James Montemagno

Modernizing Hanselman.Forms: A Customizable Brand Mobile App

The night before we launched Xamarin.Forms in mid-2014, I was having a conversation with Nat about creating a nice out of the box real world example of a Xamarin.Forms app. We discussed several different app ideas, but we were short on time as it was already 8PM at night. Then I thought perhaps I could create an app for my idol and fellow Chipotle lover Scott Hanselman. Fast-forward 8 hours and several cups of coffee …

James Montemagno

Xamarin.Forms: Fully Customize Bottom Tabs on Android & Turn Off Shifting

It seems as if the BottomNavigationView aka Bottom Tabs on Android is one of the top things that I write about on my blogs. There was an introduction post, how to use reflection to remove shifting on native Xamarin.Android, official support in Xamarin.Forms, and most recently how to get a nice drop shadow. I am back one more time to talk specifically about how to finely tune those bottom tabs on android and stop the …

James Montemagno

Xamarin.Forms: Drop Shadow/Elevation on Android Bottom Navigation TabbedPage

It is a tale as old of time fighting with Android elevation and drop shadows. First it was the Toolbar on a Navigation page and now it is the new fancy bottom tabs that we got in Xamarin.Forms 3.1. I know what you are thinking... another custom renderer... NOPE! You just have to know to set a few different properties correctly.

James Montemagno

February 11, 2019
5 min read

Conference Organizers & Attendees: Donate Your Swag

I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to attend and present to so many amazing developers at great conferences around the globe. I even get to attend a conference from time to time, but one thing has always bothered me...The Stuff We All Get aka SWAG! Don't get me wrong, I love swag! Who doesn't love a cool bag, mug, or shirt branded with our companies favorite logos? The first time you walk into a …

James Montemagno

Why I Choose Xamarin to Build Cross-Platform Apps

It has been a little over 7 years since I left my day job at Canon crafting wonderful printer workflow management software, to dive into the world of mobile development. At the time it was an extremely tough decision because I had been only working on desktop Windows Forms and WPF applications, and this change meant entering a whole new unknown world of platforms that I didn't know much about. This move was not only …

James Montemagno

Super Simple Git Tagging & Releases in Azure DevOps

I am going to be honest with all of you, I never really understood Git tags and releases inside of GitHub. In my old TFVC days I would just create a branch with the name of the release and call that my "tag" so I could always go back to it. What sparked my interest was seeing a bunch of popular projects that I was using combine tags with the GitHub releases. I started reading the documentation and still …

James Montemagno

Enhanced Mobile App Versioning in Azure DevOps (VSTS) with Mobile Tasks

A little over a year ago, I introduced my Mobile App Tasks Extensions for iOS and Android into the Azure DevOps (VSTS) marketplace. For iOS and Android developers it made the tasks of versioning and adjusting package names a breeze. They were written completely in TypeScript with VS Code and of course are open source on GitHub. Since the initial release I have received overall positive feedback and a few feature …

James Montemagno

Unique Device & App Installation Identifiers for Mobile Apps

One common query I get all the time from developers is how to get a unique device or application identifier for their mobile app. After deciding to not include an API for this in Xamarin.Essentials we heard a lot of different use cases for it including: Client/Server Communication Login Validation In-App Purchase Verification Licensing Purposes The next obvious question that you may have is why didn't we include it …

James Montemagno

James Montemagno

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