Mono For Android - James Montemagno https://staging.montemagno.com/tag/mono-for-android/ https://staging.montemagno.com/content/images/2017/08/MonogramIcon_Orange_NoBuffer.png Mono For Android - James Montemagno https://staging.montemagno.com/tag/mono-for-android/ Hugo -- gohugo.io Tue, 13 Oct 2026 23:21:57 GMT 60 LegacyBar: Your MonoDroid ActionBar https://staging.montemagno.com/legacybar-your-monodroid-actionbar/ 598df8f2c121b60019bf304f Thu, 28 Mar 2013 02:34:00 GMT Android is kind of a beast, interesting and complex. One of my favorite features of Android has to be their implementation of the Actionbar, which they started in ICS 3.0. If you are a native Java programmer using the action bar is great, and if you need to target android 2.X devices there are some great libraries that give you backwards compatibility. If you are like me, a C# developer using Mono for Android then it isn’t that easy.

When I started developing apps I started searching for a Mono action bar tool since I wanted to target 2.2+ devices. That is when I ran across Tomasz Cielecki and his project called MonoDroid.ActionBar. He took time porting over the actionbar to be backward compatible and all in C# for Mono. I soon forked it on GitHub, and started making pull requests. My additions were simple really, a few bug fixes, custom themes, and the overflow menu. Since then we have been working to make it a separate Library that anyone can use.

Today we launched the LegacyBar Sample app on Google Play and soon will be submitting to the Xamarin component library! Check it out and if you have questions open up some issues on git!

]]> Inspired by @TweedleApp https://staging.montemagno.com/inspired-by-tweedleapp/ 598df8f2c121b60019bf3057 Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:38:06 GMT If you don’t know about Tweedle and you are on Twitter and Android you should probably download it. It is a fantastic twitter client with focus on core Android design which is clean and beautiful. It is also developer by an awesome developer, Mr. Daniel Huckaby.

I have been using it nearly since day one and he keeps updating it with great features and enhancements. A while ago he revamped the direct messages part of the app and instead of a pull down to refresh like mentions and timeline had he implemented a simple “refresh” button but also added in the time and date.

I am not sure exactly why he went down this route, but i really like it. So I wanted to implement something similar in the Ceton Companion App, and while I am not a fan of Relative Layouts at all which I am sure is what he is using as it is very beneficial I love to use LinearLayouts, just because I can think them up in my head easier. However I found it easier to use a combination of Linear Layouts and also TableLayouts. I also wanted mine on the bottom of my list view compared to at the top like in Tweedle. So here was the code:

First I started with a standard LinearLayout with orientation of vertical. Inside there I added in my ListView which would fill up everything with layout_weight=“1”. Then you will see I add in a single LinearLayout with 1px. This gives it a nice separator line. I haven’t found a control to do it better just yet.<

Next up is the real meat of it. Basically you have a single row, but with 4 columns. First is the text “Last Update”, second is the actual date/time tamp you want to use, followed by the 1px seperator, and finally by actual refresh button. Now this refresh button is a standard ImageButton that has no background and you will need to do some custom stuff there with the size, but overall you should be able to figure it out.

So this is probably not the best way to do it, but I will say I think it looks fantastic:

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