James Montemagno - Page 28

Live, Love, Bike, and Code.


iOS iBeacon Background Region Monitoring

Earlier this year when iOS 8 was released I wrote up a quick blog post 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 on how this functionality works, but here are the …

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 that I have updated over time, but then I blogged about creating plugins for Xamarin.Forms, released a Vibrate Plugin, and then discussed exactly what a Plugin for Xamarin is. I love plugins as they can abstract away features common on platforms into a simple API so you never have to write the same code …

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, 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 …

James Montemagno

Building an Estimote Scavenger Hunt on iOS, Android, and Windows in C# with Xamarin

estimote: This is a guest post by James Montemagno, Developer Evangelist at Xamarin. It seems like there’s another tech conference somewhere every week. Putting together a world class event is extremely challenging, but creating a unique digital experience for your attendees can be even more of a hurdle. First step is choosing the right tools. With the Xamarin Platform, you are able to create native iOS, Android, and …

James Montemagno

Pull/Swipe To Refresh for Xamarin.Forms Android Apps

Update Xamarin.Forms now includes Pull To Refesh out of the box. Please read my article on it. It is true that I absolutely love cross platform settings for mobile applications built with Xamarin. However, there is something that I love even more… Pull To Refresh! It all started over year ago when I blogged about how to add a UIRefreshControl to MVVMCross iOS apps. Google then introduced an official …

James Montemagno

An Improved Cross-Platform Settings Library for iOS, Android, and Windows

If you follow me at all on GitHub or Twitter than you probably know that I love portable class libraries. I know this might sound odd, but I also love settings inside of mobile applications. NSUserDefault, SharedPreferences, IsolatedStorage… yup I love it. A few years back when I was doing a lot of MVVMCross development I created Mvx.Plugins.Settings to enable developers to save settings and preferences extremely …

James Montemagno

Adding Shared Projects Support For Xamarin In Visual Studio 2013

While I love portable class libraries for sharing code across multiple projects, and I absolutely love Shared Projects for sharing code within a single library or project. Shared Projects were introduced with Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 and quickly added to Xamarin Studio enabling you share code easier than ever. The two ways of sharing code are vastly different and you can read about them on the amazing Xamarin …

James Montemagno

A week in AZ: Speaking, Career Fairing, Workshopping, and Game Jamming!

What an exciting and outstanding week in Arizona. Last week I was invited back to my alma mater, the University of Advancing Technology, to participate in several events including their Tech Forum where I gave a talk, an Alumni Panel, a CocosSharp workshop, and I got to help with a 48 hour Game Jam! I was part of the 2008 graduating class at UAT and boy has our industry changed since then. I never would have imagined …

James Montemagno
James Montemagno
Author

James Montemagno

James Montemagno is a Principal Lead Program Manager for Developer Community at Microsoft. He has been a .NET developer since 2005, working in a wide range of industries including game development, printer software, and web services. Live, Love, Bike, and Code.

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