Xamarin MVP and lead developer on the game, Draw a Stickman: EPIC. Jonathan Peppers works at Hitcents, on cross platform C# development using Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android, and plain ol' .Net on Windows. http://jonathanpeppers.com 2026, Jonathan Peppers en-us Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 From my experience making image-heavy Xamarin.Forms apps in the past, Android was a huge pain-point. Android.Graphics.Bitmap is somewhat of a troublemaker, and to make matters worse, Xamarin.Forms API design makes it tough to handle them properly. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/glidex-forms---fast-images-for-xamarin-forms-on-android Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 One of the tasks that has always been in the back of my mind on the Xamarin.Android team is to make some improvements to help Xamarin.Forms apps. It turns out that one of our most common Xamarin project is developed with Xamarin.Forms in Visual Studio on Windows. We should improve that scenario! http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/xamarin-forms-performance-on-android Tue, 13 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 This week at Microsoft is "One Week"--an all-week Hackathon where we are allowed to work on open source projects for fun. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/deploying-a-minecraft-server-on-azure-with-docker Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Implementing secure in-app purchases for Google Play is a bit trickier than iOS for several reasons. The Android APIs are a bit more involved, and Android's openness lends itself to more hacking, in general. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/securing-google-play-in-app-purchases-for-xamarin-with-azure-functions Wed, 15 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000 If you've ever added in-app purchases to your app and track each purchase with analytics, you will quickly see the reports from iTunes (real revenue) don't match up with purchases recorded from your analytics tracking. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/securing-in-app-purchases-for-xamarin-with-azure-functions Wed, 15 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Any mobile application that depends greatly on HTTP requests can be a source of frustration. Mobile devices are constantly running slow connections, losing connectivity entirely, or switching from Wi-Fi to cellular. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/improving-http-performance-in-xamarin-applications Fri, 3 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000 I'm not making fun of Xamarin.Forms, I promise. Discussing my library for unit testing Xamarin.Forms appropriately named Xamarin.Forms.Mocks http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/mocking-xamarin-forms Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 One thing I’ve found not much information out there on is how to build your own copy of Xamarin.Forms and use it in your application. With just a little effort I was able to setup Visual Studio Team Services to build my fork of Xamarin.Forms and deploy a NuGet package to our private feed on MyGet. I think people out there are probably interested in setting this up, especially if you have a project pushing Xamarin.Forms to its limits. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/build-xamarin-forms-from-source Fri, 8 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000 So how exactly does C# code call into Objective-C? How does this compare to how Objective-C methods are called natively? These are questions I've always pondered but have not always had the time to research. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/xamarin-ios-under-the-hood-calling-objective-c-from-csharp Thu, 9 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000 So among the different types of games and apps we build at Hitcents, one particularly troublesome type to deal with is basically any game built with Unity. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/automating-unity3d-builds-with-fake Wed, 1 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000 My book, Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development, is new and updated with Xamarin's latest releases. Includes goodness about the new stuff: Xamarin.Forms, NuGet, shared projects, and more. http://tinyurl.com/Xamarin2ndEdition Wed, 25 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 At Hitcents currently, we had been using Jenkins, and setup some complicated build steps in their web UI to build our various projects. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/build-all-the-things!-with-fake Mon, 2 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSP-WBnJlgA Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000 After updating to Xamarin 3, I am definitely impressed with the work Xamarin is doing to improve their products. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/xamarin-3-and-healed-cuts Mon, 2 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nVi1MHDa1Q Fri, 7 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Recently at Hitcents we have been working on deploying our Android version of Draw a Stickman: EPIC to app stores across China. China’s Android app market is a strange place, and it has somewhere around 30 app stores. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/xamarin-android-builds-in-jenkins Fri, 10 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000 I had a great time talking about writing cross platform games at Hitcents with the guys on Gone Mobile. If you are interested in MonoGame or game development with C# in general, it's a great listen. http://gonemobile.io/blog/e0005-monogame-with-jonathan-peppers/ Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000 I want to start out this post by saying I am a great lover of Xamarin and their tools. Without Xamarin, I would might not have become a mobile developer and most of the success the company I work for (Hitcents) has had with mobile apps would not be possible. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/xamarin's-tiny-cuts Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000 At work, I have more and more been transitioning to using a Mac. MonoTouch has fueled this, and I hate to say it, but I am starting to like Mac hardware. http://jonathanpeppers.com/Blog/best-mac-apps-for-windows-devs Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000