James Montemagno

January 30th, 2015

Force iOS, Android, & WP to Landscape

During this weeks Xamarin.Forms 1.3 webinar I received an interesting question about how you can force your mobile applications to always use a specific orientation. This is actually easy to accomplish on each platform with just a few settings in each project. Let’s take a look: Android First thing to do is open up your MainActivity.cs file. At the very top you will see an [Activity] attribute. This attribute is used to describe your activity to the AndroidManifest file that is built for you…

James Montemagno

Fixing activatedBackgroundIndicator in AppCompat Navigation Drawer

I was overly excited when I got news that our amazing component team had finished the latest binding for AppCompat v7 rev 21 [https://components.xamarin.com/view/xamandroidsupportv7appcompat]! This was exciting to me because this meant that any developer could now introduce material design to their Android app and target older devices all the way back to API 7 (although you should just target API 15). I got busy migrating Bike Now [http://www.github.com/jamesmontemagno/BikeNow] over to AppCompat…

James Montemagno

Load More Items at End of ListView in Xamarin.Forms

I recently published a few blogs on how to add pull to refresh to your Xamarin.Forms iOS [http://motzcod.es/post/87917979362/pull-to-refresh-for-xamarin-forms-ios] and Android [http://motzcod.es/post/103224921992/pull-swipe-to-refresh-for-xamarin-forms-android] applications. This sparked a question from another developer [http://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/comment/95999/#Comment_95999] as to if you could swipe to load more at the bottom of the ListView. My feedback here is that a swipe to lo…

James Montemagno

Lollipop AppCompat PreferenceActivity

I fell in love with material design the moment I saw it and at Evolve 2014 my good friend and co-worker Jérémie Laval [https://twitter.com/jeremie_laval] and I actually gave 2 sessions on the concept and implementation of material design [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=evolve+2014+material+design] in your apps. With the introduction of v7 app compat library rev 21 you are now able to upgrade your apps while maintain compatibility with older versions of Android. If you are looking t…

James Montemagno

More Plugins for Xamarin: Vibrate, Device Info, Connectivity, & Battery

I hope that everyone has been having a wonderful holiday season. Over the last month I have had one large goal; to create a plethora of Plugins for Xamarin [http://motzcod.es/post/104507063997/what-exactly-is-a-plugin-for-xamarin]. This desire to create plugins started a long time ago when I created my very first NuGet packages for cross platform settings [http://motzcod.es/post/102974754207/an-improved-cross-platform-settings-library-for] . Once I iterated on the plugin and saw how successful a…

James Montemagno

iOS iBeacon Background Region Monitoring

Earlier this year when iOS 8 was released I wrote up a quick blog post [http://motzcod.es/post/97662738237/scanning-for-ibeacons-in-ios-8] on how to ensure you can scan for iBeacons with the new CLLocationManager RequestWhenInUseAuthorization flag. However recently I have received a lot of questions about how to scan for iBeacons when the app is in the background or when it has been dismissed completely. Apple has some amazing docs [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExpe…

James Montemagno

Text To Speech Plugin for Xamarin and Windows

You may have noticed that I am on a big Plugins for Xamarin kick currently. I have always had my Settings Plugin [http://motzcod.es/post/102974754207/an-improved-cross-platform-settings-library-for] that I have updated over time, but then I blogged about creating plugins for Xamarin.Forms [http://blog.xamarin.com/creating-reusable-plugins-for-xamarin.forms/], released a Vibrate Plugin [https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/VibratePlugin], and then discussed exactly what a Plugin for Xamarin is [ht…

James Montemagno

What Exactly is a Plugin for Xamarin?

I am so glad that you asked! I recently blogged about creating reusable plugins for Xamarin.Forms [http://blog.xamarin.com/creating-reusable-plugins-for-xamarin.forms/], and it might have caught you a bit off guard. Does Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin itself have plugins? The short answer is YES with the power of PCLs and NuGet. Component vs. Plugin For a long time, Xamarin developers have been able to add rich functionality to their mobile applications by adding Components from the Component Store […

James Montemagno

Tags

Force iOS, Android, & WP to Landscape

Fixing activatedBackgroundIndicator in AppCompat Navigation Drawer

Load More Items at End of ListView in Xamarin.Forms

Lollipop AppCompat PreferenceActivity

More Plugins for Xamarin: Vibrate, Device Info, Connectivity, & Battery

iOS iBeacon Background Region Monitoring

Text To Speech Plugin for Xamarin and Windows

What Exactly is a Plugin for Xamarin?

Tags