Book Image

Xamarin Blueprints

By : Michael Williams
Book Image

Xamarin Blueprints

By: Michael Williams

Overview of this book

Do you want to create powerful, efficient, and independent apps from scratch that will leverage the Xamarin framework and code with C#? Well, look no further; you’ve come to the right place! This is a learn-as-you-build practical guide to building eight full-fledged applications using Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS. Each chapter includes a project, takes you through the process of building applications (such as a gallery Application, a text-to-speech service app, a GPS locator app, and a stock market app), and will show you how to deploy the application’s source code to a Google Cloud Source Repository. Other practical projects include a chat and a media-editing app, as well as other examples fit to adorn any developer’s utility belt. In the course of building applications, this book will teach you how to design and prototype professional-grade applications implementing performance and security considerations.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Xamarin Blueprints
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Theming with ControlTemplates


ControlTemplates allow separation of logical view hierarchy from visual hierarchy. Similar to a DataTemplate, a ControlTemplate will produce the visual hierarchy for your controller page. One advantage of ControlTemplates, is the concept of theming. Many software applications provide settings to change user interface styles (Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio offer a dark and light theme). We are going to implement two themes for the MainPage and provide a Button to switch between the two.

Let's start with opening the App.xaml page, and adding the first ControlTemplate for the black theme:

<ControlTemplate x:Key="MainBlackTemplate"> 
                <StackLayout x:Name="StackLayout" Spacing="10" Orientation="Vertical" Padding="10, 10, 10, 10" BackgroundColor="Black" 
            VerticalOptions="Center" HorizontalOptions="Center" > 
          <Image x:Name="Image" Source="stocklist.png" HeightRequest="120" WidthRequest="120"/> &...