Develop Xamarin Apps to Monitor Device Internals Webinar Q&A

On August 23, 2018, Syncfusion hosted the webinar, “Develop Xamarin Apps to Monitor Device Internals,” presented by Chad Church, Syncfusion’s product manager. He took attendees through how to monitor the accelerometer, WiFi, and Bluetooth capabilities of their apps. The following blog post is the Q&A portion of the webinar. The webinar recording can be found on our YouTube page, or you can watch it below:

 

Q: Dear Chad, thanks for the video. I have been trying to use Xamarin.Essentials in a sample app, but always get Android related-errors. How can I solve this?

A: It depends on the errors you get. There is a troubleshooting page in Xamarin docs. Please look at it.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/essentials/troubleshooting

 

Q: Do you have a university or an online course that can teach us how to create new controls for Xamarin? I would really love to learn how you create these controls.

A: We do not have an online course that teaches you how to create custom controls. The best place to learn is the Xamarin.Forms source itself to see how the framework controls are made.

https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms

We also suggest you look at the XLabs source code in GitHub, which has some Xamarin components, or other open-source controls in GitHub.

https://github.com/XLabs/Xamarin-Forms-Labs

It is necessary to learn about custom renderers before looking at those source codes. Here are some of the links where you can study this.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-forms/app-fundamentals/custom-renderer/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-forms/creating-mobile-apps-xamarin-forms/summaries/chapter27

 

Q: When will an accordion control be available?

A: You can use SfListView as an alternative with expandable list view features.

 

Q: Can this sample be downloaded?

A: Yes. This sample can be downloaded from the following location:

https://github.com/syncfusion/xamarin-device-internals

 

Q: What are the prerequisites for the community license?

A: Companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue and 5 or fewer developers are eligible for the Syncfusion Community License.

 

Q: Do you know whether Syncfusion has any plans of developing plugins or utilities other than UI controls? For example, PCL File access.

A: As all the plugins are being included in Xamarin itself, we do not have immediate plans for developing plugins.

 

Q: It would be nice to have a timeline control. Is Syncfusion considering developing one in the near future?

A: We will make a note of it and add it to one of our future releases based on its priority.

 

Q: Do your controls have similar properties, etc., across platforms?

A: Yes. Mostly we have similar properties and functionalities.

 

Q: If I learn Xamarin, will I have a head start in learning Windows controls?

A: Yes. It will give you some head start. However, you may still have to learn platform-specific intrinsic. Also, look at this comparison.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/desktop/controls/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/desktop/controls/wpf

 

Interested in learning more about Xamarin or Mobile Development?

We recommend the following free ebooks:

Jacqueline Bieringer