One of my favorite features of the iPhone is Touch ID, introduced by Apple with the release of the iPhone 5s a couple of years ago. Touch ID adds biometric authentication to your device so users can touch the home button to unlock their device instead of using a pin code. Since its initial release, […]

The post Securing Your App with Touch ID appeared first on Xamarin Blog.

In this episode we’re talking about Xamarin.Forms again, but this time around it’s a bit different. We’re joined once again by Jason Smith, lead developer of Xamarin.Forms, to take a look behind the scenes of Xamarin.Forms. We get into where it came from, inspirations, design decisions, triumps, mistakes, and more. Join us for this peek behind the curtain of creating the Xamarin.Forms framework!

Hosts: Greg Shackles, Jon Dick

Guest: Jason Smith

Links:

• Xamarin.Forms
• Episode 13: Xamarin.Forms

Thanks to our Sponsors!

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If you are a Visual Basic developer, your options for becoming a mobile developer have historically been limited to targeting Windows Phone; however, with Xamarin.Forms, Portable Class Libraries, and Visual Studio, developing iOS and Android apps entirely in Visual Basic has become a real possibility. Last year I wrote about how Visual Basic Portable Class […]

The post Mobile Apps with Visual Basic & Xamarin.Forms appeared first on Xamarin Blog.

The problem

The solution

The good news is that is isn’t really that complicated. Simply create a custom renderer and add some behavior to the NavigationRenderer.

First, the Xaml

The definition of our view looks like this.

xml version=“1.0“ encoding=“UTF–8“?>
<ContentPage xmlns=“http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms“ 
    xmlns:x=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml“ 
    Title = “Welcome“
    x:Class=“Test.MyPage“>

    <ContentPage.ToolbarItems>
        <ToolbarItem Name=“Add“ />
        <ToolbarItem Name=“Camera“ />
    </ContentPage.ToolbarItems>

    <ContentPage.Content>
        <Label Text=“Wow, that‘s cool!“ HorizontalOptions=“Center“ VerticalOptions=“Center“ />
    </ContentPage.Content>

</ContentPage>

The key part here is to name your ToolbarItems to something useful and something that we can reference in the custom renderer. You also might want to make sure that the name works on Android and Windows Phone since those platforms won’t be affected by this change.

Then the renderer

Being a swede, I have trouble saying the word Renderer… Rendererrerr… Anyhow, this is what it looks like in code. The key is to look at the title for each UIBarButtonItem and replace the entire button with a new one. So we first define a new list to hold our new buttons and then recreate them, one by one to finally assign the new list to the NavigationItem.

The renderer goes in the iOS project since it’s iOS specific.

[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(NavigationPage), typeof(CustomNavigationRenderer))]

namespace ToolbarApp.iOS.Renderers
{
    public class CustomNavigationRenderer : NavigationRenderer
    {

        public override void PushViewController(UIKit.UIViewController viewController, bool animated)
        {
            base.PushViewController(viewController, animated);

            var list = new List<UIBarButtonItem>();

            foreach (var item in TopViewController.NavigationItem.RightBarButtonItems)
            {
                if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Title))
                {
                    continue;
                }

                if (item.Title.ToLower() == “add“)
                {
                    var newItem = new UIBarButtonItem(UIBarButtonSystemItem.Add)
                    {
                        Action = item.Action,
                        Target = item.Target
                    };
                    
                    list.Add(newItem);
                }

                if (item.Title.ToLower() == “camera“)
                {
                    var newItem = new UIBarButtonItem(UIBarButtonSystemItem.Camera)
                        {
                            Action = item.Action,
                            Target = item.Target
                        };

                    list.Add(newItem);
                }

                TopViewController.NavigationItem.RightBarButtonItems = list.ToArray();
            }
        }
    }
}

Summary

Resources

Creating mobile app prototypes is an important part of the design process. It’s extremely useful for developers and test users to be able to interact with a prototype in order to experience how the app will behave when it’s complete, but building prototypes can be daunting due to the large amount of time it takes. […]

The post Rapid Mobile App Prototyping with Xamarin.Forms appeared first on Xamarin Blog.

In just under eight months in Orlando, FL thousands of mobile .NET developers will be heading to the next Xamarin Evolve conference. Xamarin Evolve 2014 was one of the most spectacular conferences that I have ever been part of and have ever attended. The most amazing developers came together for five action packed days of training, sessions, hacking, and collaboration. To keep it short, you do NOT want to miss Xamarin Evolve 2016.

I had the joy last year of crafting multiple mobile applications for Evolve including the main conference application and an interactive scavenger hunt based on iBeacons called Evolve Quest.

With Evolve 2014 coming to a close there isn’t much need for the mobile application to hang around on the app stores, which is why I teamed up with Xamarin’s very own Mike James to craft an updated Save the Date application for Evolve. We decided that we wanted something simple but native. It had to be elegant with the latest iOS and Android designed, but still have deep integration into the platforms. The new Save the Date application for Evolve can be installed from both the Apple App Store or Google Play for Android enabling you easily sign up for updates, add Evolve to your calendar, and of course share Evolve with your friends.

Best yet, is that you can see exactly how Mike and I created the application and create your own Save the Date application for your upcoming event. Simply head over to the github repo to download the entire source code and get started today.