In The Hand Ltd

Latest Posts

  • GitHub Latest

    While I prepare to refresh my main machine with Windows 10 Creator’s Update and the latest Visual Studio and Xamarin updates I thought I’d throw together a summary of open-source progress since I last blogged:- Since the announcement of CodePlex’s… Continue reading

  • Talking to Printers

    Recently I’ve been working with a selection of Bluetooth printers. During this work I’ve noticed an odd thing about the UWP Bluetooth APIs. It’s all about the Class of Device. These are a set of defined device types and are… Continue reading

  • Forms Previewer and Custom Controls

    Recent versions of Xamarin include the Forms Previewer which generates a live representation of your XAML as it will appear on iOS or Android. I noticed one slight problem when working on my MediaElement control… The Android renderer instantiates a… Continue reading

  • Playing Media with Xamarin Forms

    Xamarin Forms has quite a rich set of controls which work natively across platforms however a big gap in the functionality is the ability to play audio or video content. You can create custom controls for Xamarin and from the… Continue reading

  • All New Clipboarder

    My free Clipboarder app for Windows Phone has now (finally) been re-written as a universal Windows 10 app. It’s currently available across all Windows 10 platforms (except Xbox but that seems fairly logical!). The app provides a share target allowing… Continue reading

  • Family Calendar with Amazon Echo

    Update 15th February 2017 Alexa can now be paired with an Outlook.com account which means you no longer have to use this workaround.   We’ve used the “Family Room” feature from Windows Phone and although it’s been discontinued the shared… Continue reading

  • Xamarin-certified

    I’ve just completed and passed the exam and am now a Xamarin-certified Mobile developer. Having been working with Xamarin since the days of Mono for Android and MonoTouch I should have probably have got around to doing this earlier. Now… Continue reading

    Xamarin-certified

  • Simulate the Surface Dial

    The Surface Dial, and the RadialController API provide an interesting new input metaphor. You may have some ideas of how you could use it but don’t actually have the hardware. Since I tried creating an Etch-a-Sketch app using the dial… Continue reading

  • Pontoon – Yet More Platforms

    What started as a Windows project (unifying the then separate Phone and PC APIs) has since expanded through the Xamarin platforms (iOS and Android) and beyond. The latest NuGet package adds Apple tvOS, macOS and the recently announced Tizen .NET… Continue reading

  • Building an Etch-a-Sketch with Surface Dial

    Microsoft have demonstrated how the Surface Dial can be used in conjunction with Pen input for drawing, but what about drawing with the Dial itself? For those of us with warm memories of the Etch-a-Sketch I thought it would be… Continue reading