Filling text with images seems like an easy thing to do with tools like Photoshop, but can be a tedious task when developing it for mobile apps. I wanted to see if this was possible and got it working using the Experimental Xamarin.Forms Shapes. Read the steps below to learn how to fill text with images in Xamarin.Forms, or dive directly in the demo code on Github. The demo that I created is fully inspired by some retro games, can you name them all? I’ll give you a hint: they were part of the Pixels-movie as well. Answers can be found at the bottom of this post! Draw text from a Path First we ..read more

If you’re trying to create automated tests for your Xamarin app, you must have stumbled across Xamarin.UITest. It’s a great way to bring the quality of your application to the next level. Just make sure to apply the best practices when using Xamarin.UITest (especially the Page Object Pattern) otherwise your code can get messy really fast. But when everything is set up properly, you can automatically test your application through the UI on over 1000 devices using Visual Studio App Center! When creating a new app in Visual Studio, simply select the checkbox “Add an automated UI Test project ..read more

The yearly Microsoft //Build/ conference is currently on its way and due to the current pandemic its being held as an Online conference. It’s the first time Microsoft held a conference of this size virtually and it’s great so far! The event made some interesting announcements today and I wanted to share my thoughts a personal big one: Xamarin will evolve and make place for Maui. Let’s first back up in time: just before the Xamarin Evolve conference took place in 2016, it was announced that Microsoft acquired Xamarin. This was a huge step forward for the Xamarin brand, but also raises the ques ..read more

One of the things I really like about web development, is the usage of the background-position CSS property. It allows you to move a background image around within its container. jFancyTile: A jQuery tile shifting image viewer plugin, realies heavily on this technique. Sadly, Xamarin doesn’t have a property like CSS that we can use out-of-the-box to recreate that effect. But, with some help of FFImageLoading, we can get the same results. In particular, the CropTransformation can crop away parts of an image so we can have some fun with each individual tile that makes up the complete imag ..read more

If you like tools like SonarQube to continuously check your code quality and you’re a Xamarin developer that wants to make sure their app is secure, you’ll love the Xamarin Security Scanner. The Scanner finds security vulnerabilities by analysing the source code, also known as Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Xamarin Security Scanner on Github The Scanner is inspired by Quick Android Review Kit (QARK), a tool created by LinkedIn to look for several security related Android application vulnerabilities. Take note that the Scanner only finds security vulnerabilities in Xamarin.An ..read more