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From action scenes to snappy dialogue, everything can be captured in a great storyboard.
The entertainment industry needs quality storyboard artists and those artists need great software. If you search around you’ll find plenty of options but they each have a range of features, benefits, and prices(some free!)
So what kind of software is best for storyboarding? And which programs offer the best features to support your creative projects?
I’ll go through all the best options in this post and get you started on the path to magnificent digital storyboards.
Storyboarder
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
The team at Wonder Unit has developed some really cool stuff for filmmakers. One of their coolest projects is Storyboarder, a free app made for visualizing stories.
This runs on all 3 major operating systems and it’s 100% free to download and use forever. At that price who can complain?
I’d think if you’re a newbie to storyboarding then you’d want to save money at every turn. That is why Storyboarder makes such a great choice for beginners who need a simple application to practice their boards.
From a single screen you can draw each shot, add dialogue/stage directions, and even port the entire thing into Adobe Photoshop if you need a larger toolset.
Also Storyboarder comes with a play feature so you can demo your boards in a slideshow preview much like a real animatic for animation.
An excellent program for presenting to clients, or just for mucking around and practicing on your own. And you can’t beat that price tag.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Price: $60/mo or $999 one-time fee
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Looking at the complete opposite of free we’ll find Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. To my knowledge this is the most expensive storyboarding software on the market and it’s also the industry standard.
A good majority of studios use Toon Boom for boarding & animating so this is something you may want to learn if you want to break into the industry.
Now with that said, it does offer a cheaper monthly fee that most people could afford compared to the upfront cost.
This monthly fee gives you a chance to test the waters and see what you think of Toon Boom without committing to a massive single use license.
So what exactly does this program give you?
Really it’s a combo of both sketching and animating together. It’s a way to sketch your boards and see how they’d animate, all while tracking your script to make sure your scenes are on target.
Toon Boom is definitely more of an animator’s program.
It can work well for ad agencies or for board artists doing small skits. But the Story Flow tool makes it a breeze for writers to switch between board & script to follow each sequence, each scene, and each act.
You can also create dynamic camera movements along with some experimental 3D features that work nicely for 3D animators. Easily import scripts from Final Draft or export your layered panels for Photoshop. Plenty of support across all the typical art industry programs.
To put it bluntly: Toon Boom Storyboard is really the professional’s program. It is not necessary to buy this in order to create a pro-level board. However it would be worth learning if you want to work in animation someday.
Adobe Photoshop
Price: $9.99/mo
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Good ol’ Photoshop.
It’s been around for 20+ years and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
Although isn’t it funny how much Photoshop gets used for other things besides photo editing? We see it used for digital painting, pixel art, and of course for storyboarding.
You can draw digitally just as well in PS as you can in other programs. In fact, I’d argue there’s even more support now with tons of brushes for the PS environment.
Not to mention all the free storyboard templates you can get in PSD format specifically for Photoshop.
I don’t think there’s much to say about this program because every artist knows about it already.
The biggest downside is the lack of support for Linux users.
But in general Photoshop is well-supported and managed by a trusted brand. Not to mention if you already use Photoshop for digital painting then you’ll know how to use it for boarding.
Storyboard Fountain
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac
Storyboard Fountain is a newer program that I found just recently. It’s exclusive to MacOS only so it’s not an option for Windows or Linux users.
That said, if you do wanna give it a shot you’ll be impressed.
You can download the program totally free of charge from the main website. It’s currently in beta so there are many features still being worked out and smaller bugs in the process.
Once it does reach its v1.0 release I think it’ll stay free because the entire project is on GitHub. This means the source code is freely available and I doubt the creators would end up charging for it.
I really like the interface and the sidebar flow works incredibly well at presenting scenes in a linear fashion. You can quickly spot scenes that need work and rearrange them without messing up the rest of the story.
Take a peek at their preview video to see this software in action.
Considering it’s limited to Mac users this will have a smaller audience. But I’m really pleased with the GUI and the many complex features of Storyboard Fountain—especially given the $0 price.
Boords
Price: $12-$24/mo
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
Online SaaS products are quickly becoming “the norm” for software. I don’t think desktop programs will go away but we are seeing more web-based programs like Boords that offer great solutions.
Boords works as a native storyboarding platform that gives you tons of free templates and collaboration tools.
If you’re working with clients they can log into your project space and drop comments on the work right from their computer.
You can also setup team accounts with multiple users if you’re working on a group project.
