Author Archives: Chris C

First Beta Release of the Xamarin Notification Plugin (Version 0.3.0-RC2)

The first beta version of the Xamarin Notification Plugin has been released.  This plugin allows you to send local notifications easily using Xamarin.  You can find the release on NuGet under “SaturdayMP.XPlugin.Notifications“. More details and documentation can be found on … Continue reading

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Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017

The results of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017 are live.  Some surprising highlights for me: Most developers surveyed are white male web developers.  Just kidding, this was not surprising at all. More than 50% of developers’ parents had a … Continue reading

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Today I Learned How To Create Xamarin iOS and Android Unit Tests

I’m currently working on a notification plugin for Xamarin Forms and wanted to setup some unit tests.  The problem is my code accesses the device-specific notification systems in iOS and Android.  This means I can’t just run my unit tests … Continue reading

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Today I Learned How to Create a Local Notification in Xamarin Android

In Android you can schedule a notification that shows immediately using the NotificationManager.  However, if you are like me, awesome, and want to schedule a notification for a future date you need to use the Android AlarmManager.  The alarm manager lets … Continue reading

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Today I Learned Bait and Switch for .NET PCL’s

If you have worked with Xamarin for longer than me (i.e. one year) then you probably already know about PCL bait and switch technique, especially if you consumed one of the many Xamarin plugins. As usual I’m late to the … Continue reading

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Today I Learned Xamarin Push Notification Plugins

I learned this week that there is no built-in support for Push Notifications in Xamarin Forms.  On the plus side there are several open source projects trying to fill this hole.  The one that has caught my eye is edsnider/Xamarin.Plugins. … Continue reading

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Notes on Converting Mini-Compressor to UWP Application (Trying to at Least)

I was inspired to get Mini-Compressor to UWP into the Windows 10 Store a while back this summer. I saw this video several months ago when it was called Project Centennial: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/2-692 Then a couple weeks ago there was a … Continue reading

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Fixing MSBuild not Exiting

After upgrading to Visual Studio Xamarin 4.1 from 4.0 our TeamCity build suddenly stopped working.  Actually it was working but won’t stop working.  The build would get hang after rebuilding out solution to create the IPA file. The step in question … Continue reading

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Best Productivity Article

As we continue to work on Goal Buddy I’ve been reading books and research papers about goal setting and its cousin productivity.  Productivity is just a fancy word for saying “get stuff done”. Some interesting articles/podcasts about productivity I recently … Continue reading

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Connect to Android Emulator from VirtualBox

I do all my development inside virtual machines.  This allows me to keep separate development environment for different projects and clients.  I wanted to keep this tradition for developing mobile applications but that turned out to be a bit of challenge. … Continue reading

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