Xamarin Blog

An open source mobile platform for building Android, iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps with .NET.

Integrations - Xamarin Blog

Exploring Android’s Bottom Navigation View

August 7, 2017 Aug 7, 2017 08/7/17
James Montemagno
The debate over whether tabs should go on the top or the bottom of a screen has raged for nearly a decade. Android has always preferred to use tabs as a filtering mechanism on the top of a page, while iOS has used bottom tabs as the main source of navigation. Now, with the addition of the Bottom Navigation View in the Support Design library, Android developers have the choice of where their main navigation comes from in their applications.

Mastering the Android Support Libraries

July 11, 2017 Jul 11, 2017 07/11/17
James Montemagno
Android Support Libraries are an essential part to every Android application and you'll find them absolutely everywhere. The Support Libraries offer developers the ability to add the latest and greatest features of Android to their application while maintaining backward compatibility with older versions of Android. As new versions of the Android SDK continue to roll out, so do updates to the Support Libraries; keeping them up-to-date and installing the correct versions is an important (and sometimes frustrating) part of Android development. This blog post will help demystify the Support Libraries and help you upgrade to the latest versions.

Simplified Android Keystore Signature Discovery

March 14, 2017 Mar 14, 2017 03/14/17
James Montemagno
The Android Keystore is at the heart of every Android application. It enables us to sign our applications and ship them to the app store securely, but also holds additional signature information needed for Google Play services and other APIs, such as Facebook. This new extension makes it super simple to get access to everything you need to sign your app!

Consumable In-App Purchases

February 15, 2017 Feb 15, 2017 02/15/17
James Montemagno
If you are building a game or application with content that needs to be purchased multiple times, you'll need to integrate consumable in-app purchases (IAPs) into your application. In my previous IAP blog post, I covered the basics of setting up your app for IAP transactions, adding the IAP items to Google Play and iTunes Connect, and introduced you to the In-App Billing Plugin for Xamarin that greatly simplifies the process of adding IAP to your application's code. Today, we'll take a look at consumables and how they offer a slight tweak to the development process.

Integrating In-App Purchases in Mobile Apps

February 2, 2017 Feb 2, 2017 02/2/17
James Montemagno
Developers often need to integrate monetization to generate revenue when developing mobile apps. There are several ways to monetize apps, but at some point you may want to introduce In-App Purchases, or IAPs, into your app. IAPs can be used in several ways that could apply to your apps, such as adding features, removing ads, or buying in-game currency. Let's take an in-depth look at IAPs and how to add them to mobile apps.