Xamarin

Part 3: My StepCounter Android: Pretty UI!

I am no UI expert that is for sure, but I really like what Michael James did with the iOS version of My StepCounter. He made a nice background that changed colors from Red to Green, had a chromeless UI, and utilized very nice fonts. I want to take advantage of some of the work he did and also customize it for android. Transparent ActionBar I Wanted to ensure that the full screen was being utilized for this app, but still wanted to take advantage of the unique actions that I can put in the Actio…

James Montemagno

Part 1: My StepCounter Android: Step Sensors

In February, my fellow Xamarin Michael James [https://twitter.com/micjames6] published a wonderful app for iOS called My StepCounter [http://micjames.co.uk/stepcounter-now-open-source/]. This app uses the new CoreMotion apis in iOS 7 to track your steps on your iPhone 5s. This isn’t a new concept and there are plenty of devices and apps out there that do step tracking, but what makes My StepCounter special is that Michael gave it a beautiful simplistic UI & beautiful animations. On top of t…

James Montemagno

Xamarin.Android Templates Pack!

Xamarin.Android already ships with a bunch of great project templates for Visual Studio, however I find that there are a few things missing. I usually start a new project with a Navigation Drawer and I am always adding new Menus, but I can never seem to remember every little bit of XML that is needed for some complex menus such as share and search. This is why I have created the Xamarin.Android Templates Pack. This is the first release that includes these items that I have listed. You can downlo…

James Montemagno

Cross Platform Settings for Everyone!

If you haven’t figure it out by now, I simply love portable class libraries. I have been blogging about them, talking about them on Channel 9 [http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Using-Portable-Class-Libraries-with-Xamarin] , and I even did a 18 city roadshow [http://blog.xamarin.com/a-look-back-at-the-.net-rocks-roadshow/] discussing PCLs and Azure Mobile Services. On my GitHub [http://www.github.com/jamesmontemagno] I have started to build out a lot of applications, someti…

James Montemagno

Portable Class Libraries + HttpClient: So Happy Together!

I was recently on Channel 9’s VS Toolbox talking about Xamarin and Portable Class Libraries [http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Using-Portable-Class-Libraries-with-Xamarin] where I showed of an expense taking application called My Expenses [https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/myexpenses]. This little app uses a portable class library and a SQLite database to store and track all of your expenses. I built out a full app for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone using this single PCL th…

James Montemagno

Portable Class Library Tips and Tricks

There has been a recent explosion of PCL use since Microsoft and Xamarin added official support for Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS. It is really amazing to have one project that is shared completely across Android, iOS, and all of the Windows platforms. I have blogged before about how to get “fake” PCL support, but I wanted to give an updated post on how to get up and running with a bunch of tips as well. It is important to remember that there is nothing special you need to do to get PCL su…

James Montemagno

Azure Mobile Services + Xamarin + PCL

You might have noticed that both @ChrisNTR [http://www.twitter.com/chrisntr] and myself have been on the .NET Rocks Roadshow [http://xamarin.com/modern-apps-roadshow]. We have been talking to awesome devs all over the US about Xamarin, PCL, and Azure all wrapped up into an amazing demo [http://bit.ly/DNRXamarin] (full source code there). One common question that has come up is that while a lot of people have the demo up and running they are having a hard time getting Azure + PCL integrated into…

James Montemagno

Let's fix that X86 Android Emulator

So genymotion is awesome! However, they recently released version 2.0 and while it seems like it is fine for personal use, using for anything else costs a huge premium. This isn’t a huge issue for some, but more pressing is the issues that I have run into with memory leaks and virtual box causing havok on my machine. So back to it, the good old x86 Intel HAX Android emulator for PC/Mac. First things first is that you can not run Hyper-V side by side HAX. This means if you want to run the x86 em…

James Montemagno

Tags

Part 3: My StepCounter Android: Pretty UI!

Part 1: My StepCounter Android: Step Sensors

Xamarin.Android Templates Pack!

Cross Platform Settings for Everyone!

Portable Class Libraries + HttpClient: So Happy Together!

Portable Class Library Tips and Tricks

Let's fix that X86 Android Emulator

James Montemagno

Tags