and try if they can lower the license fee for students.
bigdubs 12y ago
Can I show two files open at once vertically split yet? Follow Up: The answer is no. This is a pretty big productivity killer, and the ticket to implement this feature has been around forever. This is the last major gripe that is keeping me from using Xamarin Studio in lieu of VS2k12.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  Xamarin Studio doesn't have this feature yet, but you can use Visual Studio to build Xamarin apps (and many developers do). Split panes will be coming to a future version of Xamarin Studio, though.
revelation 12y ago
Awesome work! I wonder how responsive the UIs created are? The workflow looks a lot like Windows Forms (dropping elements in the editor and resize to match), and there it wasn't exactly easy to produce interfaces that could scale or even adapt. So, in short: is this more Forms or WPF? (I've looked at the subpage for Forms now, and the widgets presented there tend to lean heavily towards WPF.. so yay!)
- migueldeicaza 12y ago
  We support a number of layout managers that allow you to create responsive UIs. This is very important on Android since there is really no single form factor/screen resolution to target. You really need to build UIs that work on various kinds of resolutions.
hamstu 12y ago
This is cool. I didn't know about Xamarin until now. I use Rdio a lot, and it's generally a very good, smooth-running app on my Nexus 4. Didn't realize it was built cross-platform like this!
jedahan 12y ago
Looks cool, but why translate to native UI elements at run-time as opposed to compile-time? Does it help with debugging? Forgive my ignorance as I have not used Xamarin.
- ColinDabritz 12y ago
  From the page: "...which are mapped to native controls at runtime, which means that your user interfaces are fully native. " I read this as "we allow design in our forms library, but compile to native controls for use at runtime." It took me a couple reads to come to that conclusion, I was also confused by the wording. If that is not the case, I definitely have the same question as you. Perhaps the page could use some clarification.
  - pat2man 12y ago
    Apple's storyboards and xib files are essentially XML serialized views. Apple deserializes them at runtime and its a feature built in to Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Since Xamarin is just wrapping the native libraries it is easier and more compatible to just follow the same approach.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  From a technical standpoint the "translation" is pretty much a standard Model-View-Presenter approach. This allows both us and you maximum flexibility when working with and extending Xamarin.Forms. We expose to users the same API's we used to implement the initial set of controls.
jasallen 12y ago
Looks great, love designer and Forms sounds epically wonderful (wonder if I can export my ios designs to forms for easier porting :-) ) First ten minutes experience: I've got a little weirdness with the differences in generated code from x-code vs new designer (an outlet name went from upper case to lower for instance). iOS designer is giving prominent error "Custom components are not being rendered because problems were detected".. Though everything seems fine and log doesn't particularly help.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  Sorry to hear about the error message. Can you email your logs and the storyboard file to support@xamarin.com?
  - jasallen 12y ago
    Working on it. In a related issue, "copy file path / name" from a storyboard tab doesn't seem to do anything :)
untog 12y ago
Kind of amazing that Xamarin now seems to have better dev tools for iOS than Apple do. I was badly burnt by buying a Xamarian dev license a couple of years ago for $499 then not using it (my own fault entirely) so I've been hesitant to jump back in to Xamarin-world, but it's really only a matter of time. I'm very impressed.
- hockeybias 12y ago
  Really? I have never been a fan of the Apple dev tools...
- natfriedman 12y ago
  Drop me a note - nat@xamarin.com
  - evo_9 12y ago
    Would be nice if after subscribing you get a better price to renew your subscription, I don't see that as an option right now though, right? For example my Xamarin License expired on May 24th; to renew I have to pay the full price again, correct?
keithwarren 12y ago
I have been working with Xamarin stuff for a couple years now, released about 7 apps with them and honestly cannot imagine another approach. I mainly work with smaller startups in specific line of business scenarios and it has become a necessity to not only have viable mobile offerings, but they have to have parity across platforms and support both phone and tablets. When I go into a sales meeting and pitch the idea that I can build for Android and iOS using the same language and sharing much of that code - I usually crush my competitors on price - which saves the customer money and makes more money for me (yipeee!) The Forms work in Xamarin 3 seems lined up to make that pitch even easier and will likely help Xamarin grow into the enterprise even faster as ease of management in the code base is going to be a major driver in decisions for IT shops that now have to support a much more diverse platform set than they did in the days when a website was good enough.