Boords has flexible frame sizes, tons of free templates, and a really cool animatic tool for presenting your storyboards before animating.
The monthly price is definitely affordable and this can work on every major operating system. Not many programs can offer this much functionality for so cheap.
Anyone looking for a collaborative solution should check out Boords. It may not suit your needs but it does offer a free trial period to see if you like it or not.
FrameForge
Price: $199
Platforms: Mac, Windows Cdburnerxp free download for mac.
Typically I see FrameForge referenced more in the live action world. It’s still a great program but may not be the #1 choice for animators.
Still, the art of storyboarding is not explicitly for animation. Plenty of marketing agencies need storyboards for commercials or small teaser videos. Same goes for complex movie scenes or indie filmmakers.
The nice thing with FrameForge is that you can work just like any other program, but with a heavier focus on the script.
It supports importing from the most common script writing programs like FadeIn and Final Draft. Plus you can easily jump back & forth between scenes to get an overview of the whole story.
I’d recommend this program more for artists with an interest in directing and cinematography.
It’s also fantastic for indie artists or aspiring filmmakers who want to get a new project off the ground without a huge budget.
Prolost Boardo for After Effects
Price: $29
Platforms: Mac, Windows
So this isn’t technically a piece of software, but rather a complex add-on to the Adobe After Effects program.
Yet I think Prolost Boardo still belongs in this list because it almost feels like its own program. Not to mention plenty of TV & film artists will know the After Effects interface so it’s one of the best programs to work with.
This add-on lets you easily tilt, pan, zoom, and handle many other camera directions with a few presets. And you have the power of After Effects to alter anything else you place on the screen.
Add life to your boards with shaking motions and export everything into one final animatic, all from AE. Pretty cool!
This add-on does cost money but it’s a one-time fee of $29. That does not include the price of the After Effects software but if you already have a license for that you won’t need to worry.
Clip Studio Paint
Price: $49
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Many artists use Clip Studio Paint for drawing their comics and custom manga pages. These work well because CSP has tools that help you structure pages with boxes in a comic-esque style.
This also works nicely for storyboards since they take on a very similar look.
You can design a CSP template page and use that many times over to design your storyboards quickly. Or you could download a PSD template and import that into the software.
We recently covered a bunch of tutorials on Clip Studio Paint and it’s pretty easy to learn if you already do some digital artwork.
It also comes at a reasonable price considering it’s one of the better digital drawing/painting programs out there.
Will this work for everyone? Probably not.
But I do think it’s a viable option similar to Photoshop where you have one piece of software that gives you everything you need: drawing, painting, sketching, and boarding.
StoryboardThat
Price: $9.99/mo
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
I want to include Storyboard That even though it’s not made specifically for artists.
This free web-based program is made for quick informative boards and organizing stories fast. It does not directly support drawing beyond their pre-existing library of graphics.
Or at least, I didn’t see a way to draw judging from their free plan. To use this program you’d need to pay a monthly fee and that grants you unlimited boards with far nicer tools.
All that said I’d like to restate that I do not think this works well for animators. At least not in the serious scripting phase.
Use this more for planning compositions quickly or just getting ideas down. Even if you don’t have any artistic ability, Storyboard That can work well.
But I’d really recommend this program for anyone designing webcomics or small tidbits of visual information in a frame-by-frame format.
Certainly a nice program for marketing agencies or anyone working with an ad company that requires storyboards.
OpenToonz
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Windows
The more I look around the more impressed I get with free art software. It seems like the open source movement really has grown rapidly with no end in sight.
OpenToonz is a very nice open source program for storyboarding.
I still personally like Storyboard Fountain a little more if we’re talking about free options, but with OpenToonz you can run Mac or Windows which is nice.
The software is based on an original 2D drawing program Toonz which was used and customized by Studio Ghibli. OpenToonz is the free open source alternative to that.
It’s still under active development but it does have a lot of neat features. I specifically like the visual story mapping that lets you connect different scenes together and organize your storyline in a flow chart.
With that said, I do think the painting features need some work. OpenToonz doesn’t even come close to a powerhouse like Photoshop in regards to digital painting so it may not suit all your needs.
Download game megaman x6 full crack. But for a free program it works very well. Especially if you’re just sketching boards and organizing a small story from scratch.
Krita
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
Totally free, open source, and surrounded by a loving community of artists. What more could you ask for?
Krita has to be the fastest-growing open source painting program on the market. It’s got hundreds of free brushes along with tons of handy tutorials for beginners to learn the ropes.
