Paneque's Technology Blog

Recommending a new device to somebody else requires a lot of analysis, first of all, they will think you are trying to push your own preferences. And that could be true, at least up to a certain point. For me, however, recommending a device becomes a more complex thing. As a developer I work with and own a lot of them: iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Windows tablets, both "RT" and regular x86. And while my own device is a Windows Phone (Lumia 925) the right device for you depends on a lot of factors. First, the Phones Let's compare the three platforms, but only phones for now, we'll be talking about tablets later. So we have iOS (iPhone), Android and Windows Phone. At some point the discussion must be about a specific brand, but at the end we will have to sort results by platform. Apps Most likely the app you need is available for both iOS and Android. There is a huge app gap, as well as a huge number of low quality apps in some stores, so my ...

One the first entry of this series I covered the issues with the keyboard in iOS not hiding automatically when needed. In this second - and final - entry on the subject I am going to go for the most of annoying issue when creating UIs in iOS. The keyboard overlaps a focused TextField  If you have a TextField below the keyboard top edge position, they will be hidden once the keyboard shows up. The keyboard size is 320x216 points* in in portrait mode, so anything below the 264 (iPhone 4/4s) or 352 (iPhone 5/5s) points won’t be visible.  It is so simple that is almost unbelievable, but it happens as you can see in the images. Since this default behavior is inconvenient we are going for the workaround. The solution is not pretty but it is trivial: we need to place the UI elements inside a UIScrollView  and will use notifications to monitor when the keyboard will Show/Hide and will scroll the content of the container to ensure that views inside are always vis...

When you are a developer for more than one platform, you might find that what is considered basic or pre-built in one, it’s incomplete or completely missing in another one. This entry is about fixing some issues with the virtual keyboard on iOS; especially when it hides your text fields or keeps the input focus. Xamarin Studio/Mono and XCode were used for this example. Hiding the keyboard Tapping inside the TextField will show the keyboard, but it won't be possible to get rid of it by tapping outside or pressing “RETURN” on it. This is something pre-built in Silverlight for Windows Phone. Tapping outside of the textbox or hitting the “back” key will hide the keyboard. But well, there is no back key on the iPhone. So let’s start by creating and extension method that we will use in the rest of the solution. The method will return the view that is the first responder or the “active” one. public static class Extensions { public static UIView FirstRespon...

Popular wisdom says "things happen for a reason". However experience has proved me that when it comes to programmers, that is not always true. Things can just happen for no reason at all. That's why we require feedback, here is one and I assure you is in good spirit. So let's me write about something I found when building an app for iOS using Xamarin/Mono. The invisible property. Ranging from windows forms (desktop or Windows Mobile) to WPF, Silverlight/XAML on the web or windows phone. ASP.NET Web Forms or Razor, MVC or classic. One thing I can say for sure: any visual element  has a way to check for its visual status. Call it "Visible" in windows forms, "Visibility" in Silverlight/WPF. There is always an intuitive, simple and trivial way to know if something - that might be visible - it is visible at a particular moment or not. You can't imagine my surprise when I realized that the UIViewController in iOS does not provide such mecha...

I have published apps and games for Microsoft Windows Phone, and I update them in a regular basis. Most of the time is because a bug is found, sometimes is a new feature or just because I am trying something new. It helps to keep things moving and people thank you for that. However, I never had to protect an app or a game from human stupidity. Until now . Software developers learn  over time how to deal with the final user - in some measure - and I must admit is not easy; as programmers we are not trained to deal with them, is usually another person's job. But when it comes to phone/tablet apps, that individual is you, because as an 'indie' developer you are too close to the complete production line. I classify the users like this: The happy mute The unhappy mute The fan The hater The stupid The mute ones... There are always people that either like or don't like your app or website, or tool, but they just don't say anything. This is good and b...

DISCLAIMER: This is not about iPhone vs WP7 devices; its about development tools. If you think you can enter into a device fight here, or you like to listen to Justin Bieber, you should leave the page now. I like programming, and that's it. Well...no. I LOVE programming. No matter the platform, OS, framework or  language; I find that programming is a rewarding experience. Of course as with anything in life, you want that experience to be as smooth as possible. And that's why I am so picky with development tools... They are supposed to make my work easier. And this entry is about that, comparing the development tools used to create apps for iOS (iPhone) and Windows Phone. Recently I had the opportunity to develop the same mobile app for two platforms: Windows Phone and iOS. While I have developed for these platforms before, I rarely have coded the same app (and a complex one) for the two of them. And this is a good chance to perform a comparison, beca...