Introducing Xamarin Recipes

March 30, 2012 – 2:29 pm

The Xamarin Edu team has been getting busy. A few weeks ago, we brought you the Samples Gallery, a collection of over 100 sample apps and feature samples. Now, we are excited to announce Xamarin Recipes: walkthroughs and how-tos that are meant to target specific topics and provide solutions, quickly.

Short and sweet, recipes are the perfect place to look when you need an apt introduction to a concept, or a concise answer to a particular problem. Recipes is documentation designed to get you out of the docs, and into the code.

Currently, the docs portal houses over 100 recipes. Learn how to:

We cater new content based on community demand, so please, feel free to contact us and suggest a topic you’d like to see covered!

We believe the recipes are going to be an invaluable resource for our community, and we encourage you to get active right away by checking in and suggesting. From inspiration to distribution, we just might have the answers you are looking for.

By Nina | Posted in Documentation, Release | Comments (3)

Using iCloud with MonoTouch Seminar

March 27, 2012 – 1:10 pm

Last Thursday, we had Craig Dunn from our Xamarin documentation team walk us through how to use iCloud functionality within your MonoTouch applications on iOS 5.0. Craig shows us how set up your devices to use iCloud, how you can use the iCloud Key-Value Storage and iCloud Document Storage functionality of iCloud and general backup information. You can view the full seminar below:

As always, you can view the slides in the Xamarin Channel in SlideShare:



And the code is up on GitHub for you to checkout and download – https://github.com/xamarin/Seminars/tree/master/2012-03-22-iCloud.

The next seminar is on April 5th at 11am EDT with Dean Ellis, a MonoGame core contributor, who will give us an overview of on how you use existing XNA code and knowledge to create your own games for MonoTouch and Mono for Android using MonoGame, register now!

Don’t forget: We are now putting up the meeting registration link and all our previous seminars up on their own page at http://xamarin.com/seminars

ChrisNTR

By Chris | Posted in MonoTouch, Xaminar | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Register for the April Xamarin Seminars

March 26, 2012 – 7:50 am

Xaminar Logo

Today we are announcing topics for our April seminars, this month features our first community speakers so it’s great to have them present for us:

  • Thursday 5th April 2012 at 11am EST – Overview of MonoGame with MonoGame contributor, Dean Ellis
  • Thursday 19th April 2012 at 11am EDT – Cross-platform Mobile Development with O’Reilly author, Greg Shackles

Registration is open for the April Xamarin Seminars via GoToWebinar. You’ll get an automated reminder the day before and an hour before the event to make sure you don’t miss a moment.

Xamarin Seminar Homepage

To help everyone keep up to date on upcoming seminars, how to register, and how to view previously hosted seminars, we created a Xamarin Seminars webpage. It’s your one stop shop for all things seminar related.

Don’t worry though, we will still tweet, post links to Facebook and LinkedIn, and put all the videos up on YouTube. And, as always, slides continue to be posted to SlideShare and seminar code is ready for download on GitHub.

See you on 5th April!

ChrisNTR

By Chris | Posted in Mono for Android, MonoTouch, Xaminar | Comments (0)

Mono for Android Designer Beta Program

March 22, 2012 – 9:00 am

One of the most painful parts of developing Android applications today is building Android layout and UI. Realizing the impact solid design tools can have on the development of great apps, we asked our crack team of MonoDevelop engineers to create the kind of design experience C# developers expect, and deserve, in an IDE.

The team has really delivered on this one. Our Mono for Android Designer is now feature complete in MonoDevelop, and ready for testing on Windows and Mac.

If you’re ready to participate in the beta program, fill out the Mono for Android Designer Beta Program signup form. We will be adding batches of new users to the beta program every few days, leading up to an official stable release date to be determined based on feedback from beta testers.

By Joseph | Posted in Android | Comments (22)

Xamarin Rewards Update

March 21, 2012 – 2:18 pm

Yesterday, we launched Xamarin Rewards as a way to give back to customers who link to our web sites by paying out a 5% referral fee for all purchases that are made through referral links. In the short time the program has been live, we’ve been excited to see a lot of people signing on, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback. But one person made a suggestion that we really loved.