That said, Krita is not really a storyboarding program. It’s a digital drawing & painting program.
But here’s why Krita makes the list: it’s totally free and easy to learn!
Many storyboard artists like to draw or paint their work in color. And most storyboard artists enjoy just being artists, whether that’s drawing their own characters or doing some digital paintings for fun.
Krita lets you do all of this from one program with one set of tools, all at no charge.
And it runs on every operating system so there’s plenty of support for everyone. If your drawing tablet has working drivers you’re good to go.
As of this writing I have not found any Krita storyboard templates that match the dozens of PSD templates out there. But you can export a PSD into a PDF file and import that into Krita yourself.
Not the simplest option but it’s a great way to bring templates into a Krita workflow.
In general I’m a huge fan of Krita and really do recommend giving this a try if you need a free painting program. This software will be around for years and it’s only getting better with time.
Plot
Price: $10/mo
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux Storyboard App For Pc
Plot makes visual storytelling super easy. For $10/mo you get unlimited boards, unlimited projects, and unlimited add-on users.
It’s basically the web-based equivalent of a beginner’s storyboarding app with some nice features that apply to animators too.
With this program you can run any operating system and still get access to a drawing pane. This way you can easily draw your frames and import them directly to your project, along with added dialogue and stage directions.
Since the app is visual you can easily change scenes just by clicking and dragging different pieces around the page. Easy peasy.
I also think the collaboration features are exquisite and far beyond other programs of this price range.
Now if you can work out your drawings in a desktop program you’ll definitely have more control. Then you can always import those drawings into Plot and organize them accordingly. This way you’ve still got collaboration features with very detailed drawings all managed online.
You can try Plot’s free demo if you visit the homepage and click “create free storyboard”. Might be worth a quick test run.
Mischief
Price: $25
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Mischief is custom art software made for drawing and sketching. You can find out more on their homepage and in this piece published by ArtStation.
Suffice it to say this program is pretty darn cool. It is not designed explicitly for storyboarding, however it is designed for continuous drawing and rough sketching without excessive tools getting in the way.
Because of its simplicity you can easily dive into Mischief and start boarding ideas fast. Almost no learning curve here.
I’d consider Mischief more of an idea program for artists. This is the best way to get your ideas down onto a page and see how they work in visual form.
No messing with templates or worrying about formalities. Also this program has a really cool feature infinite canvas which lets you just keep drawing onwards into infinity.
Your boards may feel a bit messy in this format but you won’t be hindered by any square borders or edges on the page. Keep on drawing to your heart’s content and get those ideas down!
Best of all Mischief offers two plans: one totally free with limited features and a pro upgrade for $25.
Creative Bloq published a review of this program if you wanna check out their opinion. But really it’s just a neat drawing program without limits on your creativity.
TVPaint
Price: $600
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux, Android
TVPaint is a fairly common program within the entertainment industry. However it does not have the same market share as Toon Boom so it’s not as well known or as powerful(in my opinion).
Yet many animators do enjoy TVPaint including veteran Disney animator Aaron Blaise. He publishes online art courses for animators and most of them feature TVPaint.
This program is incredibly versatile and it works exceptionally well for storyboarding. It can also be used as a true-blue animation program just like Adobe Animate or Toon Boom Animate.
Anyone who wants to do professional storyboarding would do well with TVPaint’s many awesome features geared towards boarding & animatic creation.
So why is this so far down on the list?
Mostly it’s an issue of price. For the same $600 you could basically buy Toon Boom which is, in my opinion, more powerful and a preferred choice in the animation world.
Yes there are major differences between the two programs and TVPaint does feel more like a “complete” animation package. It’s just tough to justify the price considering there are so many alternatives, even with limited features.
Now TVPaint still made the list and for good reason. It’s a great piece of software! So it’s totally worth checking out if you’ve got the scratch or if you like what you see on their website.
If you’re interested in serious 2D animation work or professional storyboarding then it’s worth looking into TVPaint. But if you’re a newbie to storyboarding I wouldn’t make this your first choice.
Absolute newbies would do better with free programs like Storyboarder, Storyboard Fountain, or even Krita if you can find some templates.
And no matter what stage you’re at with storyboarding I guarantee there’s a program in this list that’ll fit your needs.
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Xamarin.Mac allows for the development of fully native Mac apps in C# and .NET using the same macOS APIs that are used when developing in Objective-C or Swift. Because Xamarin.Mac integrates directly with Xcode, the developer can use Xcode's Interface Builder to create an app's user interfaces (or optionally create them directly in C# code).
