Free ebook: Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms

Microsoft Press, in cooperation with Xamarin, is pleased to publish a new ebook by legendary author Charles Petzold: Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms: Cross-platform C# programming for iOS, Android, and Windows.

This is the third version of an ebook about writing applications with Xamarin.Forms, the mobile development platform for iOS, Android, and Windows unveiled by Xamarin in May 2014. (The first two versions of this book were Preview Editions.) Xamarin.Forms lets you write shared user-interface code in C# and XAML (the Extensible Application Markup Language) that maps to native controls on these platforms.

The Windows support of Xamarin.Forms includes the Windows Runtime (WinRT) for targeting Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices, and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which is a form of the Windows Runtime that targets Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile devices with a single program.

The two previous versions of this book were called Preview Editions because they were not complete. At 1200 pages, this is the first edition that can claim to be complete, even though several topics are not included and Xamarin.Forms continues to be progressively enhanced with no sign of slowing down.

Who should read this book

This book is for C# programmers who want to write applications using a single code base that targets the three most popular mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and Windows, encompassing the Universal Windows Platform and Windows Phone.

Xamarin.Forms also has applicability for those programmers who eventually want to use C# and the Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android libraries to target the native application programming interfaces (APIs) of these platforms. Xamarin.Forms can be a big help in getting programmers started with these platforms or in constructing a prototype or proof-of-concept application.

This book assumes that you know C# and are familiar with the use of the .NET Framework. However, when Charles discusses some C# and .NET features that might be somewhat exotic or unfamiliar to recent C# programmers, he adopts a somewhat slower pace.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 01, 2016
  Thank you Charles for writing it and microsoft for helping Xamarin to make it available. And thank you Kim for telling us about it.
• Anonymous
  April 05, 2016
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)
  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2017
    I 2nd her message to you Charles.
• Anonymous
  April 07, 2016
  Thanks a lot.I love This Microsoft's Job
• Anonymous
  April 07, 2016
  thank you
• Anonymous
  April 11, 2016
  Thank you Kim for making this available, and also big thanks to Charles for taking the time to write this wisdom on the "paper". I would really like to see this platform is adopted by many developers as it would benefit the platform itself.
• Anonymous
  April 12, 2016
  Thank you. Good job!
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2016
  Thank you...
• Anonymous
  April 20, 2016
  Thank you! I'm inquisitively looking foreword to read the ebook.
• Anonymous
  April 27, 2016
  an invent developer
• Anonymous
  April 27, 2016
  Thank you very much! Nice job Charles and Kim for posting the pdf
• Anonymous
  April 28, 2016
  Norton doesnt allow me to download this file :(can someone email the pdf for me ?? :DTnx
  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2017
    What is your E-mail Address, I will post it to you.
    • Anonymous
      August 08, 2017
      pls send me pdf file of this book
• Anonymous
  May 12, 2016
  test
• Anonymous
  May 26, 2016
  tkank you very much.!
• Anonymous
  June 11, 2016
  Is a paper book version to come ?
  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2016
    Hi Alain -We have no plans to print this book.
• Anonymous
  June 26, 2016
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  July 01, 2016
  kindle version is too large to transfer to kindle for androidkindly make the app available on amazon store for download
• Anonymous
  July 06, 2016
  Thanks for the great resources for students!
• Anonymous
  July 08, 2016
  Thank you for posting the book
• Anonymous
  July 27, 2016
  thank you so much charles.
• Anonymous
  August 08, 2016
  Thanks Charles for sharing this useful book.
• Anonymous
  September 20, 2016
  Thanks for this book
• Anonymous
  September 30, 2016
  //I appreciate for sharing this valuable knowledge for free..I am in debt to Xamarin and Microsoft. Lets work to build great Apps and pay it back.The book is amazing.
• Anonymous
  November 08, 2016
  Sorry guys, but I would never recommend this book to anyone, especially for new-starters It's 1200 pages but it's too bloated with information which would be better to read in official documentation. And accents it makes are irrelevant in most mobile apps. It focuses on writing pages in C# instead of XAML. But in most cases apps are usually written in XAML because it's simpler to mantain, it's less verbose than C#, it's just de-facto standard on Windows platform so .net devs are quite familiar with it, even if they are not - most likely they are familiar with HTML and XAML has a lot of common. The book doesn't tell how to better organize the app, how to build better navigation, etc. It only lists the options, but all those options are available in the documentation.I really appreciate the effort, but sorry, it doesn't look like a book written by Mobile developer for Mobile developers. If you want to learn fast I better recommend search for Xamarin.Forms video series by Houssem Dellai.
• Anonymous
  November 16, 2016
  From Russia with Love)Can you translate this book in Russian?
• Anonymous
  January 02, 2017
  Kim, Could I translate this book in Korean on my blog?it is not commercial. it is just for studying.I'll thank you for your answer
  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2017
    Our distributor, Pearson, owns the rights to translate our free ebooks. You will need to email them and ask for permission. You can email them here: rights@pearsoned.com
• Anonymous
  February 08, 2017
  we are pleased to thank u for posting this article , good job Charles,
• Anonymous
  February 13, 2017
  Great book. Just a small correction. On page 324 a few times "because" should be "became".
• Anonymous
  February 14, 2017
  Is this book has a Simplified Chinese edition? I want it very much.
• Anonymous
  February 22, 2017
  Will this book have a simplified Chinese edition in the future?I would like to read and learn very much.
• Anonymous
  March 09, 2017
  Thanks, This was Helpful
• Anonymous
  March 11, 2017
  Thank you.
• Anonymous
  March 16, 2017
  Thank you for sharing
• Anonymous
  April 19, 2017
  Thanks
• Anonymous
  April 28, 2017
  Please i am front end developer, i want to learn how to build mobile apps front end designs with xamrin. so i need advice on what to do?