Nic Wise suggested that we change Rewards such that the person being referred gets a 5% discount on their purchase. This way, both parties benefit. We loved the idea, and implemented it this morning.

This feature is now live. Many thanks to Nic for the suggestion and for being a great member of the Xamarin community!

By Bojan | Posted in Mono for Android, MonoTouch, News, Rewards | Comments (2)

Xamarin Identified as a Leader in Mobile Cross-Platform Application Development Tools

March 21, 2012 – 2:14 pm

VisionMobile, a leading market analysis and strategy firm for all things mobile, recently issued a report on Cross-Platform Developer Tools – and has identified Xamarin’s MonoTouch and Mono for Android as the best fit mobile development platforms for CIOs looking to mobilize enterprise applications.

The study also finds MonoTouch and Mono for Android scores highest for a number of important criteria: support, servics and device access.

VisionMobile – Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development Tools Mindshare

The annual report, of which Xamarin is one of 10 sponsors, surveyed 2,400 developers worldwide for their perceptions on cross-platform mobile application development tools -including incentives and deterrents to cross-platform tool use, and the most-wanted tool features. Xamarin was identified as a leader among 15 well-known cross-platform tools.

Key report findings include:

  • Xamarin is the recommended solution for building mobile enterprise apps targeting customers and employees. “From our survey results and analysis, we identify Xamarin’s MonoTouch and Mono for Android for CIOs wanting to mobilize enterprise applications, who want to re-use existing .NET applications and who want to create new enterprise apps,” said Andreas Constantinou, Ph.D., managing director at VisionMobile.
  • Xamarin’s solutions are found to be particularly complete and mature. “Furthermore, our survey found that a significant majority (92 percent) of Xamarin developers use the tool to build the core application and not just the UI or middleware layers,” says Constantinou.
  • Xamarin leads awareness recognition and usage intentions. “Xamarin’s cross-platform Mono software appears to be gaining developer favor, ranking high in both current market share and future IntentShare,” Constantinou adds.
  • Xamarin’s customers are very loyal with very low abandon rates compared to other solutions.  Xamarin scored high on several key tool characteristics, including support and services, device access, and runtime performance. In contrast, the study cites developer abandon rates for competitors at levels of 27 percent and 33 percent. Three significant reasons cited for the abandonment of non-Xamarin solutions are: 1) poor development and debugging experiences; 2) poor runtime performance; and 3) poor native integration, which are Xamarin strengths.

The study reveals more than 60 percent of developers view “breadth of platforms that the tool supports,” as the most important criteria in selecting a cross-platform tool. Xamarin supports iOS, Android and Windows devices, more than 91 percent of the smartphone and tablet market.

“‘Use existing skills’ is the second most important reason for tool selection,” says Constantinou. “It goes without saying that developers see cross-platform tools as a way to reach additional platforms without learning new programming skills, be that a new authoring language or a new development environment. Xamarin, with MonoTouch and Mono for Android, stood out with 80 percent of developers who use Xamarin as their primary tool because it allows them to use their existing C# and .NET skills.”

VisionMobile’s findings are an important endorsement to the depth and flexibility Xamarin solutions provide to developers.  Xamarin solutions give developers the tools needed to create and operate high-performance, cross-platform mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows phone devices.

You can see more information about the VisionMobile study, here: http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2012/02/crossplatformtools/

By David | Posted in Mono for Android, MonoTouch, News | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Introducing Xamarin Rewards

March 19, 2012 – 10:21 pm

Xamarin has a great community and user-base that has built, and continues to build, first-class applications. We owe a lot of our success to you: many of our customers first hear about us from existing users who have built apps and are excited to talk about our platform. We at Xamarin have been wanting to find a way to give back to the community that has helped us grow—and so today we are proud to announce Xamarin Rewards.

