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December 2024
As developers, we've all faced the tedious task of styling user interfaces in .NET MAUI. For many, the and helpers are wellknown goto options for applying styles. But did you know there's a hidden g...
May 2024
Xamarin emerged as a gamechanger in the world of mobile app development, offering the promise of writing code once and deploying it everywhere. To me, that was a premise that instantly clicked. The qu...
March 2024
In essence it's a fairly simple NuGet package. Maybe one you didn't even know you needed. But if you've ever found yourself wrestling with XAML layouts, scratching your head over elusive UI elements, ...
November 2023
In this last installment we're going to take a look at the Android specific pipeline getting your app all the way to the Google Play Store. In of this series I set up a parent workflow that passes pa...
October 2023
This time around we're going to take a look at the iOS specific pipeline, which gets your app binary all the way to the Apple AppStore for testing. In I set up a parent workflow that passes a bunch o...
September 2023
To do so, we'll be using nested workflows for both of these different platforms, which are called from a root workflow. This post will cover the overarching workflow while next installments will cover...
February 2022
Moving resources to a single project One of the common pet peeves with Xamarin.Forms is the need to copy a lot of similar resources across multiple projects. If, for example, you have a specific imag...
January 2022
We commonly refer to the object encapsulating all of this as the host, and it’s typically configured through the method in a class. Alternatively, a class can also provide an entry point to configu...
January 2022
As a developer, you can create a custom renderer that allows you to target a specific type of control on a specific platform and override its builtin behavior. For example, if you want to remove the u...
November 2021
Have you ever done any mobile development in the Microsoft ecosystem? Then you might’ve heard about Xamarin. The technique, at this point synonymous with the company that originally built it, goes bac...
June 2021
Recently I've picked up a few little projects again after having been on a hiatus of sorts. I noticed I hadn't blogged for a while either, so it's time to kill a few birds with this one little stone i...
January 2021
In iOS14, Apple introduced us to a new UIDatePicker. However, you may want to revert back to the old wheellike style. How can we do it? Let's check it out! Today we'll be taking a look at the . If you...
January 2021
I recently used the bottom tabs navigation for Android, which comes with a fancy animation scaling the selected item. But what if you don't want that? Making your apps look similar on all platforms is...
December 2020
Dark mode; it's all the rage in apps these days. Its main goal seems to be saving our eyes from burning out when reading things in a dark environment, but is that true? The theory behind it When bro...
November 2020
We can interact with our phones in different ways, but the most commonly used one is through touch. But what makes for good touch targets and how can we improve upon what we get out of the box in Xama...
October 2020
When creating a text input in Xamarin.Forms you might want to show a numeric keyboard. However, when setting it up and running your app on iOS you can't put in negative numbers. What's up with that? ...
July 2020
It's been in the making for quite a while and the road to getting to the end result has been quite a struggle. However, it's finally time to release version 2.0 of PancakeView! What's new? So what d...
June 2020
A while ago about using the concept of a base page in Xamarin.Forms. Since people are still looking at options to swap out native controls for custom implementations due to complex visual requirement...
May 2020
Why would you want to be livestreaming? When I started this year I set myself a goal to try new things and get out of my comfort zone of blogging. After all, writing blogs can be a fairly solitary tas...
April 2020
Movement breathes life into your app. But getting started with animation in Xamarin.Forms might not be the simplest thing. This post explains how to get started with creating some cool animations you ...
April 2020
I had the privilege of being asked to speak at the latest dotNETConf, which completely focussed on Xamarin. My very first speaking gig, but how did I end up there and what was it like? In this post, I...
March 2020
Using an icon font in your app for a while now, but what if the existing ones aren't to your liking? It's pretty easy to make your own if you have vector art available for them. Let's take a peek! ...
March 2020
Neumorphism (or neuomorphism) might be a word you've never heard before. If that's the case, then this is the blog post for you! We will take a peek at what it means and how we might be able to achiev...
February 2020
I recently released a new version of my DebugRainbows plugin, which adds grid overlays to the set of debugging tools it offers. Let's take a closer look at what they are and how to use them! How did...
February 2020
Authenticating users in our app is a common challenge that mobile developers need to tackle. Leveraging existing authentication systems like those of social networks or big companies like Microsoft's ...
