In The Hand Ltd

Latest Posts

  • Xamarin Forms Password Entry on Windows Runtime

    Xamarin Forms doesn’t have a specific PasswordBox control – instead you use the Entry (Think TextBox) and set IsPassword to true. Normally this works as expected and provides a masked entry box. However there is a known issue on Windows… Continue reading

  • Add Sharing to your UWP App

    With Windows 10 the original Charms introduced with Windows 8 have gone. Old Windows 8.x apps will display a window menu with those commands if supported in the app e.g. You’ll also notice the icon has changed in Windows 10… Continue reading

  • Bluetooth Development made easier in Windows 10

    With Windows (and Phone) 8.1 there were two different device capabilities which needed to be set to use either RfComm or Bluetooth LE from your app. You had to specify a target device (or All) and target service name(s). With… Continue reading

  • ShowEditNewAppointmentAsync Weirdness

    The Windows.ApplicationModel.Appointments namespace in Windows 8.1 (and Windows Phone 8.1) provides access to the user’s calendar. Prior to Windows 10 there were big differences in the APIs as Phone had the existing capability to extend the calendar with app-specific calendars.… Continue reading

  • .NET 4.6 and DateTime extras

    In case you missed it there is a great blog post on .NET 4.6 which is a part of Windows 10. Among the various performance and Hi-DPI improvements there are some more subtle enhancements. Perhaps as a nod to Microsoft’s… Continue reading

  • 32feet and Windows Apps

    Some time ago I created a subset of 32feet.NET to extend the Bluetooth functionality in Windows Phone 8.0. This was for the Silverlight app model and the only API at the time was based around the Proximity APIs. When Windows… Continue reading

  • Charming Storage Update

    I’ve just released an update to Charming Storage on NuGet. After a lot of use in Windows Phone 8.1 projects I’ve reworked the TryGetItemAsync StorageFolder extension method to improve the performance. On average it is now takes 1/4 of the time… Continue reading

  • Windows Phone 8.1 Support in Xamarin Forms

    Recently Xamarin Forms has been expanded to support Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1. There are instructions online for adding a Windows Phone 8.1 app to your solution and plugging it all together here:- http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/xamarin-forms/windows/getting-started/phone/ However there is a small… Continue reading

  • Background Bluetooth Services on Windows Phone 8.1

    Added in Windows Phone 8.1 was a new RfcommConnectionTrigger which allows you to host a Bluetooth service on the device and have your background task triggered when an incoming connection is established. This makes a lot of sense as having… Continue reading

  • iRAPP Remote Desktop

    Firstly, just to clarify, I don’t rap – this is a post about a useful Remote Desktop server for OSX. Wait, I hear you cry, you’re a Windows developer! Well that is true but I also use Xamarin to produce… Continue reading