Android

Essential Xamarin.Android Templates for Visual Studio

During my Effective Navigation in Android [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw8tB45kse4] talk at last years Xamarin Evolve I had the opportunity of showcasing my Xamarin.Android Templates Pack for Visual Studio [https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bee6442f-8f5a-4bba-8849-e380b61e76b0] , which you can get from the Visual Studio Gallery under “Tools->Extensions and Updates”. I like the templates that come installed with Xamarin, however the flexibility of Visual Studio to easily creat…

James Montemagno

Coffee Filter: A C# Powered Android App in 2 Days

I love coffee. You will normally find me riding my bike around Seattle stopping from coffee shop to coffee shop indulging in a 8oz quad lattes, strong black coffee, or probably a shot in the dark. So when I set out to blog about the new Google Maps Lite API [http://blog.xamarin.com/android-tips-faster-maps-with-google-maps-lite/] it was pretty obvious what I needed to do… create an app showing me the closest coffee shops around me. In that moment Coffee Filter [https://play.google.com/store/apps…

James Montemagno

How To Keep Your Android App Size Down

On my recent visit out to Tonto National Forest [http://www.fs.usda.gov/tonto/] to visit one of my best friends,Luke Karrys [http://www.twitter.com/lukekarrys], I started to realize the importance of trying to keep your app size down when shipping Android apps to Google Play. Working from the middle of the forest is relaxing, productive, and just plain fun, but there is one huge issue, internet and cell reception barely exists in the the middle of no where. When I woke up one morning and saw…

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

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

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

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 [http://motzcod.es/post/102974754207/an-improved-cross-platform-settings-library-for-ios] 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 [http://motzcod.es/post/59125989518/mv…

James Montemagno

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

If you follow me at all on GitHub [http://www.github.com/jamesmontemagno] or Twitter [http://www.twitter.com/jamesmontemagno] 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 e…

James Montemagno

Tags

Essential Xamarin.Android Templates for Visual Studio

Coffee Filter: A C# Powered Android App in 2 Days

How To Keep Your Android App Size Down

Fixing activatedBackgroundIndicator in AppCompat Navigation Drawer

Lollipop AppCompat PreferenceActivity

Text To Speech Plugin for Xamarin and Windows

Pull/Swipe To Refresh for Xamarin.Forms Android Apps

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

James Montemagno

Tags