A simple developer's journey

Problematic Mobile applications are used by many people these days. Many craftsmen, freelancers and others people have at the point, the idea to make their own mobile application to support their business. In general it's a really good idea to do so. Providing a quality application to your customer is always a PLUS and sometimes a MUST.  The problem is that sometimes, we don't know what creating an application implies and we don't know how to start... ➡️ This often leads to time and money loss 🤯 Guide to design your mobile app [ free eBook ] Below, you will find a link to download a presentation that I wrote about how to design your mobile app.  This is a short document that will help you to understand all the steps needed in order to publish a stable and a quality application .  We also cover the 'delays' problematic as many people think that a mobile app is fast to develop, so they underestimate deadlines... You will also find a few tips about Play Store and the

  [SocialCut] Released on Google Play Store ! Hello guys, today, just an announcement to inform you that SocialCut has been released and is now available for everybody ! 📱 Download SocialCut On Google Play Store 🧑🏻‍🎨 SocialCut is the ideal tool for: digital content creator community manager, digital artist influencer digital media manager , freelance developer, or simply a daily picture user 💡 And remember that SocialCut is available in the following languages: - English, Spanish, French, Chinese (simplified), Japanese  

  [SocialCut] The perfect app for digital content creators If you have to deal with digital pictures and social networks, you may have noticed that there are so many simple tools like applications to generate grids for Instagram. We can note apps like: PhotoSplit : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.techpositive.photosplit&hl=en_US Griddy : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/griddy-split-grid-post-maker/id1114106704?uo=4 PanoraSplit for instagram : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/panorasplit-for-instagram/id1463280209 and much more... SocialCut is a new Android application that extends this principle. With SocialCut you will be able to cut/crop/resize pictures in order to publish it to your favorite social networks . Google Play Store - SocialCut SocialCut for Android If you are: digital content creator community manager, digital artist influencer digital media manager , freelance developer, or simply a daily picture user SocialCut is made for you! You will be able to cre

Background task for 'closed' applications Handling a background task in Xamarin Forms, even when the application is closed, can be challenging due to the mobile operating systems' restrictions on background activities. Here's a detailed solution using a combination of Dependency Service , Background Services , and Platform-Specific Implementations . Step 1: Create an Interface First, create an interface in your shared Xamarin Forms project that defines the method for starting the background task. public interface IBackgroundTask { void StartBackgroundTask(); } Step 2: Implement Platform-Specific Services Android Implementation: In your Android project, create a service that implements the IBackgroundTask interface. Create a Service: [Service] public class MyBackgroundService : Service { public override IBinder OnBind(Intent intent) => null; public override StartCommandResult OnStartCommand(Intent intent, StartCommandFlags flags, int startId

I'm sure, if you are a Flutter's developer, that you will need one day to get specific paths, for instance to store files, generate temporary files etc... Path_provider package For that I use the 'path_provider' package that has some helpers methods. For example: Future < Directory >   getApplicationDocumentsDirectory ( ) returns the documents directory. How to use it ? Directory tempDir = await getTemporaryDirectory(); String tempPath = tempDir.path; Directory appDocDir = await getApplicationDocumentsDirectory(); String appDocPath = appDocDir.path; Follow the links: Package:  https://pub.dev/packages/path_provider Package's documentation:  https://pub.dev/documentation/path_provider/latest/index.html

The splash screen is the first screen you see when you start your app. - you can display your logo for instance - and while the splash screen is shown,  your application is loaded (like user data, business data...) In this example we will use flutter_native_splash package. I- Package: flutter_native_splash (for native splash screen) In your " pubspec.yaml " file you have to add the correct dependency, here at less version 2.0.5 # Dependencies specify other packages that your package needs in order to work. # To automatically upgrade your package dependencies to the latest versions # consider running `flutter pub upgrade --major-versions`. Alternatively, # dependencies can be manually updated by changing the version numbers below to # the latest version available on pub.dev. To see which dependencies have newer # versions available, run `flutter pub outdated`. dependencies : flutter : sdk : flutter flutter_native_splash : ^2.0.5 hint : Pubspec Assist extension To auto

  iOS 15, transparent TabBar Since the release of iOS 15, some people had regression with their app, particularly because of the TabBar component . In iOS 15, by default (while using Xamarin Forms), the TabBar comes with a Transparent background and the page's content can scroll behind this TabBar. So it's not user friendly  and I presume for all existing apps, it's not beautiful. See the next picture: iOS 15, transparent TabBar You can solve this problem by many ways, but the fastest solution / workaround that I found is the following: => manage iOS SafeArea directly into your XAML to constrain page's content to fit the free space of the page.  You can do that in XAML in 2 lines of code: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <ContentPage xmlns:ios="clr-namespace:Xamarin.Forms.PlatformConfiguration.iOSSpecific;assembly=Xamarin.Forms.Core" ios:Page.UseSafeArea="True" ... iOS 15 using Page.UseSafeArea = true As Ta

I- Introduction, OpenCV and EMGU Do you know OpenCV ( Open Source Computer Vision Library:  https://opencv.org/ ) ?  This open source library let's you work and play with images and videos with a lot of powerful image processing algorithms !  If you want some details, I suggest you to first navigate to the link above or search for 'OpenCV' on Google.  Examples of OpenCV processing found on the web (filters, object detection, edges...): EMGU is a .NET OpenCV wrapper. That means that you will be able to use OpenCV functionnalities in your .NET projects using C# for instance. EMGU is cross platform, so you will also be able to use it in your Xamarin projects ! That's great because there is no advanced image processing library in Xamarin. In this article, we will talk about EMGU and list the steps to setup a Xamarin Forms project using EMGU . It may help you because, we must say that it's not a trivial task...  II-What do I need to

Discover 'FFLoadingImage' library Today I want to make a quick presentation of a really good library for Xamarin Forms . This is the kind of library we would like to see more often on XF... This one is dedicated to image manipulation. It's called " FFImageLoading ". If I take time to make this presentation, it's because I think that we should use it in almost all our "basic" Xamarin Forms applications. When I say basic, I exclude Games or other specific apps. But in my mind, I suggest you to change all your traditional "<Image />" by "<FF:CachedImage />" in your apps. Before to start, where to find it ? On Github:  https://github.com/luberda-molinet/FFImageLoading On Nuget:  https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.FFImageLoading Main features So what will you find using this library ? I will not explain all the details but the main interesting features of the library. Multi-platform The good po

Custom entry with renderers For my Xamarin Forms project I needed to render an 'Entry' control with a bottom border of a specific color. There are several possibilities but I will show you mine. For that, I used renderers. iOS one is particularly not trivial. The wished result look like that: iOS Renderer [assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(ExtDatePicker), typeof(ExtDatePickerRenderer))] namespace MyCompany.iOS.Renderers { public class ExtDatePickerRenderer : DatePickerRenderer { protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<DatePicker> e) { base.OnElementChanged(e); // Need to connect to Sizechanged event because first render time, Entry has no size (-1). if (e.NewElement != null) e.NewElement.SizeChanged += (obj, args) => { var xamEl = obj as DatePicker; if (xamEl == null) ret