NEWS
Xamarin University Presents: Guest Lectures from Industry Luminaries!
Technology moves quickly; new software, platforms, and frameworks are constantly being developed, improved, and released. Exploring the landscape of developer tools and libraries that we can consume in our C# .NET apps can be exciting, but it takes time to review and evaluate the latest innovations.
Fortunately, Xamarin University is here to help! We invite the industry’s top experts and developers to present guest lectures on key technologies and patterns that show us how to best use them in our mobile solutions in a live, interactive forum.
So many great Guest Lectures heading your way. Sign up for some!
Xamarin University Presents: Guest Lectures from Industry Luminaries! by Rob Gibbens
DESIGN
Product Design Principles in a Single Card
Get better at UX and UI. Here are some great simple pointers.
Tips for App Porting From Android to iOS or Vice Versa
In case you hadn't realised, Android and iOS have different design metaphors. Here are some things to look out for.
Tips for App Porting From Android to iOS or Vice Versa by Spruha Pandya
Introducing Material Theming
One exciting announcement from this year’s Google I/O is the new Material Theming (just don’t call it Material Design 2). Brian Gardner walks through what it all means.
Introducing Material Theming by Brian Gardner
BUSINESS & MARKETING
Halide: One Year Later
Interesting story of the Halide app and it's rise to stardom. It really just goes to show that taking advantage of new iOS features (or the Notch) can lead to App success.
OPEN SOURCE
Contributing to Xamarin.Android
Xamarin has been open source for over two years now, starting the day we made the exciting announcement about the future of Xamarin. Since then, we’ve moved the majority of our work out in the open so that you and your fellow developers can contribute. If you are wondering whether you can contribute, then the answer is YES. Here are some ways you can make your mark.
Contributing to Xamarin.Android by Jon Douglas
PERFORMANCE
Reduce network traffic with HTTP conditional requests
On mobile, bandwidth counts. It is not unlimited and can even impose costs on your users. One way to reduce the bandwidth usage is implementing HTTP conditional requests. In this post, Gerald will explain to you what they are and how to use them.
Reduce network traffic with HTTP conditional requests by Gerald
TOOLS
mFractor: Visual Studio for Mac's Best Friend with Matthew Robbins
This week, James is joined once again by friend of the show Matthew Robbins, Microsoft MVP, who shows us the latest and greatest in MFractor, the ultimate code refactoring and intellisense add-in for Visual Studio for Mac.. MFractor adds several features so you can make great C#, Xamarin, and Xamarin.Forms apps faster. Matthew walks us all of the great new features that developers can get right now. Xamarin Show viewers can get 10% off the Pro edition
mFractor: Visual Studio for Mac's Best Friend with Matthew Robbins by James Montemagno
Introducing fuget.org
Have you ever wondered what exactly is in a nuget to see if it’s right for you? You read the description, you like the name, but, if you’re like me, you probably ended up in GitHub reading the source code to decide if you want to use the library. Today, I’m pleased to announce fuget.
This is yet another amazing tool by Frank Krueger!
Introducing fuget.org by Frank A. Krueger's
ANDROID
How to fix app quality issues with Android vitals (Part 1)
For an app developer there is no better measure of success than happy users, and preferably a lot of them. The best way to achieve this is to have a great app that people want to use, but what do we mean by “great”? It boils down to two things: features and app quality.
This article talks through the new section to the Play Console called Android vitals which helps you manage the quality and ranking of your apps.
How to fix app quality issues with Android vitals (Part 1) by Wojtek Kaliciński
XAMARIN FORMS
Xamarin.Forms Behaviors: GoToStateAction
David Brich published his Behaviors Library including a GoToStateAction class, which represents an action that will transition a VisualElement to a specified VisualState when triggered.
Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with CSS
There has been a lot of talk about whether CSS is a good addition to Xamarin.Forms. In this post, Greg Shackles shows how awesome it can be. Check it out.
Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with CSS by Greg Shackles
Detecting Xamarin.Forms Binding Errors in the Output Window
Debugging Binding issues is tough. Doubly so on iOS where the binding issues don't appear in your debug output. In this post, Gerald shows you how to fix this.
Detecting Xamarin.Forms Binding Errors in the Output Window by Gerald
Exploring new properties in Xamarin Forms 3.0
With the release of Xamarin Forms 3.0, everybody is talking about the new features: Flex Layout, css, Visual State Manager and Right to Left. In this article, Charlin Agramonte (XamGirl) walks through some of the new properties that have appeared in Xamarin.Forms 3.0.
XF 3.0 New Feature: Create WPF Application using Xamarin.Forms
Yes you read the title right in this blog we’ll talk about creating WPF applications using Xamarin.Forms ? a little background first.
XF 3.0 New Feature: Create WPF Application using Xamarin.Forms by TechieRathore
Xamarin Forms - recipe for letters that are out of this world
Setting a letter spacing for a Label in Android and iOS turned into an interesting research for me. I would expect that such a common task would be easily done with a help of a Renderer or an Effect. However, I was very surprised to discover that some platforms do not have a built-in support for setting letter spacing. xamarin-forms-recipe-label-with-letter-spacing by E. Zborovsky
.NET
Asynchronous Programming in .NET – Common Mistakes and Best Practices
We all like the idea of Async code, but sometimes it's easy to screw it up. This article lists some of the most common mistakes using asynchronous programming and gives you some guidelines going forward.
Asynchronous Programming in .NET – Common Mistakes and Best Practices by rubikscode
AZURE
Everything you ever wanted to know about Azure B2C
Matthew Soucoup shares a great link to a free ebook. This PDF will walk you through the very basics of terminology and setting up tenants all the way to using custom policies and Microsoft Graph!
Describing a photo in a mobile app using Azure Computer Vision
Jim Bennett recently gave an introduction to Xamarin talk at Imperial College, London and wanted to build a cool app to show off what you can do on mobile using the awesome Cognitive Services available on Azure. You might be surprised how easy it is.
Describing a photo in a mobile app using Azure Computer Vision by Jim Bennett
PODCASTS & VIDEOS
.NET Rocks! vNext
Carl and Richard talk to Mikayla Hutchinson about the latest features coming for the former Xamarin product. The biggest news is support for Razor, JavaScript and TypeScript intellisense, which sounds simple, but involves a ton of changes and makes VS for Mac more than just that mobile development tool. There's plenty of improvements in the mobile dev space too, and the first steps to integrating with VSTS!
Merge Conflict 99: Inclusive App Design & Seeing AI with Saqib Shaikh
We got to sit down with the legendary Saqib Shaikh to talk about creating inclusive software for everyone. As a blind person Saqib not only has first person experience with using software that is accessible, but also designing and working on inclusive software as he is the Team Lead for the Seeing AI mobile application. During our chat we discuss what developers can do inside of their application to add accessibility features and how they can test them using the built in operating systems. Saqib also shared insights into how Seeing AI was created and where it is going next.
Merge Conflict 99: Inclusive App Design & Seeing AI with Saqib Shaikh
Xamarin.iOS Weak Attribute
In this lightning lecture, we’ll look at the new Xamarin.iOS WeakAttribute which automated the process of wrapping a field as a WeakReference. This new attribute elegantly helps you reduce potential circular references in your Xamarin.iOS apps.
Xamarin.iOS Weak Attribute - Glenn Stephens - Xamarin University Lightning Lecture by Glenn Stephens
Google Play App Signing
This lightning lecture is an extension to our AND220 “Publishing an Android app” class at Xamarin University. It explains “Google Play App Signing” which is an enhancement to the app signing process. It allows app creators to store the signing certificates of their apps directly inside Google Play Console.
Google Play App Signing - Rene Ruppert - Xamarin University Lightning Lecture by Rene Ruppert