Why would I want to build a xib-free iOS app with C#?
- Because I can
- Because it’ll be fun
- Because it’ll be less painful than using Interface Builder, storyboards, and Objective-C
Now that you know some of my biases, let’s get started:
- Download Xamarin.iOS
- Use the Starter edition for free
- Follow the Xamarin installation instructions
Xamarin already has a good introduction to building an iOS application in code, so go do that now. I suggest that you use the Starter (free) edition of Xamarin Studio instead of Visual Studio. This whole series will be based on using Xamarin Studio instead of Visual Studio. When you come back, we’ll start building a slightly larger app over a series of blog articles.
We’re going to build a current weather clock. The user story is:
I would like an iOS app that shows current time and weather conditions so that I don’t have to look out the window to see the weather.
Roadmap for building our app:
- Clock
- Timers
- Add an iAd banner (you do want to monetize this app, don’t you?)
- Landscape and auto layout
- Get current location
- NuGet
- Get current weather
- Profit!
That’s enough for today. I figure you spent an hour or two on downloading and installing Xamarin.iOS and building your first xib-free iOS app in C#. We’ll start building the current weather clock next.