- natfriedman 12y ago
  Thanks for the endorsement! We built Xamarin.Forms because we have lots of enterprise customers building apps with a dozen or more screens doing simple things like tabular data display and data entry, but who have a native UI requirement in their app. Xamarin.Forms should make these types of apps much easier to write quickly.
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    Seconding the post above, your clear moves towards the Enterprise have on my radar as soon as I have the resources to develop native mobile clients :).
Zigurd 12y ago
Xamarin is the cross-platform solution I would consider first for developing mobile apps, and I can't think of a second one that's close. If your team is mostly experienced in C# or if F# is your thing, I would really seriously consider it versus training for iOS and Android. It's an very hard problem, and Xamarin has successfully gone from "That's neat but weird" to what looks like a practical tool that isn't going to leave you stranded with an oddball code base.
deleted 12y ago
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buster 12y ago
But as always, no Linux support, sadly and a no go for me :(
supermatt 12y ago
I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of their free tier. Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow people to tinker around as much as they want? I see no negatives to having an unlimited trial, and then simply charge to remove the '24hr binary' restriction. As it is, the little free time I had over those 30 days to play with Xamarin equated to around 5 hours, most of which was going through the tutorials and sample apps (which you cant use in the free mode). I certainly haven't experienced enough to commit to a purchase, and now I likely never will. I spoke with one of your colleagues about this. He offered me 20% discount on the business tier if I purchased iOS and Android (~$1600 'value') within 4 days... All i wanted to do was evaluate the damn thing... I think what you are doing is great, but please try and apply some common sense to your evaluations.
- wvenable 12y ago
  I agree; I haven't even bothered to tinker around with the free trial. The minimum price is too high to just buy to play around with and free version is too restricted to get a feel for the platform. What I would want is the ability to do everything but distribute/publish an application (even the 24 hour binary restriction is fine). I also don't understand why Visual Studio support isn't included in the Indie price or the free trial since I suspect the vast majority of developers who want to code mobile apps in C# use Visual Studio. So for $300 I get a sub-par product and for free I don't know anything about it. If you aren't a mobile developer today then there's really no reason to consider Xamarin. They aren't marketing to developers who currently aren't doing mobile development but are interested in it. They should be trying to woo developers who are on that ground level so we'll buy in once we're committed.
- benologist 12y ago
  Seconded. I looked into it for games and specifically MonoGame and got blocked before I even wrote any code. Stupidest thing I've ever seen. Except for their shitty setup process with all the downloads that don't resume or retry, instead they just abort the installation for you if a single file fails.
jordan0day 12y ago
Xamarin.Forms looks very compelling. In a former life I was a .NET person, and so I've always kept my eye on Xamarin, but the only real mobile stuff I've done has been native cocoa touch dev on iOS. Even though Xamarin.Forms might be a lowest-common-denominator type of thing, being able to build basically "universal" apps looks awesome. The indie license really isn't very expensive, but I wish the starter version allowed bigger apps (but maybe stripped out publishing to app stores or something), so you could really thoroughly check it out without spending $300.
mkal_tsr 12y ago
Man, as much as I'd love to use Xamarin w/ VS, 3 platforms for a single developer (myself) is $3000. It looks like a great product but wow, I can't swing that solo while bootstrapping. Have you considered a free-until-release approach? Don't get me wrong, you guys need to make money, I'm just wondering if there is a more optimal / appealing approach for those that are between Indie and Business.
egeozcan 12y ago
Xamarin is great. I saw a colleague of mine developing apps with it and was simply amazed. I think it definitely deserves all they're asking for it. Just one thing though: Why do I have to pay 700$ difference per year just for VS support? Is it really that hard to integrate?
ternaryoperator 12y ago
Detailed review of the v. 3.0 Enterprise Edition here: http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321 http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321
