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2021
How To Get a PAT (Personal Access Token) for Azure DevOps from the az cli
Another long title for a relatively short article. In case you aren’t aware, the az cli has a great extension for Azure DevOps and supports automatically logging you in to the devops extension when you use az login. Very helpful and simple, no need to manually issue a PAT through the Azure DevOps portal. Now, […]
How to Queue an Azure DevOps yaml Pipeline with Parameters from PowerShell
Long enough title? It might be longer than the actual article content. If you need to queue a yaml pipeline in Azure DevOps from a script, you may be tempted to use the az cli and the devops extension. The extension is useful, but has some bugs/gaps I would recommend using it in combination with […]
2020
Community Planet Xamarin Snppts.dev Xamarin Slack Community Maintained Components Twitch Streamers Official Xamarin is open source on Github Xamarin on YouTube Xamarin Community Standups Xamarin on Microsoft Learn Dotnet Conf: Focus on Xamarin Other Frameworks Comet Uno Platform AvaloniaUI Fabulous Mobile Blazor Bindings Mobile Blazor Bindings Getting Starting
How To Confirm Exit in Android with Xamarin Forms
Update – 2020-03-05 I updated the samples and snippets to include some reader feedback: Accounted for Master-Detail navigation in App.PromptToConfirmExit Provided a toast + back button confirmation alternative sample Updated sample: allow toggling between Master-Detail and Tabbed navigation; allow toggling between dialog and toast confirmation styles. Overview Ever hit the navigation bar back button when […]
Implementing MSAL + AAD B2C in Xamarin – 6 Tips, Tricks and Facts
Inspired by Steven Thewissen’s excellent MSAL article, I thought I would share what I have learned about MSAL over the 3+ years I have worked with MSAL and Xamarin. If you’re just getting started, be sure to read Steven’s article, he does a great job covering how to use the tools. This article is a […]
Mobile Blazor Bindings – Getting Started + Why You Should Care
TLDR: The Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings can result in much less XAML and C#, 64% less in my experiment, but the tech isn’t quite ready for prime time. Update – 2020-02-24 I migrated my sample to the Mobile Blazor Bindings February Preview 2 Update. It only took a few minutes and fixed the issues I […]
2019
I generally use Xamarin Forms to build apps. I’m currently working on a new project and using all the new greatness from Prism. One of those great features is Xaml Navigation. This is a fancy markup extension which allows you to navigate to another page in your app without implementing anything in your view models! […]
Well, this post is slightly overdue…TO Mobile Devs hosted Xamarin Saturday 2019 back on August 24th, 2019, seems like a lifetime ago! All the Toronto Xamarin Saturday 2019 sessions can be seen on YouTube! David Ortinau opened the morning and afternoon, everyone was in the main room for these talks. The morning topic was Comet, […]
Next Saturday in Toronto is Xamarin Saturday! In case you haven’t heard, the Toronto Mobile .NET Developers group is hosting a full-day session, Xamarin Saturday, on August 24th at BSI Labs. Whether you are totally new to Xamarin or are an experienced Xamarin expert, we will have something for everyone! We will have an incredible […]
iOS 13 TestFlight Screenshot Feedback
I am often more irritated than pleased by Apple’s announcements. The notch, features that have been in Android for years being lauded as a revolutionary innovation, dropping the headphone jack…I could go on, but it would be exhausting for both of us. I think it’s important to know what I think about Apple before I […]
TLDR: This is going to be an excellent conference that you don’t want to miss! If you buy a Xamarin Developer Summit ticket within the next 24 hours, you will get a complimentary night at the The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel & Convention Center. The New Evolve Since Microsoft purchased Xamarin and ended Xamarin Evolve, […]
When testing apps, I generally use a combination of 3 tools for distribution. It’s important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various available tools to easily onboard testers and gather feedback. App Center I’ll only be touching on App Center Distribute, none of the other features. I would say that it’s worthwhile to […]
Version Checking for Xamarin Apps
The Problem One of the biggest differences between web apps and mobile apps is the decentralized nature of mobile apps. Instead of pushing updates into servers or the cloud, we instead push the updates through the App Store and Google Play Store where the updates are pulled down by our users. The fact that updates […]
If you are using EF.Core in Xamarin, the Xamarin.iOS linker needs to exclude various BCL classes in order to properly function. Include this Linker.xml in your Xamarin.iOS head project to ensure the linker doesn’t remove any of the required dependencies! https://gist.github.com/dylanberry/081ba2ffb55e37d5d05f7588be3178cc
TLDR: Add HttpTracer to your project and pass a new instance to HttpClient for Fiddler-like http audit/debug capabilities. What is HttpTracer? About a year ago, Daniel John Causer, Chase Florell and I decided that some code that I was using to inspect HTTP traffic in my Xamarin apps should be an open source library. The […]
I was asked to list out the mobile development podcasts I listen to, so here they are! https://www.mergeconflict.fm/ http://androidbackstage.blogspot.com/ https://fragmentedpodcast.com/ http://insideiosdev.com/ https://www.gonemobile.io/ https://www.xamarinpodcast.com/ https://appinthecloud.net/
Xamarin Dev Tools – Hello, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC.
