Setting up platform projects

In Xamarin Studio, let's start by setting up the platform projects. Go to File | New Solution and select a Xamarin.Forms app from the cross-platform menu on the left:

Once the project is created, you will see both an iOS and Android project created along with a PCL.

Note

Unfortunately, we can't develop our Windows Phone applications through Xamarin Studio; we will be touching on this after the iOS and Android projects.

Let's create our first ContentPage in XAML, right-click on the PCL, create a new XAML ContentPage, and call it MainPage:

Xamarin.Forms provides the option to build user interfaces entirely in C#, but it is recommended you stick with XAML because it is a very powerful markup language. The code required for a XAML sheet is much smaller than a user interface in C#.

We also want to create a new folder called Pages and add MainPage to this folder.

Our first element on the page is a Grid. A Grid separates a layout by rows and columns based upon the entire size...