adl 12y ago
I know that the official comment regrading Linux support is that there are no plans to support it right now, I just want to say that there are people on Linux that are willing to pay for your product! I'm developing cross platform mobile apps with HTML5 and I would jump at the chance of using Xamarin instead (I was a C# developer in another life). I might just end up running it in a VM, but it would be great running Xamarin Studio on Linux. Thanks :-)
- migueldeicaza 12y ago
  Once we charge you, you would expect the same level of support that we provide users on other platforms. And The Linux desktop is just too fragmented for us to be able to do this and deliver the support you need.
  - adl 12y ago
    Thanks for your quick reply Miguel, I do understand the difficulties of supporting the Linux ecosystem. I hope that someday it becomes worthwhile for Xamarin to provide that support, in the meantime, another laptop or a VM will have to do. ;) Xamarin 3.0 looks great, congratulations!
soapdog 12y ago
I've never played with C# or Xamarin but this tool set is looking really good, specially the F# thing. Anyone care to share their stories about F#? it appears to be a nice functional language.
evo_9 12y ago
It's a real shame that Xamarin has a such a prohibitive pricing structure. My employer would love for me to use this on projects but they simply won't pay that much for a tool EACH YEAR. Considering Visual Studio, if you actually pay for it and don't go to an event and get a free copy, is a one time cost that a company can semi-easily justify (we've been on VS2010 for over 4 years now, with 5 developers, that's a major expense if we have re-subscribe each year). But with Xamarin, unlike Visual Studio, it's a 1 year subscription. I hate to say it but I agree with my employer, as much as I LOVE using Xamarin to build mobile/cross platform apps, the current pricing model is just crazy. I'd say drop the subscription only option (maybe have that as one of the choices), and add some 'buy it, you own it forever' options, hopefully without raising the price (ideal world you'd drop the price, too).
- wvenable 12y ago
  You do own the software forever. It doesn't expire after a year; you just will no longer have access to new releases and support. It's their last FAQ item on the pricing page. It does seem a bit odd to hide that detail on the very bottom of the page. I have other development tools (JetBrains products) that having similar pricing models without signing up for a "subscription" and with a discount for renewing each year. I feel a lot better about that than what Xamarin has presented here.
  - squeaky-clean 12y ago
    The JetBrains stuff is also cheaper. I'd love to buy Xamarin just to play around with. But $300 for a single platform, and I don't even get Visual Studio support with it? The idea of using C# for apps really appeals to me. But only because that means I could use Visual Studio and ReSharper. To compare that with the JetBrains business model. I can get a personal license for IntelliJ IDEA for $200, and there's even a free open source version that does 95% of the things I want with no limits. Their other products also have fully unrestricted 30 day trial periods. I guess Xamarin isn't targeting indie developers or hobbyists in that field. Which is OK. But it feels a little insulting to have an "indie" license which is so prohibitive and at the same time expensive.
SneakerXZ 12y ago
They aim on enteprise clients otherwise I cannot justify the pricing. I cannot imagine spending 600 USD for both platforms just to build hobby project (and with missing Visual Studio support) and if I cannot build a hobby project, how can I propose it to my employer when I don't have any experience with it? I would love to use Xamarin and would be willing to pay (I could justify 300 USD for all platforms (iOS, Android, Mac) with Visual Support for my hobby and indie projects. I hope Microsoft buys them or they will be more friendly to indie and hobby developers.
romanovcode 12y ago
I don't understand how come that Indie license does not include Visual Studio support? I think the biggest issue with Xamarin for me is this: http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  I agree. Xamarin has a price difference between "Business" and "Enterprise" but really the 600 bucks for Visual Studio support is what differentiates between Enterprise vs everything else. I wonder if Visual Studio starting to integrate Phone Gap tooling could eat away at part of Xamarin's value proposition. Regardless what Xamarin does with pricing, their announcement today with the new native UI builder is huge, congrats to the team.
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
The per-platform pricing is ridiculous. Would someone please build an open source competitor and put these jerks out of business?
rogerthis 12y ago
I may be stupid, but I found Xamarin too bugged. And to use it well, i have to know C#, iOS and Android well. With Phonegap I need to know web dev well, phonegap, and much less of the underlying platform.