Additionally, since Xamarin.Mac applications are written in C# and .NET, code can be shared with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android mobile apps; all while delivering a native experience on each platform.
This article will introduce the key concepts needed to create a Mac app using Xamarin.Mac, Visual Studio for Mac and Xcode's Interface Builder by walking through the process of building a simple Hello, Mac app that counts the number of times a button has been clicked:
The following concepts will be covered:
Requirements
Xamarin.Mac application development requires:
To run an application built with Xamarin.Mac, you will need:
Warning
The upcoming Xamarin.Mac 4.8 release will only support macOS 10.9 or higher.Previous versions of Xamarin.Mac supported macOS 10.7 or higher, butthese older macOS versions lack sufficient TLS infrastructure to supportTLS 1.2. To target macOS 10.7 or macOS 10.8, use Xamarin.Mac 4.6 orearlier.
Starting a new Xamarin.Mac App in Visual Studio for Mac
As stated above, this guide will walk through the steps to create a Mac app called
Hello_Mac that adds a single button and label to the main window. When the button is clicked, the label will display the number of times it has been clicked.
Free Storyboard Apps For Windows
To get started, do the following steps:
Visual Studio for Mac will create the new Xamarin.Mac app and display the default files that get added to the app's solution:
Visual Studio for Mac uses the same Solution and Project structure as Visual Studio 2019. A solution is a container that can hold one or more projects; projects can include applications, supporting libraries, test applications, etc. The File > New Project template creates a solution and an application project automatically.
Anatomy of a Xamarin.Mac Application
Xamarin.Mac application programming is very similar to working with Xamarin.iOS. iOS uses the CocoaTouch framework, which is a slimmed-down version of Cocoa, used by Mac.
Take a look at the files in the project:
The following sections, will take a quick look through some of these files. Later, they will be explored in more detail, but it’s a good idea to understand their basics now.
Main.cs
The Main.cs file is very simple. It contains a static
Main method which creates a new Xamarin.Mac app instance and passes the name of the class that will handle OS events, which in this case is the AppDelegate class:
AppDelegate.cs
The
AppDelegate.cs file contains an AppDelegate class, which is responsible for creating windows and listening to OS events:
This code is probably unfamiliar unless the developer has built an iOS app before, but it’s fairly simple.
The
DidFinishLaunching method runs after the app has been instantiated, and it’s responsible for actually creating the app's window and beginning the process of displaying the view in it.
The
WillTerminate method will be called when the user or the system has instantiated a shutdown of the app. The developer should use this method to finalize the app before it quits (such as saving user preferences or window size and location).
ViewController.cs
Cocoa (and by derivation, CocoaTouch) uses what’s known as the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. The
ViewController declaration represents the object that controls the actual app window. Generally, for every window created (and for many other things within windows), there is a controller, which is responsible for the window’s lifecycle, such as showing it, adding new views (controls) to it, etc.
The
ViewController class is the main window’s controller. The controller is responsible for the life cycle of the main window. This will be examined in detail later, for now take a quick look at it:
ViewController.Designer.cs
The designer file for the Main Window class is initially empty, but it will be automatically populated by Visual Studio for Mac as the user interface is created with Xcode Interface Builder:
Designer files should not be edited directly, as they’re automatically managed by Visual Studio for Mac to provide the plumbing code that allows access to controls that have been added to any window or view in the app.
With the Xamarin.Mac app project created and a basic understanding of its components, switch to Xcode to create the user interface using Interface Builder.
Info.plist
The
Info.plist file contains information about the Xamarin.Mac app such as its Name and Bundle Identifier:
It also defines the Storyboard that will be used to display the user interface for the Xamarin.Mac app under the Main Interface dropdown. In example above,
Main in the dropdown relates to the Main.storyboard in the project's source tree in the Solution Explorer. It also defines the app's icons by specifying the Asset Catalog that contains them (AppIcon in this case).
Entitlements.plist
The app's
Entitlements.plist file controls entitlements that the Xamarin.Mac app has such as Sandboxing and iCloud:
For the Hello World example, no entitlements will be required. The next section shows how to use Xcode's Interface Builder to edit the Main.storyboard file and define the Xamarin.Mac app's UI.
Introduction to Xcode and Interface Builder
As part of Xcode, Apple has created a tool called Interface Builder, which allows a developer to create a user interface visually in a designer. Xamarin.Mac integrates fluently with Interface Builder, allowing UI to be created with the same tools as Objective-C users.
