Introducing Suave Streams

Welcome to Suave Streams at https://twitch.tv/suave_pirate where I’ll be taking some time twice a week to build some of the coolest, funniest, and also innovative pieces of software using real-world patterns, practices, and tools.

Come for a laugh, come to build, and come to learn! We’ll be jumping into languages, and tools like:

  • C#
  • TypeScript
  • Kotlin
  • Swift
  • ASP.NET Core
  • Alexa Skills
  • Actions on Google
  • Bixby Capsules
  • Conversational AI
  • Real time communications
  • Xamarin/Maui.NET
  • UWP
  • Game Development
  • Bot building

and so much more!

We’re starting off with a schedule of every:

  • Sunday 12:30-4:30PM EST
  • Wednesday 6-10PM EST

I hope you’ll join for our first ever livestream this Sunday, May 22nd at 12:30pm EST where we are starting to build an Alexa Skill to Beat Call of Duty Warzone! Using:

C#, ASP.NET Core APIs, SignalR, UWP, Alexa Skills SDK, and scalable architectures and design patterns to make it come to life.

After each stream, I’ll also be uploading the whole recording (with minor edits) to my YouTube over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ycVqsWOInQuel68295M7w

So if you can’t make the stream, you won’t miss out on all the fun. Be sure to follow me on twitch for updates on when I go live and to keep up with the projects we start creating!

See you there!

 

 

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HACKMIT 2019 This Weekend!

HackMIT is this weekend, September 14-15th.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be mentoring as one of the local Microsoft MVPs that were invited to help as part of the Microsoft sponsorship of the event. I look forward to building some incredible applications with some of the brightest students coming to Cambridge! Hack for a reason 🙂

Check out some of the awesome tracks:

hackmit_tracks

 

If you’re hacking this weekend, come find me for help with:

  • Conversational AI
  • Voice First Development
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Machine Learning
  • Unity
  • C#
  • JavaScript/TypeScript
  • Kotlin
  • React
  • Video Editing
  • and RTC

See ya’ll there!


If you like what you see, don’t forget to follow me on twitter @Suave_Pirate, check out my GitHub, and subscribe to my blog to learn more mobile developer tips and tricks!

Interested in sponsoring developer content? Message @Suave_Pirate on twitter for details.

HackMIT This Weekend!

HackMIT is this weekend, September 16-17.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be mentoring as one of the local Microsoft MVPs that were invited to help as part of the Microsoft sponsorship of the event. I look forward to building some incredible applications with some of the brightest students coming to Cambridge, and may the best faction win! Keep an eye out for me Sunday morning, and feel free to reach out if you’re attending.

 

If you like what you see, don’t forget to follow me on twitter @Suave_Pirate, check out my GitHub, and subscribe to my blog to learn more mobile developer tips and tricks!

Interested in sponsoring developer content? Message @Suave_Pirate on twitter for details.

 

 

Xamarin.Tips – Removing the Bottom Border of Your iOS Navigation Bars

iOS UINavigationBars by default ship with a bottom border. If you want to remove it, all you need to do is update the ShadowImage of your UINavigationBar. Setting it to new UIImage() will do the trick. This might not be a universal solution. If you are doing more custom work or for certain layouts, you might need to take some additional steps including setting ClipsToBounds to true and setting the BackgroundImage of the UINavigationBar to a new UIImage() as well.

Here’s all of that together:

...
NavigationBar.ShadowImage = new UIImage();
NavigationBar.ClipsToBounds = true(); // optional
NavigationBar.BackgroundImage = new UIImage(); // optional
...

Of course, we are also going to talk about applying this in Xamarin.Forms!

If you want to apply this globally, you can create a custom renderer for NavigationPage. If you only want it in some situations, then you will need to create a new subclass of ContentPage and create a custom renderer for that page that will apply the same changes as below for our universal solution:

CustomNavigationRenderer.cs

[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(NavigationPage), typeof(CustomNavigationRenderer))]
namespace YOUR_IOS_NAMESPACE
{
    public class CustomNavigationRenderer : NavigationRenderer
    {
        public override void ViewDidLoad()
        {
            base.ViewDidLoad();

            NavigationBar.ShadowImage = new UIImage();
            NavigationBar.ClipsToBounds = true(); // optional
            NavigationBar.BackgroundImage = new UIImage(); // optional
        }

    }
}

One other way to do this is by using the Appearance API and apply it universally!

...
UINavigationBar.Appearance.ShadowImage = new UIImage();
...

Lastly, here’s is how this would look in Swift if you’ve landed here but aren’t using Xamarin and C#:

UINavigationBar.appearance().setBackgroundImage(
    UIImage(),
    forBarPosition: .Any,
    barMetrics: .Default)

UINavigationBar.appearance().shadowImage = UIImage()

or if you are for some reason in love with Obj-C:

[[UINavigationBar appearance] setBackgroundImage:[[UIImage alloc] init]
                                  forBarPosition:UIBarPositionAny
                                      barMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

[[UINavigationBar appearance] setShadowImage:[[UIImage alloc] init]];

 

transnavbar

 

If you like what you see, don’t forget to follow me on twitter @Suave_Pirate, check out my GitHub, and subscribe to my blog to learn more mobile developer tips and tricks!

Hide Your iOS App in the Switcher

Does your app have sensitive information that belongs to your user? If so, you’re probably taking some action to protect it. Storing it with encryption, locking it behind a passcode, using TouchID, clearing their session when they leave the app, etc.

One thing you might not have considered is a vulnerability when using the app switcher. Could someone take your user’s phone and view the sensitive information by just double tapping the home button?

Let’s protect that data. We’re going to put a blurred view over the app whenever the user leaves (or even just hits the app switcher right away), plus it can look pretty cool!

In our AppDelegate.cs, override the OnResignActivation method:

public override void OnResignActivation(UIApplication uiApplication)
{
    var window = UIApplication.SharedApplication.KeyWindow;
    var blurView = UIBlurEffect.FromStyle(UIBlurEffectStyle.Light);
    var blurEffectView = new UIVisualEffectView(blurView);
    blurEffectView.Frame = window.Frame;
    blurEffectView.Tag = 808080;
    window?.AddSubview(blurEffectView);
    base.OnResignActivation(uiApplication);
}

This will add our blurred view whenever they leave. Now to remove it when they come back, override the OnActivated method:

public override void OnActivated(UIApplication uiApplication)
{
    var window = UIApplication.SharedApplication.KeyWindow;
    window?.ViewWithTag(808080)?.RemoveFromSuperview();
    base.OnActivated(uiApplication);
}

And that’s it!

Bonus swift version: Override applicationWillResignActive and applicationDidBecomeActive in your AppDelegate.swift.

func applicationWillResignActive(application: UIApplication) {

    let blurEffect = UIBlurEffect(style: UIBlurEffectStyle.Dark)
    let blurEffectView = UIVisualEffectView(effect: blurEffect)
    blurEffectView.frame = window!.frame
    blurEffectView.tag = 808080

    self.window?.addSubview(blurEffectView)

}

func applicationDidBecomeActive (application: UIApplication) {

    self.window?.viewWithTag(808080)?.removeFromSuperview()

}