Nick's .NET Travels

Create, Build and Publish a Flutter Web App

August 17, 2019August 17, 2019

Using Flutter for building iOS and Android applications brings with it some advantages over other cross platform solutions such as Xamarin.Forms or React but one of the more interesting developments to keep an eye on is the support for running Flutter apps on the web. In this post we’re going to create a basic Flutter … Continue reading “Create, Build and Publish a Flutter Web App”

Using C#, XAML, Uno and MvvmCross to Jump Start Your Cross Platform Application

August 15, 2019August 15, 2019

Rukesh has put together a great post, entitled Using C#, XAML + Uno Platform to Build One Codebase, Cross-Platform Apps, that provides a great walk through of getting started with the Uno Platform. It goes through grabbing the Uno extension for Visual Studio and then creating a new multi-platform application using just C# and XAML. … Continue reading “Using C#, XAML, Uno and MvvmCross to Jump Start Your Cross Platform Application”

Content from Former Microsoft WPF and Silverlight Team Member

August 10, 2019August 11, 2019

Someone pointed me in the direction of a series of great blog posts that have recently been migrated to a github repository. The posts are quite old, dating back to a period between 2005 and 2013 when Beatriz Stollnitz worked for Microsoft as part of the WPF and Silverlight teams. Here are the links to … Continue reading “Content from Former Microsoft WPF and Silverlight Team Member”

How to Create a Flutter Widget Using a RenderObject

August 10, 2019August 10, 2019

There is plenty of documentation on how to build a Flutter application and more importantly the significance of widgets. Most articles you’ll read about widgets talk about what a StatelessWidget is and what a StatefulWidget is and how you can inherit from these to create your own widgets. However, what happens when you want to … Continue reading “How to Create a Flutter Widget Using a RenderObject”

Using the UWP SplitView on iOS, Android and WebAssembly with Uno

August 3, 2019August 4, 2019

In this post we’re going to cover one of the basics of app navigation which is the use of the UWP SplitView. If you’re coming from iOS and Android development you might be thinking “huh, I don’t even know what that is.” Well the good news is that it’s actually something you’re already familiar with. … Continue reading “Using the UWP SplitView on iOS, Android and WebAssembly with Uno”

How to Get Started with Flutter

July 28, 2019July 28, 2019

This post will cover the basics of how to get started with Flutter. It’ll provide you with an overview of your first Flutter app and will give you some pointers on how to get familiar with Flutter, Dart, the tools and ecosystem around building apps using the Flutter SDK. Enough about what you’ll take out … Continue reading “How to Get Started with Flutter”

Tutorial: How to Create a XAML Templated Control

July 21, 2019July 21, 2019

In this post we’re going to cover creating a custom control that uses a control template to define how it looks, aka a Templated Control. The principles of templated, or lookless, controls have been adopted by most of the XAML based technologies but for the purpose of this post we’re going to start by building … Continue reading “Tutorial: How to Create a XAML Templated Control”

Optimising Multi-Targeting with Visual Studio Solution Filters

July 6, 2019July 6, 2019

Over time Visual Studio has progressively improved support for solutions that have a large number of projects. MvvmCross used to be over 200 projects to handle each of the target platforms it supports. With the introduction of multi-targeted projects the number of projects dropped significantly to around 50 projects. For example, the core MvvmCross project … Continue reading “Optimising Multi-Targeting with Visual Studio Solution Filters”

ListView and GridView Templates for Windows (UWP)

July 5, 2019July 5, 2019

In my previous post I discussed Control Template in Windows development (UWP and Platform.Uno). I feel the topic of templates warrants at least one follow up post. So, in this post I’m going to walk through ListView Templates and GridView Templates. As both ListView and GridView inherit from ListViewBase, I’m actually going to focus my … Continue reading “ListView and GridView Templates for Windows (UWP)”

XAML Control Templates for Windows (UWP) and Platform.Uno

June 25, 2019June 29, 2019

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about using code to declare the user interface of an app. Such as a recent post I did following the announcement of SwiftUI by Apple. In the Xamarin.Forms world the hashtag CSharpForMarkup has become the latest distraction. CSharpForMarkup encourages developers to move away from XAML to defining … Continue reading “XAML Control Templates for Windows (UWP) and Platform.Uno”

Xamarin Developer Summit Schedule Breakdown

June 17, 2019June 25, 2019

In just under a month some of the biggest names in the Xamarin community will be presenting alongside a prominent members of the Microsoft Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms teams at the Xamarin Developer Summit. Whilst I’m not going to be able to make it across to the summit I wanted to do a bit call out … Continue reading “Xamarin Developer Summit Schedule Breakdown”

Navigate Flutter Apps with Routes

June 8, 2019June 8, 2019

One of the most important aspects of an app is the flow or journey that the user takes through the app. Apps are often described in terms of pages, or screens, and navigating between them. In this post I’m going to cover dividing your application into routes, and how to work with the Flutter navigation … Continue reading “Navigate Flutter Apps with Routes”

Apple Introduces SwiftUI; So What?

June 5, 2019June 22, 2019

Shortly after Apple announced SwiftUI a twitter thread erupted discussing a hypothetical Sharp UI. It was positioned an alternative for declarative ui development, across Xamarin applications in C# or F#. If Apple has SwiftUI, perhaps we’ll Microsoft rollout # UI (Sharp UI) for as a new method for building user interfaces in @xamarinhq apps with … Continue reading “Apple Introduces SwiftUI; So What?”

Productivity Musings on App Navigation, Information Density and Work Environment

June 2, 2019June 2, 2019

This morning I set out to explore the most recent ramblings on app navigation. I expected to come across a bunch of designers talking about their sliding, popping, whirling interface. How they are going to radicalize the way we interact with mobile applications. The first thing I was struck with was that I needed to … Continue reading “Productivity Musings on App Navigation, Information Density and Work Environment”

Decompilers for .NET and Windows (UWP) Apps

June 1, 2019June 2, 2019

I think I’ve been living under a rock as I’ve only just come across dnSpy, a decompiler for .net! I’ve been building apps and services with .NET for a long time, so a Twitter thread talking about decompilers amused me. David Kean’s comment pretty accurately reflects my sentiment regarding Reflector. You can pry ildasm from … Continue reading “Decompilers for .NET and Windows (UWP) Apps”