Xamarin Development Tools Part 1 – Windows vs. macOS I’m going to speak from experience here because it’s been a long road. The first 2 years I worked on Xamarin and mobile projects, I used a Windows machine, it was a decent laptop with an Intel Core i7 chip, 16 GB of ram and an […]
Here we go, another attempt at blogging! So much has happened since I last wrote, 3.5 years ago. I have been running a user group, Toronto Mobile .NET Developers Group for the past 18 months and it has been a fantastic experience. Organizing a user group/meetup can be a lot of work and it is […]
2015
Late last week, I had an untimely incident with my phone. Right before my sprint review, a mug fell a mere 3 inches on my OnePlus One cracking the screen causing the digitizer to stop functioning. This was the first phone which I have ever broken. I don’t use a case and I take good […]
Here Be Dragons: Xamarin.Forms And Material Design
In my last post, I noted the following: We are planning on using the master-detail view for the Android version of the app while following the material design guidelines. For iOS the app will use a tabbed bar along the bottom of the screen and a settings icon in the navigation bar. I had made this decision […]
Sprint 1: The Great Learning Curve
We had the sprint retro for our first 2 week iteration and did not have much to show for it. The learning curve of Xamarin, plus time for planning and time stolen by other projects caused the velocity to make a major hit. Only 4 of 8 story points were completed in sprint 1, the […]
Over the past 4 days, I have been working with Xamarin here and there. I’m starting to get the lay of the land, and I may actually have some things of value to share. Here’s a quick braindump: When creating your Visual Studio solution/projects, start with “Blank App (Xamarin.Forms.Shared)”, this will create your “core” project […]
Since iOS development requires a Mac, I have decided to look at the Hackintosh-on-a-VM route. Here are the resources I used to get up and running: Main guide – http://www.macbreaker.com/2015/01/virtualbox-yosemite-zone.html Troubleshooting – http://givemesome.tips/guide-to-fix-most-common-problems-with-hackintosh-347/ Personally, I encountered a few different issues which the Troubleshooting guide helped me fix. I now have my VM up and running and […]
$12,000 USD/year for the entry level plan?! You have got to be kidding me! Here are a couple of options with more reasonable price points: AppThwack – starts at $20 USD/month Testdroid – starts at $49 USD/month
Pete Goodliffe On How To Be A Better Developer
The kind of stuff I’m talking about here, is humility. You don’t want to work with guys who think they know it all but don’t. Being humble is the key thing. http://blog.fogcreek.com/going-beyond-code-to-become-a-better-programmer-interview-with-pete-goodliffe/
I’m a little late to the mobile game…like 9 years late, but I really haven’t been motivated to create anything for the mobile space. I have daydreamed about creating a fantastic mobile app for the iPhone and Android and it has remained just that, a daydream. When I put in after hours time, for hobby […]
This is how I would describe the REST API I’m dealing with today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bLFO4ZV0i4