January 2020
While building our latest Xamarin app we recently ran into an issue where a button on Android would only have a partial ripple effect. This post explores the workaround we ended up implementing. W...
January 2020
We all know and love Microsoft's offering when it comes to analytics and crash reporting for our mobile apps. But what if you're one of those people that are interested in even more indepth usage sta...
December 2019
As a Xamarin developer, you have surely come across a scenario where you've mistyped a binding and didn't figure it out until hours later. Let's see if we can improve that with XAML compilation and co...
December 2019
A while ago we started , asking you to submit your goodlooking UIs to the platform and promising swag in the process. Now that the deadline has passed, let’s take a quick look back on this challenge! ...
November 2019
As you probably know I'm one of the cofounders of together with my bestie Gerald Versluis. This month of November is all about getting more content into the platform and what better way to do it than...
September 2019
Have you always wanted to create your own NuGet package but not quite sure where to start? Let's take a peek at how I built my and how I distribute them using Azure DevOps! Since my primary focus is...
August 2019
You may have used in your Xamarin.Forms adventures in the past. Ever dreamed of breaking out of that rectangular/circular mould? Well, now you can with the latest update! Introducing 1.1.8 A whil...
August 2019
A new version of Xamarin.Forms has hit NuGet feeds around the globe. Let's take a quick peek at what has changed under the hood! Improvements to Shell Shell has taken the Xamarin.Forms world by sto...
July 2019
If you're like me and mess around with UI in Xamarin.Forms a lot you might've come across the problem of a control or view not displaying as you'd expect it to. This little package may help you in fin...
July 2019
Have you ever had a scenario where using the builtin navigation bar and other UI elements simply didn't cut it? Perhaps it's been suggested to you by a designer that the default elements are just ugly...
June 2019
Fellow community member has recently held a Xamarin Month initiative. During the entire month of February, someone from the community / Xamarin team posted a blog about Xamarinrelated topics. I would...
May 2019
Recently I've been pushing out a few NuGet packages with components that I use in my every day Xamarin work. This blog post is meant to give you a little overview of these packages and how they can he...
April 2019
They say that seeing new places can work wonders for your creativity. I've recently gone on a trip to Seattle, visiting the Microsoft MVP Summit. With half an hour to kill in between sessions, I start...
February 2019
If you frequent this blog you probably know I like creating coollooking stuff in Xamarin.Forms. Since that's what I like doing, why would I stop? So here's another one! Finding inspiration for one of...
November 2018
As you may have seen from reading other content on this blog I dabble in the world of cryptocurrency. To help me on my position sizing I figured I'd create a little calculator app. Obviously, if you k...
October 2018
A while ago I wrote on creating a simple carousel for your Xamarin.Forms app. That post also showed off a cool parallax effect on a carousel. I've always wanted to come back to that effect, let's get...
October 2018
Wow. This has been a while. A long while. Five months to be precise. But don't worry, I will blog more regularly from now on! However, I may need to explain where I've been all this time... Busy sav...
April 2018
I've blogged about Azure Functions before and have speaken highly of it as well. While diving deeper into them there are definitely some drawbacks to be found though. How about doing a binding redirec...
March 2018
A lot of apps currently in stores have some sort of walkthrough or tutorial screen that walks you through the basic functionality of an app. Let's see what kind of things go into making one of those s...
February 2018
If you're anything like me you probably have an iPhone cable near you at all times when working on a Xamarin app. It will probably look like it has seen better days but it still works doesn't it? Bec...
January 2018
In October of 2014 Xamarin announced one of their new flagship products: Xamarin Insights, a realtime monitoring system that enables you to identify, report, and track issues that are impacting users....
November 2017
Microsoft Connect 2017 has come and gone and a lot of new awesome stuff was announced across the board. I'm partial to mobile development using Xamarin and the whole Devops process using VSTS, so here...
November 2017
In we built a trading bot using an Azure Function. In this 2nd part we will create a simple mobile app to keep track of what our bot is doing. Since it's still a robot we also want to control it a bi...