Xamarin Rewards offers our customers a way to earn rewards by linking to Xamarin web pages. From your account page, you can create referral links. If someone clicks on those links and then purchases a Xamarin product within 72 hours, you will earn a rewards credit of 5% of the purchase price.

You can use your rewards earnings in three ways—we can send you cash, via PayPal or a U.S. check, or you can get a Xamarin Store discount toward your next license (or toward any other products offered in the store, stay tuned). Customers who choose to get a Xamarin Store discount will earn an extra 20% bonus on their rewards earnings for being loyal customers.

If you want to let your users know that you’re powered by Xamarin, you can also use one of our new badges, like this:

Powered by Xamarin Mobile Badge

Powered by Xamarin Mobile Badge

The badges are available in a variety of colors, to suit your design, and can be used for your referral links. You can download a promo kit full of badges from the new Rewards area of the store, or from xamarin.com/about/promo.

Xamarin Rewards launches today, and you can begin using it by logging into your Xamarin Store account at store.xamarin.com, and heading to the Account area via the link in the top right. Once in the account area, you will see a new Rewards item, which will help you sign up and get on your way to earning rewards.

By Bojan | Posted in Mono for Android, MonoTouch, News, Rewards | Tagged | Comments (5)

Xamarin wants your suggestions

March 19, 2012 – 3:32 pm

UserVoice LogoDo you know what MonoTouch and Mono for Android really need? We’d love to hear from you!

We’ve recently set up Xamarin UserVoice to enable you to provide your feedback and to suggest new features for upcoming product releases. You can visit our UserVoice to submit your own feedback, and to vote on suggestions from others.

In addition to general suggestions and product specific pages, we are also seeking feedback on the Xamarin Mobile API and suggestions for future Xamarin Seminar topics.

You can add your requests, as well browse and vote on existing suggestions, by visiting these UserVoice pages:

By Joseph | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)

New features of MonoTouch 5.2 Seminar

March 12, 2012 – 1:08 pm

For the fourth Xamarin Seminar, Mike Bluestein walked us through a few of the new features of MonoTouch 5.2, and how you can take advantage of them when you are creating MonoTouch applications. The seminar shows how to quickly build applications with MonoTouch.Dialog by generating native UI from JSON, and how to unit test your application’s code on simulator and device. We also show how to enable you to track down hanging references using the new Memory Profiler. You can watch the full seminar below:

As always, you can view the slides in the Xamarin Channel in SlideShare:



And the code is up on GitHub for you to checkout and download – https://github.com/xamarin/Seminars/tree/master/2012-03-08-MonoTouch_5_2.

The next seminar is on March 22nd at 11am EDT with Craig Dunn, who will walk you through using iCloud with MonoTouch and iOS 5, register now!

ChrisNTR

By Chris | Posted in MonoTouch, Xaminar | Comments (0)

MonoTouch and iOS 5.1

March 11, 2012 – 2:31 pm

In iOS 5.1 Apple introduced restrictions to stdout calls that can cause applications that are installed via the App Store or Ad-hoc deployment to throw an unhandled exception and to terminate if they attempt to write to the console. This includes calls to Console.Write* (Write, WriteLine). This problem affects all apps that attempt to use stdout calls, including those written in Objective-C, although in Objective-C the error is silently ignored.

This problem has been addressed with MonoTouch 5.2.4 by prohibiting any console output via apps that are built in Release mode. However, any apps that were built in a previous version, or apps that have been inadvertently deployed in Debug mode will experience this issue.

In order to address this in your apps, please do one of the following:

  • Recompile with MonoTouch 5.2.4 or later.
  • Remove any Console.Write*, or other console out calls (Debug.Write* calls are ok, as they only output in Debug mode).

If your app is in the App Store, you should resubmit it and request a free, expedited app review for existing apps which can be found here. Under Request Details Section > Request Type drop down, make sure to select Critical Bug Fix, and in the Reason for Request details box, let them know that you’re removing the Console Output calls.

If you have an old version of MonoTouch, you can get the updates from MonoDevelop using Check for Updates. If you need any more help, please submit a request to support@xamarin.com.

By Miguel | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (9)