185 points by vdepizzol 12y ago

Beautiful work. Congrats to Miguel, Nat and everyone on the team. Funny that IB stinks so much they had to basically rewrite it. Also, I like the (minor) redesign. Looks more solid now.

migueldeicaza 12y ago
Thank you Dan!

fakir 12y ago

Looks Great! Do you have any plans to integrate this with an MBaaS ( Azure looks like a great fit)?

natfriedman 12y ago
We have support for Azure, Parse, and others already: http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-services http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-services http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse

miguelrochefort 12y ago

Awesome work guys! Can't wait to give Xamarin.Forms a try! I'm wondering how well Xamarin.Forms will work with MVVM and bindings.

natfriedman 12y ago
Xamarin.Forms is designed to work with MVVM and data bindings: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms
- miguelrochefort 12y ago
  Thanks Nat! That's awesome news. To what extend is XAML support in Xamarin.Forms? Can I use it to create multiplatform controls/views?
  - natfriedman 12y ago
    Yes, you can use XAML to create multiplatform controls/views with Xamarin.Forms. Xamarin.Forms supports all of XAML 2009 and uses the XAML syntax with its own namespace and types. So, no existing XAML designer will work with Xamarin.Forms. However, the names and properties should be familiar to any experienced XAML developer.
    - bztzt 12y ago
      omg, something finally supports XAML 2009. =O

andyjohnson0 12y ago

I appreciate that this is an initial announcement, but does anyone know what the situation is with upgrades for existing users? Edit: Forgot to say that this new version looks really good - congrats to the Xamarin team! Not having to launch XCode is going to massively improve my quality of life.

natfriedman 12y ago
All of these features are available free to existing customers with current subscriptions!
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Excellent. Thanks Nat!

martinald 12y ago

This looks amazing. Especially Xamarin forms. Surely Microsoft will acquire them soon? They'd be totally nuts not to.

tonyedgecombe 12y ago
What benefit would Microsoft get by buying them?
- runjake 12y ago
  Ownership of a high-quality, viable, cross-platform mobile environment with its own UI frameworks. They could essentially stage a development platform coup on the leading mobile platforms.
  - mariusmg 12y ago
    Yes, because that's exactly what MS wants now. Another UI framework to support.......
    - runjake 12y ago
      Did you not pay attention to Microsoft's BUILD (Microsoft's version of WWDC) conference this year, where they gave Xamarin the limelight and official blessings?
- untog 12y ago
  A key position in iOS development. They could further the cause of C#-based apps significantly - and while it might look initially like they wouldn't want to encourage iOS development that moment has already passed. If they managed to make it much easier to develop for iOS and Windows simultaneously it could be a big win.
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  It would go a long way towards providing potential users of Xamarin's long-term existence.

nbevans 12y ago

Is this available to download or what? Even as a beta?

natfriedman 12y ago
It's fully released and supported. You can download here: http://xamarin.com/download http://xamarin.com/download

martinald 12y ago

This looks amazing. Especially Xamarin forms. Surely Microsoft will acquire them soon? They'd be totally nuts not too.

thebouv 12y ago

Looking forward to giving this a try. I've built many mobile solutions in various languages / frameworks / platforms, but being new to C#, I'm eager to give this a go.

paulsmith 12y ago

Site looks hosed, is there a summary of what was announced, specifically?

leorocky 12y ago
Yep, totally not responding and I have no idea what a xamarin is. EDIT: Looks like the main website is up: http://xamarin.com/ http://xamarin.com/ They let you build apps for other platforms in C# which is cool.