November 2017
Want to get rich quickly? Want to earn money while you sleep? Even though it sounds amazing these are the kind of things you can achieve simply by building a cryptocurrency trading bot which you can h...
October 2017
I recently started exploring the wonderful world of Azure Functions and while they are a great tool to move towards a cloudbased architecture I started to wonder... How should I be deploying Azure Fun...
September 2017
It seems like people really like this kind of content, so I decided to keep it up for now. This is the third instalment in this series already and this time we're going to be taking a look at the Spot...
September 2017
Developers can use Effects in Xamarin Forms to customize native controls and add some styling of their own. But why not simply use a custom renderer to achieve the same thing? While that is certainly ...
September 2017
My previous post about creating a fancy Xamarin Forms UI was a whole lot of fun to do and I got some awesome feedback so it's time for another. Since running is one of my hobbies I see a whole lot of ...
August 2017
When creating a Xamarin Forms application there's almost no getting around using a component at some point. When you have a lot of items to display you might even consider adding grouping. But how d...
August 2017
I love tinkering with UI. There, I said it. Even though I'm a developer first and foremost I cannot help the fact that any mobile app UI I create has to look fancy. However most of my development work...
August 2017
I've talked about your mobile apps using VSTS before. But there's a simpler alternative in the works at Microsoft; Mobile Center. So let's have a quick look at it! Getting started with Mobile Cente...
July 2017
In the previous articles in this series we set up our CI builds and versioned our app. Now we need to be talking about distribution. This is a vital part of any DevOps pipeline. In this blogpost we wi...
July 2017
Knowing what your app is doing after you've released it into the wild is very important. When it comes to Xamarin there are several products that offer functionality such as crash reporting and analyt...
June 2017
When building an app for a customer that has an active YouTube channel you might get the requirement to embed their YouTube channel into the app. This is actually simpler then you might think. Since Y...
June 2017
This is the 4th post in the Xamarin and DevOps series. The topic at hand is versioning of your mobile app. Having a standardised version number helps you track your releases and issues that might occu...
May 2017
Congratulations, you've made it to the third post in this series on getting started with DevOps in a Xamarin project. Last time we created a Continuous Integration pipeline for Android so this time it...
May 2017
When using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) you have the choice to create a repository using Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) or Git. Up until recently there wasn't really a simple option to m...
May 2017
This is the second post in a series on getting started with DevOps in a Xamarin project. In this post we will be looking at automating the build process which gives you the advantages of improving you...
May 2017
This is the first post in a series on getting started with DevOps in a Xamarin project. One of the cornerstones of DevOps is automating a lot of tedious work such as builds, releases and testing. With...
March 2017
In a Web API project I recently started working on I found that testing it using a tool like Postman works pretty well, but having to type out all your test requests can become quite tedious. That's a...
November 2016
Een snorkeltripje naar het dichtbij gelegen eiland Nusa Lembongan, dat leek ons wel wat. Althans, na de vrouw ervan overtuigd te hebben dat kwallen en haaien hier waarschijnlijk niet zitten. Longen ...
November 2016
Rijst. We eten het allemaal wel eens, maar hoe gaat het van een zompig veld naar een mooie rijstkorrel? How do they do it? Gebrek aan toeristen? Maar eerst gaan we terug naar het begin van de dag t...
November 2016
Op Bali bevinden zich een aantal vulkanen en het landschap is er erg bergachtig. Het leek ons een goed plan om boven op een berg gedropt te worden en met de fiets door de binnenlanden af te dalen. P...
November 2016
Op het moment van schrijven is het alweer ruim vrijdag, maar onze donderdag had ook nog wel wat moois te bieden. Laten we eens kijken wat er dit keer gebeurd is, shall we? Iemand koffie? Een hele d...
November 2016
Ruim een jaar geleden tikte ik een serie blogs over ons reisje naar Thailand en nu is het zover; deel 1 uit een nieuwe serie met als onderwerp Bali! Dit tropische Indonesische eiland is ons thuis voo...
August 2016
When developing applications you inevitably encounter a piece of legacy code. In our case this code was put into DLL files that were being used by quite a lot projects. However, when you want to move ...
June 2016
One of the recent additions to the Xamarin family of products is the Xamarin Test Recorder. What this nifty little tool does is allow you to record your UI tests while you're navigating through your a...
