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Announcing Xamarin 3

blog.xamarin.com

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Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#51

Post by buckbova »

gum_ina_package wrote: post #23

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…

Not C# but give kivy a try. Cross platform and in python. Great for student projects and those looking for open source alternatives.

http://kivy.org/docs/gettingstarted/intro.html

Other open-source alternatives are haxe and phonegap.

http://haxe.org/

http://phonegap.com/

Comparison site:

http://www.riaxe.com/blog/top-cross-platform-mobile-developm...

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#53

Post by runjake »

mariusmg wrote: post #37
runjake wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, because that's exactly what MS wants now. Another UI framework to support.......

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?

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#54

Post by pat2man »

ColinDabritz wrote: post #47
jedahan wrote: post #27

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.

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 som…

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.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#55

Post by pat2man »

natfriedman wrote: post #19

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/studio http://xamarin.com/visual-studio And our new Xamarin.Forms library is explained here: http://xamarin.com/forms

Great stuff! As an IB fan I am excited to try it out!

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#56

Post by natfriedman »

jedahan wrote: post #27

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.

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.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#58

Post by supermatt »

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.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#59

Post by jasallen »

natfriedman wrote: post #50
jasallen wrote: post #32

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…

Sorry to hear about the error message. Can you email your logs and the storyboard file to support@xamarin.com?

Working on it. In a related issue, "copy file path / name" from a storyboard tab doesn't seem to do anything :)

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#60

Post by gum_ina_package »

swalsh wrote: post #48
masivemunkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's a great product, but $300 per year is cost prohibitive for me.

I think $300 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a huge productivity boost.

I agree if that $300 was almost as much as my monthly rent lol :)
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