To get started, double-click the
Main.storyboard file in the Solution Explorer to open it for editing in Xcode and Interface Builder:
This should launch Xcode and look like this screenshot:
Before starting to design the interface, take a quick overview of Xcode to orient with the main features that will be used.
Note
The developer doesn't have to use Xcode and Interface Builder to create the user interface for a Xamarin.Mac app, the UI can be created directly from C# code but that is beyond the scope of this article. For the sake of simplicity, it will be using Interface Builder to create the user interface throughout the rest of this tutorial.
Components of Xcode
When opening a .storyboard file in Xcode from Visual Studio for Mac, it opens with a Project Navigator on the left, the Interface Hierarchy and Interface Editor in the middle, and a Properties & Utilities section on the right:
The following sections take a look at what each of these Xcode features do and how to use them to create the interface for a Xamarin.Mac app.
Project Navigation
When opening a .storyboard file for editing in Xcode, Visual Studio for Mac creates a Xcode Project File in the background to communicate changes between itself and Xcode. Later, when the developer switches back to Visual Studio for Mac from Xcode, any changes made to this project are synchronized with the Xamarin.Mac project by Visual Studio for Mac.
The Project Navigation section allows the developer to navigate between all of the files that make up this shim Xcode project. Typically, they will only be interested in the
.storyboard files in this list such as Main.storyboard .
Interface Hierarchy
The Interface Hierarchy section allows the developer to easily access several key properties of the user interface such as its Placeholders and main Window. This section can be used to access the individual elements (views) that make up the user interface and to adjust the way they are nested by dragging them around within the hierarchy.
Interface Editor
The Interface Editor section provides the surface on which the user interface is graphically laid out. Drag elements from the Library section of the Properties & Utilities section to create the design. As user interface elements (views) are added to the design surface, they will be added to the Interface Hierarchy section in the order that they appear in the Interface Editor.
Properties & Utilities
The Properties & Utilities section is divided into two main sections, Properties (also called Inspectors) and the Library:
Initially this section is almost empty, however if the developer selects an element in the Interface Editor or Interface Hierarchy, the Properties section will be populated with information about the given element and properties that they can adjust.
Within the Properties section, there are eight different Inspector Tabs, as shown in the following illustration:
Properties & Utility Types
From left-to-right, these tabs are:
Use the Library section to find controls and objects to place into the designer to graphically build the user interface:
Creating the Interface
With the basics of the Xcode IDE and Interface Builder covered, the developer can create the user interface for the main view.
Follow these steps to use Interface Builder:
While resizing and moving controls around, notice that Interface Builder gives helpful snap hints that are based on macOS Human Interface Guidelines. These guidelines will help the developer to create high quality apps that will have a familiar look and feel for Mac users.
Look in the Interface Hierarchy section to see how the layout and hierarchy of the elements that make up the user interface are shown:
From here the developer can select items to edit or drag to reorder UI elements if needed. For example, if a UI element was being covered by another element, they could drag it to the bottom of the list to make it the top-most item on the window.
With the user interface created, the developer will need to expose the UI items so that Xamarin.Mac can access and interact with them in C# code. The next section, Outlets and Actions, shows how to do this.
Outlets and Actions
So what are Outlets and Actions? In traditional .NET user interface programming, a control in the user interface is automatically exposed as a property when it’s added. Things work differently in Mac, simply adding a control to a view doesn’t make it accessible to code. The developer must explicitly expose the UI element to code. In order do this, Apple provides two options:
In Xcode, Outlets and Actions are added directly in code via Control-dragging. More specifically, this means that to create an Outlet or Action, the developer will choose a control element to add an Outlet or Action to, hold down the Control key on the keyboard, and drag that control directly into the code.
For Xamarin.Mac developers, this means that the developer will drag into the Objective-C stub files that correspond to the C# file where they want to create the Outlet or Action. Visual Studio for Mac created a file called
ViewController.h as part of the shim Xcode Project it generated to use Interface Builder:
This stub
.h file mirrors the ViewController.designer.cs that is automatically added to a Xamarin.Mac project when a new NSWindow is created. This file will be used to synchronize the changes made by Interface Builder and is where the Outlets and Actions are created so that UI elements are exposed to C# code.
Adding an Outlet
Pitfall 2 rom download torrent. With a basic understanding of what Outlets and Actions are, create an Outlet to expose the Label created to our C# code.
