workaround

Workaround to force Xamarin.Forms WebView to use a dark mode CSS for local content on Android

Workaround to force Xamarin.Forms WebView to use a dark mode CSS for local content on Android

Recently I updated my blog reader app to support the dark mode newer iOS and Android version support. While everything went smooth on iOS and the update is already live in the App Store, I had some more work to do on Android. One of the bigger problems: the WebView I use to view posts does not automatically switch to dark mode with Xamarin.Forms.

What’s causing this problem?

On part of the problem is that the WebView does not support the CSS query “prefers-color-scheme“. This works as intended on iOS however and is a problem specific to Android. You can refer to this issue on the Xamarin.Forms repository on Github.

Workaround

I am not sure if this problem will ever get solved by the Xamarin.Forms team. I tried to play around with some Javascript solutions that are floating around the web to keep just one CSS file. In the end however, I went with a Xamarin.Forms only approach following the KISS principle.

Xamarin.Forms has a working theme detection mechanism. Based on the return value of the Application.Current.RequestedTheme property, I am loading either the dark mode CSS file or the light mode CSS file (which is default in my case).

Shipping the CSS files is easy, we just need to add them to the Assets folder and set the Build action to AndroidAsset. This results in the following structure within the Android project:

All files that are shipped that way are accessible via the android_asset file uri:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="file:///android_asset/dummycss_light.css">

Now that everything is set up in the Android project, let’s head over to the Xamarin.Forms project. In the sample for this post, I am loading a local html file, while I generate the html dynamically in my blog reader app. The idea works the same way in both cases:

private async Task SetThemeAndLoadSource()
{
    _html = await LoadHtmlFromFileAsync();

    _html = Application.Current.RequestedTheme == OSAppTheme.Dark ?
            _html.Replace("light", "dark") :
            _html.Replace("dark", "light");

    this.TestWebView.Source = new HtmlWebViewSource() { Html = _html };
}

As you can see, I just override the light and dark part of the CSS file name I load into the HTML. That’s all the “magic” that needs to happen here. Just one little thing left to add – what if the user changes the theme while the app is running? Xamarin.Forms has the solution built in as well – just handle the RequestedThemeChanged event and override the file name again, followed by setting the HtmlWebViewSource again:

private async void Current_RequestedThemeChanged(object sender, AppThemeChangedEventArgs e)
{
    await SetThemeAndLoadSource();
}

Conclusion

As most of us are already used to, we sometimes need to find some workarounds when dealing with Xamarin.Forms. While this problem could have been solved with a bunch of Javascript and a custom CSS in a WebViewRenderer as well (I tried that, but didn’t like the complexity), you can achieve reliable results with the workaround above just in Xamarin.Forms.

You can find a working sample here on Github. As always, I hope this post will be helpful for some of you.

Until the next post, happy coding, everyone!
Posted by msicc in Android, Dev Stories, Xamarin, 1 comment

How to work around IDE freezes in Visual Studio 2019 when switching between Build configurations

After a lot of project unloading, deleting our custom configurations back and forth and project file modifications, we finally found a workaround to continue our work by browsing other/similar issues to ours in the VS feedback forums. The freeze of the solution is caused by a feature that is meant to fasten up solution loading: parallel project initialization.

It seems to be an issue that some others already had with 16.2.x versions, so it may be a regression (as it is flagged as fixed).

The workaround

The workaround is pretty easy, just follow these simple steps:

  • Open Tools / Options in Visual Studio 2019 and find the Projects and Solutions node
  • Unselect ‘Allow parallel project initialization’
  • Click ‘OK’ and close the solution

After that, we need to delete the .vs folder of Visual Studio 2019 within the local solution folder. This folder contains a SQLite DB that corresponds with some behind the scenes stuff for the parallel project initialization (and more).

Now open the solution – switching between Build configurations should now work again.

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Until the next, happy coding!

Posted by msicc in Dev Stories, 10 comments
[Updated] A workaround for Xamarin Forms 2.5 bug that prevents resource declaration in App.xaml

[Updated] A workaround for Xamarin Forms 2.5 bug that prevents resource declaration in App.xaml

Update: Xamarin appearently solved this problem with Service Release 3 for Xamarin Forms 2.5. I can confirm it works in the app that caused me to write this post.

Additional note: the forms:prefix is no longer needed, just insert the <ResourceDictionary>tag.


If you have a Windows background like I do, one of the most normal things for applications is to create keyed Resources in App.xaml to make them available throughout the app. Something like this should look familiar:

<forms:ResourceDictionary >
    <viewModels:ViewModelLocator x:Key="Locator"></viewModels:ViewModelLocator>
    <forms:Color x:Key="MainAccentColor">#1e73be</forms:Color>
    <forms:Color x:Key="LightAccentColor">#61a1f1</forms:Color>
    <forms:Color x:Key="DarkAccentColor">#00488d</forms:Color>
    <forms:Color x:Key="MainBackgroundColor">#f4f4f4</forms:Color>
</forms:ResourceDictionary>

This is also possible in Xamarin.Forms. Sadly, Xamarin.Forms 2.5 introduced an ugly bug where this declarations throw an ArgumentException, telling us the key(s) already exist in the dictionary (see Bugzilla here). I can confirm that this bug affects at least UWP, Android and iOS applications which use such an implementation.

As this is a show-stopping bug, I had to find a way to work around it for the moment. In such cases, I always try to find a way that has only very little impact. For this particular bug, I just moved the declaration of the resources into the code-behind file, which keeps the rest of my code unchanged. I just created a method that does the work I originally had in the .xaml-file:

//needed because of Xamarin Bug  https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=60788
private void CreateResourceDictionary()
{
    //making sure there is only one dictionary
    if (this.Resources == null)
        this.Resources = new ResourceDictionary();

    //making sure there is only one key
    if (!this.Resources.ContainsKey("Locator"))
    {
        this.Resources.Add("Locator", ViewModels.ViewModelLocator.Instance);
    }

    if (!this.Resources.ContainsKey("MainAccentColor"))
    {
        this.Resources.Add("MainAccentColor", Color.FromHex("#1e73be"));
    }

    if (!this.Resources.ContainsKey("LightAccentColor"))
    {
        this.Resources.Add("LightAccentColor", Color.FromHex("#61a1f1"));
    }

    if (!this.Resources.ContainsKey("DarkAccentColor"))
    {
        this.Resources.Add("DarkAccentColor", Color.FromHex("#00488d"));
    }

    if (!this.Resources.ContainsKey("MainBackgroundColor"))
    {
        this.Resources.Add("MainBackgroundColor", Color.FromHex("#f4f4f4"));
    }
}

This makes the application running again like it did before. Once the bug in Xamarin.Forms is fixed, I just have to delete this method and uncomment the XAML-declarations to get back to the state where I was prior to Xamarin.Forms 2.5.

If you are experiencing the same bug, I recommend to also comment on the Bugzilla-Entry (link).

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Happy coding!

 

 

Posted by msicc in Android, Dev Stories, iOS, Windows, Xamarin, 4 comments