April 2016
After a few months of development we are proud to announce a new service for everyone interested in Xamarin and Xamarin Forms specifically! Not every company has a design department at their disposa...
April 2016
Last Wednesday I completed my Xamarin University exam which means I can call myself a Xamarin Mobile Certified Developer for the next year. I had planned on writing about the experience but some other...
February 2016
Xamarin Forms is a great platform for quickly making multiplatform mobile apps. Xamarin markets it as a platform that isn't quite suited for creating complex UIs but that doesn't necessarily have to b...
January 2016
When developing a web app using ASP.NET MVC you sometimes come across to make decisions based on the current page. A good example of this is when you're using Bootstrap and you want to add "active" cl...
October 2015
Je hebt van die dagen op vakantie dat je het rustig aan doet. Relatief gezien was het vandaag zo'n dag. Vrij vroeg worden we wakker omdat we op het dak regen horen plenzen. Aangezien we vandaag naar e...
October 2015
Om tot die situatie te komen moeten we terug naar vanmorgen rond een uur of kwart voor 6. Als je naar Koh Phi Phi wil moet je namelijk vroeg opstaan. En dat op vakantie! Wanneer we bij de ferry aankom...
October 2015
Daar zitten we dan na een binnenlandse vlucht van Chiang Mai (het noorden) naar Phuket (het zuiden) van een goeie twee uur. Klaar om aan het strandgedeelte van de vakantie te beginnen. Helaas zonder o...
October 2015
Daar lig je dan in een bamboehutje ergens hoog op een berg in Thailand waar krekels de hele avond lang hun getjirp niet stil kunnen houden en het aantal gevonden WiFi netwerken welgeteld 0 is. Om tot...
October 2015
Rustdag voordat we morgen aan onze jungle trekking beginnen. Zo kun je vandaag wel beschrijven. Wat marktjes aflopen (allemaal dezelfde crap), wat fietsen en wat tempels bezoeken in Chiang Mai. Noemen...
October 2015
Het weer in Chiang Mai is al wat meer opgeklaard wanneer we deze morgen wakker worden om ons klaar te maken voor een dagje olifanten verzorgen in een opvangpark. Er is zelfs een lekker warm zonnetje t...
October 2015
Het was een rustig dagje in Bangkok gisteren. Uitslapen, relaxed alles inpakken en uiteindelijk naar het station zien te komen voor een zo goedkoop mogelijke prijs want afdingen is hier gewoonte. Zelf...
October 2015
Wil je in Bangkok eens wat anders zien moet je een fietstoer pakken is ons gezegd. Die raad hebben we dan ook opgevolgd door om 7 uur in de morgen klaar te staan voor een 5 uur durende tour met een fi...
October 2015
"Travel broadens the mind" zeggen ze wel eens. Alhoewel, het feit dat je eerst een uur of 11 je eigen vierkante meter of minder aan vliegtuig tot je beschikking hebt anders doet vermoeden. Gelukkig z...
October 2015
Een dag vol met tempels stond op het programma. Een ware ontdekkingstocht door Bangkok waar het werkelijk barst van die dingen. Hoewel weersvoorspellingen tot nu toe altijd gezegd hebben dat het regen...
October 2015
Nog een paar dagen en het is zover. Dan beginnen we voor het eerst in 2,5 jaar weer aan het fenomeen vakantie. En nog verdiend ook nog. Waar het de vorige keer in ZuidAfrika al indrukwekkend was, gaan...
March 2015
When using Entity Framework (or any other ORM for that matter) you always have to be aware of the queries you send to the database. When using a feature like lazy loading it's fairly easy to create an...
March 2015
Today we came across the issue that one of our customers' IT specialists received a strange message while trying to install a new build of one of our apps. He was installing the app on a Windows 8.1 ...
March 2015
In my adventures in the Xamarin mobile world I particularly liked the fact how their Xamarin Studio IDE visually handles TODO comments. Basically, all it does is make the TODO part bold. I know that i...
March 2015
To honor the name of this blog I will also be writing posts about software development. The software developer that hasn't turned to Google for some advice once in a while hasn't been born yet. As a s...