Do the following:
Adding an Action
Next, expose the button to C# code. Just like the Label above, the developer could wire the button up to an Outlet. Since we only want to respond to the button being clicked, use an Action instead.
Do the following:
With the user interface wired-up and exposed to C# code, switch back to Visual Studio for Mac and let it synchronize the changes made in Xcode and Interface Builder.
Note
It probably took a long time to create the user interface and Outlets and Actions for this first app, and it may seem like a lot of work, but a lot of new concepts were introduced and a lot of time was spent covering new ground. After practicing for a while and working with Interface Builder, this interface and all its Outlets and Actions can be created in just a minute or two.
Synchronizing Changes with Xcode
When the developer switches back to Visual Studio for Mac from Xcode, any changes that they have made in Xcode will automatically be synchronized with the Xamarin.Mac project.
Select the ViewController.designer.cs in the Solution Explorer to see how the Outlet and Action have been wired up in the C# code:
Notice how the two definitions in the ViewController.designer.cs file:
Line up with the definitions in the
ViewController.h file in Xcode:
Visual Studio for Mac listens for changes to the .h file, and then automatically synchronizes those changes in the respective .designer.cs file to expose them to the app. Notice that ViewController.designer.cs is a partial class, so that Visual Studio for Mac doesn't have to modify ViewController.cs which would overwrite any changes that the developer has made to the class.
Normally, the developer will never need to open the ViewController.designer.cs, it was presented here for educational purposes only.
Note
In most situations, Visual Studio for Mac will automatically see any changes made in Xcode and sync them to the Xamarin.Mac project. In the off occurrence that synchronization doesn't automatically happen, switch back to Xcode and then back to Visual Studio for Mac again. This will normally kick off a synchronization cycle.
Writing the Code
With the user interface created and its UI elements exposed to code via Outlets and Actions, we are finally ready to write the code to bring the program to life.
For this sample app, every time the first button is clicked, the label will be updated to show how many times the button has been clicked. To accomplish this, open the
ViewController.cs file for editing by double-clicking it in the Solution Explorer:
First, create a class-level variable in the
ViewController class to track the number of clicks that have happened. Edit the class definition and make it look like the following:
Next, in the same class (
ViewController ), override the ViewDidLoad method and add some code to set the initial message for the label:
Use
ViewDidLoad , instead of another method such as Initialize , because ViewDidLoad is called after the OShas loaded and instantiated the user interface from the .storyboard file. If the developer tried to access the label control before the .storyboard file has been fully loaded and instantiated, they would get a NullReferenceException error because the label control would not exist yet.
Next, add the code to respond to the user clicking the button. Add the following partial method to the
ViewController class:
This code attaches to the Action created in Xcode and Interface Builder and will be called any time the user clicks the button.
Testing the Application
It’s time to build and run the app to make sure it runs as expected. The developer can build and run all in one step, or they can build it without running it.
Whenever an app is built, the developer can choose what kind of build they want:
Free Storyboard App
The developer can select the type of build from the Configuration Selector at the upper left-hand corner of the Visual Studio for Mac screen:
Building the Application
In the case of this example, we just want a debug build, so ensure that Debug is selected. Build the app first by either pressing ⌘B, or from the Build menu, choose Build All.
If there weren't any errors, a Build Succeeded message will be displayed in Visual Studio for Mac's status bar. If there were errors, review the project and make sure that the steps above have been followed correctly. Start by confirming that the code (both in Xcode and in Visual Studio for Mac) matches the code in the tutorial.
Storyboard Template MacRunning the Application
There are three ways to run the app:
The app will build (if it hasn’t been built already), start in debug mode and display its main interface window:
If the button is clicked a few times, the label should be updated with the count:
Where to Next
With the basics of working with a Xamarin.Mac application down, take a look at the following documents to get a deeper understanding:
The Mac Samples Gallery contains ready-to-use code examples to help learn Xamarin.Mac.
One complete Xamarin.Mac app that includes many of the features a user would expect to find in a typical Mac application is the SourceWriter Sample App. SourceWriter is a simple source code editor that provides support for code completion and simple syntax highlighting.
The SourceWriter code has been fully commented and, where available, links have been provided from key technologies or methods to relevant information in the Xamarin.Mac documentation.
Summary
This article covered the basics of a standard Xamarin.Mac app. It covered creating a new app in Visual Studio for Mac, designing the user interface in Xcode and Interface Builder, exposing UI elements to C# code using Outlets and Actions, adding code to work with the UI elements and finally, building and testing a Xamarin.Mac app.
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