In today’s highly disruptive mobile app development world, companies do not want to miss out on any platform – be it Google Play Store or Apple App Store. The future of mobile app development is in the hands of cross-platform app development. Needless to say, cross-platform app development has emerged as a viable solution for businesses who are planning to target a presence on both Android and iOS and don’t want to burn their pockets by investing in native applications.
Cross-platform app development provides developers with an opportunity to write the code once and use it anywhere on other platforms, thereby facilitating a faster, safe, and better-quality software release. In this article, we will discuss how Xamarin, one of the best cross-platform frameworks, is shaping the future of mobile app development.
Why Choose Xamarin?
Among many existing cross-platform app development frameworks, choosing the right mobile application development tool is of utmost importance. Xamarin has emerged as one of the most interesting and preferred frameworks lately. It is a cross-platform user interface toolkit built on the .Net framework and comes with some of the best features such as gestures and animations for developing native apps that run across multiple platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows.
Xamarin’s ability to provide a specific compiler for each of the platforms enables native applications. With Xamarin, developers can write their cross-platform code in C#, wherein they can insert a piece of code for performing general functions such as access to the database, model, external services, etc., on all the platforms. Furthermore, Xamarin gives access to the SDK platform and a native mechanism for designing the user interface.
Xamarin comes with several visual editors for Android, iOS and Windows, which simplifies several activities on the interface creation which replicate the same functionality found in native development tools. The framework lets you save a great deal of time on the projects with a simple UI and a focus on work around the database. As it shares more than 75% of its native code throughout the development of cross-platform mobile apps for different operating systems, it significantly reduces the developer’s effort.
Xamarin also includes the framework – Xamarin.Forms which has a huge potential for the future of the mobile app development industry. It can help you create user interface elements using the code or with the help of XAML language. The framework lets you design simple interfaces without any need for visual editing.
One of the best advantages of Xamarin.Forms is that the whole UI for all platforms is described in a single place and will have the same look and structure across all the platforms. However, Xamarin.Forms works best for speeding up the development in apps wherein the general code is more important than the unique UI. Use of layer renderers in Xamarin.Forms impose restrictions on the use of platform-specific APIs.
Where should you use Xamarin?
Xamarin is an ideal framework for applications that requires a lot of computations or actions that are platform-independent. For example – Calculator applications, calendars, applications for data processing from the database, and other mobile authenticators.
However, it is wise not to go with Xamarin if the application demands a large number of platform-specific actions, such as in gaming projects.
Summing up the aforesaid, Xamarin is your go-to framework if you have plans to develop a cross-platform app development to save time and money without impacting the quality of the app.
So, if you are planning to launch a future-proof mobile application for your business that have cross-platform capabilities, you can partner with a leading Xamarin app development company having a team of experienced developers who can develop, deploy, and manage a high-performing Xamarin-powered mobile app for your business.
Originally published at: https://vocal.media/01/top-mobile-app-development-trends-to-look-for-in-2021-and-beyond