No book is the product of just the author; he just happens to be the one with his name on the cover. Several people contributed to the success of this book, and it would take more space than thanking each one individually.
I would personally like to thank three special people who have been an inspiration and who have provided me with so much support during the writing of this book, Reshma Raman, my Senior Acquisition Editor, who is the reason that this book exists; Shweta Pant, my Acquisition Editor; and Priyanka Mehta for her understanding and support, as well as her brilliant suggestive approaches during the chapter rewrites. I would like to thank each of you for everything, and making the writing process enjoyable.
Lastly, to my reviewers, thank you so much for your valued suggestions and improvements to make this book what it is; I am truly grateful to each one of you.
Thank you also to the entire PACKT Publishing team for working so diligently to help bring out a high-quality product. Finally, a big shout out to the engineers at Xamarin, Inc. for creating Xamarin Studio and the Mono Platform to provide developers with the tools to create fun and sophisticated applications with the power of Xamarin.Forms.
Finally, I would like to thank all my friends for their support, understanding, and encouragement during the book writing process. I am extremely grateful to have you as my friends, and it is a privilege to know each one of you.
About the Reviewers
Lance McCarthy is an exceptional community leader with an acute expertise for all things .NET and C#, especially on the XAML stack, including WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, and Windows store apps. He is very helpful online, guiding and answering questions from Microsoft developers on Twitter as @lancewmccarthy; he blogs on his own time as well, with a strong focus on Windows Universal apps, at WinPlatform.wordpress.com. He organizes and hosts events in the Boston area, such as user group nights, mini-code camps, and full hackathons.
During the day, Lance is a senior technical support engineer at Telerik, where he supports developers with their Classic Windows, Universal Windows, web and mobile (Xamarin, Android and iOS native) application development.
On the side, Lance writes blog posts for blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/, creates resources for developers (tutorials, sample source code, tips of the week, and so on), and helps the developer community in any way possible.
Previously, Lance worked for Nokia and Microsoft as a Developer Ambassador, where he sought out and engaged developers through outreach programs and provides them with technical support and resources to make them successful on the Windows platforms.
Lance was also an assistant professor at Harvard University, helping students build, market, and publish successful Windows Phone apps. He has also appeared on podcasts, such as the Windows Developer Show, has been a technical editor for publications and books, has won several app building contests and hackathons (including first place in the Microsoft Build 2013 hackathon), and is a published developer with over a million downloads in the Windows Store.
Some of the books that he has reviewed are as follows:
- Netdunio Home Automation Projects by Matt Cavanaugh
- Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin by Can Bilgin
- Begin to Code with C# by Rob Miles
Engin Polat has been involved in many large and medium-scale projects on .NET technologies as a developer, architect, and consulting, and he has won many awards since 1999. Since 2008, he has been training many large enterprises in Turkey on Windows development, web development, distributed application development, software architecture, mobile development, cloud development, and so on. Apart from this, he organizes seminars and events in many universities in Turkey about .NET technologies, Windows platform development, cloud development, web development, game development, and so on. He shares his experiences on his personal blog (http://www.enginpolat.com). He has MCP, MCAD, MCSD, MCDBA, and MCT certifications. Since 2012, he is recognized as a Windows Development MVP by Microsoft; since 2017, he is recognized as a Visual Studio and Development Technologies MVP too. Between 2013 and 2015, he was recognized as a Nokia Developer Champion-very few people in the world are given this award. Since 2015, he has been recognized as a Regional Director by Microsoft.