Mapping and Location with Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android)

Real Estate is all about location, location, location. Mobile is about maps, location and maps. Maps are an excellent mechanism to communicate information about locations. Maps are graphical, and you know that a picture is worth a thousand words. When users are mobile, presenting a user with a map provides him with easy-to-understand location information in a graphical format. Android provides full mapping support to present maps to users along with a programmable API. In this article, I'll introduce the mapping and location APIs in Mono for Android.  

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/07/01/mapping-and-location-with-mono-for-android.aspx

Article - Create a MapView in Google Maps for iOS

With the introduction of iOS 6 in September 2012, Apple Inc. removed the map system based on Google Maps and introduced its own map system for iPhone and iPad users. The introduction of Apple Maps, like any new technology, came with its own problems.

In December 2012, Google released its Google Maps SDK for iOS. (Check the Google Maps SDK for iOS page for additional documentation as new features are deployed to the product.) Google Maps for iOS has a long, solid track record, given the use of its data in Android and many years of usage. The introduction of Google Maps for iOS has resulted in a measurable increase in the number of users who have updated their existing iPhones from iOS version 5 to iOS version 6. This article will look at using Google Maps for iOS using Xamarin.iOS.

Article url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/how-to-use-google-maps-for-ios.asp

Mapping and Location in iOS and Android at Xamarin Evolve 2013

The following is a link to my talk on Mapping & Location in iOS and Android at Xamarin Evolve 2013.  Obviously, the talk is centered on MonoTouch, aka Xamarin.iOS, and Mono for Android, aka Xamarin.Android.  In this talk, I cover the native functionality of each platform.  In addition, I cover Google Maps for iOS SDK.  I hope that you find the talk to be helpful.

http://xamarin.com/evolve/2013#session-d336r1byq5

Testing WebAPI with Fiddler

I was wanting to test some WebAPI Methods via Fiddler so that I could all be working on one machine, debug, and make sure that everything is working.  Here is what my fiddler setup looks like:

 

We're calling into a method with the signature:

        public List Post([FromBody] UserLocation value)
        {
//............
        }
 

The UserLocation object has the following signature;

    public class UserLocation
    {
        public string AppKey { get; set; }
        public double Latitude { get; set; }
        public double Longitude { get; set; }
    }

Xamarin.iOS Visual Studio Plugin Article

Url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/04/01/ios-development.aspx

Developers working with Xamarin MonoTouch have been stuck with developing on a Macintosh and working with MonoDevelop. This hasn't been a bad thing. The Apple iOS SDK only runs on the Mac, so this requirement hasn't been a major limiting factor in iOS development.

Unfortunately, .NET and C# developers are used to using Visual Studio. Microsoft has spent a lot of time, effort and money to make Visual Studio the premier software development tool in existence. Xamarin Inc. has heard from those developers who want to integrate Visual Studio with iOS development. On Feb. 20, Xamarin introduced Xamarin.iOS for Visual Studio. This plug-in allows developers using Visual Studio to write iPhone and iPad applications for the iPhone using the Microsoft .NET Framework and C#.

Juice Up Your Android UI

Recently, I wrote an article for our Mono for Android column about improving your user interface of your applications.  The url is:http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/03/01/enhancing-your-uis.aspx

I hope that you enjoy the article.  I spent a lot of time on the article plus, helping out users and creating applications that are helpful to them is a personal/pet project of mine. 

One thing that I wanted to mention in the article and could not besides a side mention is the part about reverse geocoding.  Reverse geocoding is the process of taking a latitude/longitude and getting back an address.  Users are familiar with addresses, not latitude/longitude.  Unfortunately, I was not able to show the Android reverse geocoding that is built in.  Why?  Well, at the time, I was pre-release tester of what would become Mono for Android 4.6 and all the new stuff inside of it.  I couldn't come out and say that's why this didn't work and I was not comfortable trying to go ahead with the code anyway.  I know that the code worked in previous versions.  Unfortunately, deadlines will sometimes hit you over the head when you don't expect it.  Bottom line: I apologize to you the reader.  I will have an article out on mapping at a later time and I will discuss reverse geocoding there.

Mobile Web Development Featuring jQuery Mobile

Url: http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/mobile-web-development-jquery-mobile?code=EP3234W1

I'll be doing a seminar on jQuery Mobile on April 23.  I hope that you can attend.  Here is the info:

Start: 4/23/2013 11:00 AM (UTC -05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
End: 4/23/2013 4:30 PM (UTC -05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Rates: $199.99

Mobile development is a hot item. Customers are buying iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and many other mobile computing devices at an ever increasing record pace. Devices based on iOS and Android are nearly 80 percent of the marketplace. RIM continues to be dominant in the business area across the world. Nokia's growth with Windows Phone will grow on a worldwide basis. At the same time, clearly web development is a tremendous driver of applications, both on the public Internet and on private networks. How can developers target these various mobile platforms with web technologies? Developers can write web applications that take advantage of each mobile platform, but that is a lot of work. Into this space, the jQuery Mobile framework was developed. This eLearning series will provide an overview of mobile web development with jQuery Mobile, a detailed look at what the jQuery Mobile framework provides for us, how we can customize jQuery Mobile, and how we can use jQuery Mobile inside of ASP.NET.

Sessions (each session runs approximately 75 minutes):

Session 1: Mobile Web Development

Are you wondering what web developers can do in the mobile world?  This session will focus on:
• What web developers need to know about the idiosyncracies of mobile development
• Tools to use for mobile development
  • ASP.NET development options: Webforms v MVC v Web Pages
  • Web browsers
• Javascript language features useful for mobile web development
• Integrating with the Phone
• Meta tags to improve the user experience

Session 2: jQuery Mobile

You are probably aware of the jQuery javascript library. This seminar will introduce jQuery Mobile, a library that will make the development of web applications for mobile devices easy. We’ll look at the basics of jQuery Mobile, including

• Page Setup
• Toolbars
• Navigation
• Integrating basic controls with jQuery Mobile
  • Buttons
  • List components
  • Form/UI components
• Basic options for jQuery Mobile
• AJAX operations with the ListView

Session 3: jQuery Mobile Advanced with ASP.NET

jQuery Mobile allows developers to create an application with a mobile-specific user interface. There are many options to optimize and change the default behavior of jQuery Mobile, as well as how ASP.NET developers can easily integrate with jQuery Mobile. This session will look at

• Creating a Template for ASP.NET developers
• Creating a custom theme
• Build one ASP.NET Page with jQM Themes to target multiple devices
• Offline operation and the application manifest
• Plug-ins and optimizations for tablets
• jQM Events

 

Instructors

Wally McClure graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) with a BS & MS in Electrical Engineering. Since that time, he has done consulting and development for companies large and small. Wally has authored books on iPhone Programming with Mono/Monotouch, Android Programming with Mono for Android, application architecture, ADO.NET & SQL Server, and finally AJAX. He is a Microsoft MVP and an ASPInsider, and a partner in Scalable Development, Inc., where we're ramping up to provide training on iPhone, Android, and HTML5.

 

Customer Service

If you have any questions regarding this event, the registration process or would like to register more than one attendee, please contact us directly.

Email: service@devproconnections.com 
Phone: 800-793-5697 or 913-967-1719