natfriedman 12y ago

Thanks for all the kind words, everyone! This release was the result of a lot of hard work; especially the new visual designer for iOS, which took two years to build. You can read more about our platform here: http://xamarin.com/platform http://xamarin.com/platform http://xamarin.com/studio http://xamarin.com/studio http://xamarin.com/visual-studio http://xamarin.com/visual-studio And our new Xamarin.Forms library is explained here: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms

freeman478 12y ago
Any plan to also support Windows 8 in Xamarin Forms ? This would allow the same level of cross platform-ness for tablets. Great work !
- natfriedman 12y ago
  We don't have a firm date, but adding support for Windows tablets is on the roadmap. It will come in the form of Universal app support.
  - freeman478 12y ago
    Excellent, thanks.
pat2man 12y ago
Great stuff! As an IB fan I am excited to try it out!
runjake 12y ago
Please, please, how about an affordable option for hobbyist/free app programmers? The current free Starter version isn't it. Edit: Wow, natfriedman. If you could only see the uparrows this comment is getting :)
- kayoone 12y ago
  This. I have been using C# with Unity3d a lot and love it and i would love to try Xamarin with a sideproject, but $1000 per year/seat (yes i want VS integration) is just too much. Making this more affordable would do wonders for C#s popularity in the mobile space and possibly trickle down to a lot of other usecases.

yawn 12y ago

How well does the new Forms stuff play with existing MTD? How hard would it be to transition from MTD to Forms?

migueldeicaza 12y ago
You can mix and match. The transition depends on whether you use MTD just as a consumer, or whether you subclass it extensively (like I used to do on TweetStation). The former is easy, the latter not.

p_papageorgiou 12y ago

Hey Guys, I'm the co-founder of Avocarrot (http://www.avocarrot.com/ http://www.avocarrot.com/) and we were wondering for a while whether to build a dedicated plugin for Xamarin. How easily can you integrate an native Android or iOS SDK with your Xamarin apps? Would it make a big difference for you if a Xamarin plugin was available?

natfriedman 12y ago
You have two options: 1. You can bind the native iOS or Android library into C#, which is relatively straightforward: http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/binding_objective-c/ http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/bind... http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/java_integration_overview/binding_a_java_library_ http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/...(.jar)/ 2. Or you could create a single, managed library in C#, which would also make it easier to get Windows support. Option 2 is more work.
deleted 12y ago
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gum_ina_package 12y ago

Now all they have to do is make it free. Seriously though, as a student I can't shell out $299 for a license and even at the $99/year student rate (with proof of relevant course work), I can't see myself paying $99/year to write/maintain apps I've built. Especially considering the $99/year Apple app store fee. Please, Xamarin, show us young C# devs some love! update: not really sure why the down votes. I'm big fan of Xamarin and C# in general. All I was doing was pointing out that there's no way I can afford/am willing to buy their software and that I think I speak for the majority of student developers.

masivemunkey 12y ago
I agree. It's a great product, but $300 per year is cost prohibitive for me.
- swalsh 12y ago
  I think $300 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a huge productivity boost.
  - gum_ina_package 12y ago
    I agree if that $300 was almost as much as my monthly rent lol :)
  - benologist 12y ago
    It's only a huge productivity boost if you're already working with .NET. For everyone else the free trial limitations are so severe you're being asked to pay $299 just to try it out while most alternatives are cheaper, free, or open source.
hatred 12y ago
I certainly did not like the lousy words written above which explains the down-votes. But certainly the team at Xamarin can look upon his request and try if they can lower the license fee for students.

bigdubs 12y ago

Can I show two files open at once vertically split yet? Follow Up: The answer is no. This is a pretty big productivity killer, and the ticket to implement this feature has been around forever. This is the last major gripe that is keeping me from using Xamarin Studio in lieu of VS2k12.

natfriedman 12y ago
Xamarin Studio doesn't have this feature yet, but you can use Visual Studio to build Xamarin apps (and many developers do). Split panes will be coming to a future version of Xamarin Studio, though.

