Xamarin

Optimizing Xamarin Apps & Libraries with the Linker

The Xamarin linker is one of the most important pieces of technology when building mobile apps, that no one knows exists. It does all of the hard work for you, stripping out all unused code from libraries that you include in your apps. It should only be used in release mode as it takes extra time to compile your app, but means that your app will be smaller: The linker has specific implementations for both iOS and Android and is completely customizable. Linking for App Developers Before I get…

James Montemagno

Hangout, Drink Coffee, & Cycle with Me at Build 2019

Microsoft Build 2019 is right around the corner (not only from where I live, but also it starts next Monday), so what better time to plan some meetups with awesome .NET developers <3. There will be tons of awesome sessions, the Xamarin booth, but also tons of coffee drinking with me, and even a bike ride opportunity. Here is my schedule for Build! Monday May 6th 7am - 8am: Early Morning Coffee (pre-keynote): Monorail Espresso - (across the street from convention) 3pm - 3:30pm: Hub Theater…

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 changing my main day job, but also the city that I lived in with a fresh start i…

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 wasn't sold on it because I have a full CI/CD pipeline setup for all of my projects…

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 requests to add new features. Over the last year I teamed up with my good friend And…

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 in Xamarin.Essentials if everyone seemed to want it? The answer is actually pret…

James Montemagno

Android Emulators On Hyper-V Are Pretty Awesome

I have been a mobile developer for 7 years now and since the day I started one of my largest complaints has been the Android emulator. From the very start we had just ARM emulators that were a complete joke to work with as they moved at a snail's pace. From there a bunch of companies attempted to fix the problem by using custom built solutions on top of Virtual Box or Hyper-V. Google has done a lot of work in the last few years to improve the Android emulators with Quick Boot, more customization…

James Montemagno

Real Time Communication for Mobile with SignalR (Core)

Real Time Communication or RTC as the cool kids call it has always been a hot topic, especially for mobile. In normal mobile development when we wanted to get updates of data we would make a web request to a server, pull down data, and update our user interface. If you wanted to get bits of data on demand and in real time you would have to integrate WebSockets or some sort of push notifications to receive data as it is happening. However, it doesn't have to be anymore with the latest version of…

James Montemagno

Tags

Optimizing Xamarin Apps & Libraries with the Linker

Hangout, Drink Coffee, & Cycle with Me at Build 2019

Why I Choose Xamarin to Build Cross-Platform Apps

Super Simple Git Tagging & Releases in Azure DevOps

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

Unique Device & App Installation Identifiers for Mobile Apps

Android Emulators On Hyper-V Are Pretty Awesome

Real Time Communication for Mobile with SignalR (Core)

James Montemagno

Tags