James Montemagno
James Montemagno

Live, Love, Bike, and Code.

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James Montemagno

Xamarin

How-to Integrate Helpful Support Emails in Mobile Apps with Insightful Data & Logs

In the mad rush to finish my most recent app, My Cadence [https://montemagno.com/introducing-my-cadence-for-ios-a-simple-cadence-sensor-display/], I forgot to integrate an essential feature. A feature that enables my users to easily get a hold of me to report issues or request features, which is of course email support. Both Google Play and the App Store enable you to supply a support website and email, however this is a very lack luster experience for both you and your users. For your users the…

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Asking for app reviews really works! It just takes 1 line of code!

Last week I launched a new app called My Cadence [https://mycadence.app] for both iOS [https://montemagno.com/introducing-my-cadence-for-ios-a-simple-cadence-sensor-display/] and Android [https://montemagno.com/my-cadence-now-available-on-android/]. Even though it was a quick app that only took me a week or so to build and ship [https://montemagno.com/building-testing-shipping-my-cadence-for-ios-in-less-than-a-week/] , I still followed my checklist of best practices to ensure as much success as…

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Porting My Cadence to Android in 1 Day!

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was writing up a blog post on how I was launching My Cadence for iOS [https://montemagno.com/introducing-my-cadence-for-ios-a-simple-cadence-sensor-display/] and then blogging about how I wrote and shipped the app [https://montemagno.com/building-testing-shipping-my-cadence-for-ios-in-less-than-a-week/] in under a week. Well, it wasn't yesterday, but it was just 5 days ago! After I shipped the iOS version, I was watching some HGTV on Hulu and thou…

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Building, testing, & shipping My Cadence for iOS in less than a week

My holiday hacking [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/xamarin/xamarin-holiday-season-hack-ideas/] came early this year when I decided to build my own DIY spin bike [https://montemagno.com/building-an-at-home-diy-spin-bike-for-peloton-apple-fitness/]. Soon, after a few rides, my mind started to swirl with app ideas of how to improve my ride. Then when Apple released Apple Fitness+ without support for displaying cadence information from sensors I knew I had to build an app. That app is My Cadence [ht…

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5 Must Install NuGet Packages for New Xamarin Projects

Starting your first project can be a bit overwhelming. I mean heck, I wrote nearly 3,000 words [https://montemagno.com/build-your-first-for-ios-android-app-with-xamarin-and-visual-studio/] breaking down every bit of what to select and what each option means. Oh, and I also have a full video series [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwOF5UVsZWUiHY1CkRVjYJ6dm0iCvAlfw] walking you through it step by step on my YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/jamesmontemagno]. Before I start writing…

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Build Your First for iOS & Android App with Xamarin and Visual Studio

Let's start our journey together to build beautiful native cross-platform apps with .NET, Xamarin, and Visual Studio! In this blog I am going to guide you through the entire process and describe everything that is in File -> New for Xamarin. If you are a more visual learner, I have a full video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvp7wvbyceo] that you can watch: Let's set some groundwork first by answering some frequent questions. What is .NET? .NET [https://dotnet.microsoft.com?WT.mc_…

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Enabling C# 9 in Xamarin & .NET Standard Projects

Whoa! .NET 5 is out and C# 9 is out! This means you are ready to use records, new pattern matching, and more! But wait a second... your apps haven't been upgraded to .NET 5 yet or are a project type that don't support .NET  so you don't have access to the new C# 9 features :( Or do you!?!?!?! Yes, of course you do! Most new features in C# are compiler based and not necessarily runtime based.  When you create a new project the compiler determines a default C# language based on these r…

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Shrink Your Android App Size with One Setting

When you are developing Android apps your app size can grow really fast.  We can get so caught up in the day to day that we forget how important it is to keep down the app size of our app. It may not seem like a 20MB APK is that much, but when you have limited internet or reception it can be a real pain. As an Android developer you have to develop for multiple ABIs, add a ton of resources and translations, and of course you have you have all of your source code and dependencies. You may have a…

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