revelation 12y ago

Awesome work! I wonder how responsive the UIs created are? The workflow looks a lot like Windows Forms (dropping elements in the editor and resize to match), and there it wasn't exactly easy to produce interfaces that could scale or even adapt. So, in short: is this more Forms or WPF? (I've looked at the subpage for Forms now, and the widgets presented there tend to lean heavily towards WPF.. so yay!)

migueldeicaza 12y ago
We support a number of layout managers that allow you to create responsive UIs. This is very important on Android since there is really no single form factor/screen resolution to target. You really need to build UIs that work on various kinds of resolutions.

hamstu 12y ago

This is cool. I didn't know about Xamarin until now. I use Rdio a lot, and it's generally a very good, smooth-running app on my Nexus 4. Didn't realize it was built cross-platform like this!

jedahan 12y ago

Looks cool, but why translate to native UI elements at run-time as opposed to compile-time? Does it help with debugging? Forgive my ignorance as I have not used Xamarin.

ColinDabritz 12y ago
From the page: "...which are mapped to native controls at runtime, which means that your user interfaces are fully native. " I read this as "we allow design in our forms library, but compile to native controls for use at runtime." It took me a couple reads to come to that conclusion, I was also confused by the wording. If that is not the case, I definitely have the same question as you. Perhaps the page could use some clarification.
- pat2man 12y ago
  Apple's storyboards and xib files are essentially XML serialized views. Apple deserializes them at runtime and its a feature built in to Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Since Xamarin is just wrapping the native libraries it is easier and more compatible to just follow the same approach.
natfriedman 12y ago
From a technical standpoint the "translation" is pretty much a standard Model-View-Presenter approach. This allows both us and you maximum flexibility when working with and extending Xamarin.Forms. We expose to users the same API's we used to implement the initial set of controls.

jasallen 12y ago

Looks great, love designer and Forms sounds epically wonderful (wonder if I can export my ios designs to forms for easier porting :-) ) First ten minutes experience: I've got a little weirdness with the differences in generated code from x-code vs new designer (an outlet name went from upper case to lower for instance). iOS designer is giving prominent error "Custom components are not being rendered because problems were detected".. Though everything seems fine and log doesn't particularly help.

natfriedman 12y ago
Sorry to hear about the error message. Can you email your logs and the storyboard file to support@xamarin.com?
- jasallen 12y ago
  Working on it. In a related issue, "copy file path / name" from a storyboard tab doesn't seem to do anything :)

untog 12y ago

Kind of amazing that Xamarin now seems to have better dev tools for iOS than Apple do. I was badly burnt by buying a Xamarian dev license a couple of years ago for $499 then not using it (my own fault entirely) so I've been hesitant to jump back in to Xamarin-world, but it's really only a matter of time. I'm very impressed.

hockeybias 12y ago
Really? I have never been a fan of the Apple dev tools...
natfriedman 12y ago
Drop me a note - nat@xamarin.com
- evo_9 12y ago
  Would be nice if after subscribing you get a better price to renew your subscription, I don't see that as an option right now though, right? For example my Xamarin License expired on May 24th; to renew I have to pay the full price again, correct?

keithwarren 12y ago

I have been working with Xamarin stuff for a couple years now, released about 7 apps with them and honestly cannot imagine another approach. I mainly work with smaller startups in specific line of business scenarios and it has become a necessity to not only have viable mobile offerings, but they have to have parity across platforms and support both phone and tablets. When I go into a sales meeting and pitch the idea that I can build for Android and iOS using the same language and sharing much of that code - I usually crush my competitors on price - which saves the customer money and makes more money for me (yipeee!) The Forms work in Xamarin 3 seems lined up to make that pitch even easier and will likely help Xamarin grow into the enterprise even faster as ease of management in the code base is going to be a major driver in decisions for IT shops that now have to support a much more diverse platform set than they did in the days when a website was good enough.

natfriedman 12y ago
Thanks for the endorsement! We built Xamarin.Forms because we have lots of enterprise customers building apps with a dozen or more screens doing simple things like tabular data display and data entry, but who have a native UI requirement in their app. Xamarin.Forms should make these types of apps much easier to write quickly.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Seconding the post above, your clear moves towards the Enterprise have on my radar as soon as I have the resources to develop native mobile clients :).

