Reynolds - Xamarin Essentials

Mark Reynolds is a software enthusiast who has worked in the industry for nearly 30 years. He began his career with Electronic Data Systems, building and supporting systems for the manufacturing sector. Over the years, Mark has worked with start-ups and Fortune 100 companies across a diverse set of industries. In 1993, he started a consulting practice that focused on delivering training and mentoring services in the areas of software architecture, design, and implementation. With the rise of mobile computing, he has focused his practice on designing, developing, and delivering mobile software solutions.

Mark recently published his first book, Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android , Packt Publishing . His private consulting practice is based in Allen, TX, USA, where he resides with his wife and son.

I would like to thank my mother, Charlene Reynolds, who I lost this year. She was a great mother, wife, sister, cousin, aunt, and friend, and a great inspiration to everyone she came in contact with. We'll miss her, but we know in her new home; she has overcome the illness she battled here, and we rejoice in that.

Jason Awbrey is a Xamarin MVP, frequent speaker, author, and consultant based in Spring, Texas, USA. He has been working with the .NET framework for over 15 years, and with Xamarin since its early beta stages. He is the President of the North Houston .NET Users Group and a co-lead of the Houston Xamarin Meetup.

Jason's company, PostDotNet Consulting (postdotnet.com), is a Xamarin Consulting Partner.

Thanks to Vicki for everything, and to Jacob, Jonah, and Maggie for not bothering daddy while he was in the office.

Joe Dan Galyean is the Vice President of Application Development for Cinemark USA. He has been working in the field of software development for 14 years, primarily with .NET technologies.

Paul F. Johnson has many years of experience in cross-platform development. He started his programming career back in the 1980s on 8-bit machines. With a background in chemistry and working experience in education, he developed a large number of applications for students as well as developed code in Fortran for his Master's degree. During this time, he became interested in .NET, especially C# due to its similarities with the other C languages. By chance, a small start-up in the US called Ximian had started to develop an open source implementation of the .NET standard, so being a Linux chap was now no longer a barrier.

Over the years, this interest grew and so did Ximian. Novell bought them out, and after Novell was sold, Xamarin was formed and mobile development was the next stage.

After completing education, Paul worked on the ill-fated WowZapp messenger application followed by a number of other mobile apps on both iOS and Android. All the code for these platforms was in C#, so the idea of cross-platform mobile development was certainly going strong.

In April 2013, Paul began working on a complete rewrite of F-Track Live so that it would run on Android, iPhone, and Windows Mobile. During that time, he was contacted by Xamarin to check whether he was willing to come on board as part of the documentation team.

Paul has written Xamarin Mobile Application Development for iOS , Packt Publishing , and is part way through writing a new book for Packtagain using Xamarin for cross-platform development. He also has a third book in discussion with Packt Publishing for using the Xamarin Mobile platform to create an interactive adventure (including the AI aspects required for it).

I would like to dedicate my work to my ever loving wife, Becki, and to my extremely good coffee-making son, Richard, who have helped me with the phrasing of comments and supply of coffee during the technical review process. I'd also like to thank Mary and Puja at Packt Publishing for being great to work with as well as Mark (the author of this book) for showing me a trick or two and accepting criticism when given.