Zigurd 12y ago

Xamarin is the cross-platform solution I would consider first for developing mobile apps, and I can't think of a second one that's close. If your team is mostly experienced in C# or if F# is your thing, I would really seriously consider it versus training for iOS and Android. It's an very hard problem, and Xamarin has successfully gone from "That's neat but weird" to what looks like a practical tool that isn't going to leave you stranded with an oddball code base.

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buster 12y ago

But as always, no Linux support, sadly and a no go for me :(

supermatt 12y ago

I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of their free tier. Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow people to tinker around as much as they want? I see no negatives to having an unlimited trial, and then simply charge to remove the '24hr binary' restriction. As it is, the little free time I had over those 30 days to play with Xamarin equated to around 5 hours, most of which was going through the tutorials and sample apps (which you cant use in the free mode). I certainly haven't experienced enough to commit to a purchase, and now I likely never will. I spoke with one of your colleagues about this. He offered me 20% discount on the business tier if I purchased iOS and Android (~$1600 'value') within 4 days... All i wanted to do was evaluate the damn thing... I think what you are doing is great, but please try and apply some common sense to your evaluations.

wvenable 12y ago
I agree; I haven't even bothered to tinker around with the free trial. The minimum price is too high to just buy to play around with and free version is too restricted to get a feel for the platform. What I would want is the ability to do everything but distribute/publish an application (even the 24 hour binary restriction is fine). I also don't understand why Visual Studio support isn't included in the Indie price or the free trial since I suspect the vast majority of developers who want to code mobile apps in C# use Visual Studio. So for $300 I get a sub-par product and for free I don't know anything about it. If you aren't a mobile developer today then there's really no reason to consider Xamarin. They aren't marketing to developers who currently aren't doing mobile development but are interested in it. They should be trying to woo developers who are on that ground level so we'll buy in once we're committed.
benologist 12y ago
Seconded. I looked into it for games and specifically MonoGame and got blocked before I even wrote any code. Stupidest thing I've ever seen. Except for their shitty setup process with all the downloads that don't resume or retry, instead they just abort the installation for you if a single file fails.

jordan0day 12y ago

Xamarin.Forms looks very compelling. In a former life I was a .NET person, and so I've always kept my eye on Xamarin, but the only real mobile stuff I've done has been native cocoa touch dev on iOS. Even though Xamarin.Forms might be a lowest-common-denominator type of thing, being able to build basically "universal" apps looks awesome. The indie license really isn't very expensive, but I wish the starter version allowed bigger apps (but maybe stripped out publishing to app stores or something), so you could really thoroughly check it out without spending $300.

mkal_tsr 12y ago

Man, as much as I'd love to use Xamarin w/ VS, 3 platforms for a single developer (myself) is $3000. It looks like a great product but wow, I can't swing that solo while bootstrapping. Have you considered a free-until-release approach? Don't get me wrong, you guys need to make money, I'm just wondering if there is a more optimal / appealing approach for those that are between Indie and Business.

egeozcan 12y ago

Xamarin is great. I saw a colleague of mine developing apps with it and was simply amazed. I think it definitely deserves all they're asking for it. Just one thing though: Why do I have to pay 700$ difference per year just for VS support? Is it really that hard to integrate?

ternaryoperator 12y ago

Detailed review of the v. 3.0 Enterprise Edition here: http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321 http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321

adl 12y ago

I know that the official comment regrading Linux support is that there are no plans to support it right now, I just want to say that there are people on Linux that are willing to pay for your product! I'm developing cross platform mobile apps with HTML5 and I would jump at the chance of using Xamarin instead (I was a C# developer in another life). I might just end up running it in a VM, but it would be great running Xamarin Studio on Linux. Thanks :-)

migueldeicaza 12y ago
Once we charge you, you would expect the same level of support that we provide users on other platforms. And The Linux desktop is just too fragmented for us to be able to do this and deliver the support you need.
- adl 12y ago
  Thanks for your quick reply Miguel, I do understand the difficulties of supporting the Linux ecosystem. I hope that someday it becomes worthwhile for Xamarin to provide that support, in the meantime, another laptop or a VM will have to do. ;) Xamarin 3.0 looks great, congratulations!

soapdog 12y ago

I've never played with C# or Xamarin but this tool set is looking really good, specially the F# thing. Anyone care to share their stories about F#? it appears to be a nice functional language.

evo_9 12y ago

It's a real shame that Xamarin has a such a prohibitive pricing structure. My employer would love for me to use this on projects but they simply won't pay that much for a tool EACH YEAR. Considering Visual Studio, if you actually pay for it and don't go to an event and get a free copy, is a one time cost that a company can semi-easily justify (we've been on VS2010 for over 4 years now, with 5 developers, that's a major expense if we have re-subscribe each year). But with Xamarin, unlike Visual Studio, it's a 1 year subscription. I hate to say it but I agree with my employer, as much as I LOVE using Xamarin to build mobile/cross platform apps, the current pricing model is just crazy. I'd say drop the subscription only option (maybe have that as one of the choices), and add some 'buy it, you own it forever' options, hopefully without raising the price (ideal world you'd drop the price, too).

wvenable 12y ago
You do own the software forever. It doesn't expire after a year; you just will no longer have access to new releases and support. It's their last FAQ item on the pricing page. It does seem a bit odd to hide that detail on the very bottom of the page. I have other development tools (JetBrains products) that having similar pricing models without signing up for a "subscription" and with a discount for renewing each year. I feel a lot better about that than what Xamarin has presented here.
- squeaky-clean 12y ago
  The JetBrains stuff is also cheaper. I'd love to buy Xamarin just to play around with. But $300 for a single platform, and I don't even get Visual Studio support with it? The idea of using C# for apps really appeals to me. But only because that means I could use Visual Studio and ReSharper. To compare that with the JetBrains business model. I can get a personal license for IntelliJ IDEA for $200, and there's even a free open source version that does 95% of the things I want with no limits. Their other products also have fully unrestricted 30 day trial periods. I guess Xamarin isn't targeting indie developers or hobbyists in that field. Which is OK. But it feels a little insulting to have an "indie" license which is so prohibitive and at the same time expensive.

SneakerXZ 12y ago

They aim on enteprise clients otherwise I cannot justify the pricing. I cannot imagine spending 600 USD for both platforms just to build hobby project (and with missing Visual Studio support) and if I cannot build a hobby project, how can I propose it to my employer when I don't have any experience with it? I would love to use Xamarin and would be willing to pay (I could justify 300 USD for all platforms (iOS, Android, Mac) with Visual Support for my hobby and indie projects. I hope Microsoft buys them or they will be more friendly to indie and hobby developers.

romanovcode 12y ago

I don't understand how come that Indie license does not include Visual Studio support? I think the biggest issue with Xamarin for me is this: http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png

jbigelow76 12y ago
I agree. Xamarin has a price difference between "Business" and "Enterprise" but really the 600 bucks for Visual Studio support is what differentiates between Enterprise vs everything else. I wonder if Visual Studio starting to integrate Phone Gap tooling could eat away at part of Xamarin's value proposition. Regardless what Xamarin does with pricing, their announcement today with the new native UI builder is huge, congrats to the team.

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

The per-platform pricing is ridiculous. Would someone please build an open source competitor and put these jerks out of business?

rogerthis 12y ago

I may be stupid, but I found Xamarin too bugged. And to use it well, i have to know C#, iOS and Android well. With Phonegap I need to know web dev well, phonegap, and much less of the underlying platform.