Issue 162

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Midyear Madness

Where does the time go? It's already halfway through the year, how did that happen.

Make sure you check out some great links in the week's edition. There are also some great Nugets, in fact, I couldn't decide so there are two Nugets of the Week ;-)

Enjoy, and Happy Coding...

DESIGN

UX Design Tools for 2018 (For Mac AND PC)

A great list of some UX Design tools for you.

UX Design Tools for 2018 (For Mac AND PC) by Chris Bam Harrison

BUSINESS & MARKETING

Apple Search Ads Creative Sets best practices

Let’s take a look at what Apple Search Ads are then dive into the opportunities that Creative Sets bring (and examples!).

Apple Search Ads Creative Sets best practices and optimization examples by Sylvain Gauchet

IOS In-App Purchases and Subscriptions

What are In App Subscriptions and how should you deal with them?

IOS In-App Purchases and Subscriptions by Juan F. Caracciolo

The Real Reason Apple and Google Want You to Use Your Phone Less

Why are Apple and Google providing so many features around monitoring and controlling the time you spend using your devices? At first, it seems counter-intuitive but there is a great quote in this article that highlights the reason.

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.”

And neither Apple nor Google want to create a shipwreck.

The Real Reason Apple and Google Want You to Use Your Phone Less by Nir Eyal

OPEN SOURCE

Cryptallet — a Xamarin.Forms dapp

Cryptallet is a simple Xamarin.Forms application built for working with Ethereum blockchain. It provides simple, yet essential features. It's also open source.

Cryptallet — a Xamarin.Forms dapp by Vũ Đức Tuyến

TOOLS

181 iOS Developer and Productivity Tools

Paul Solt provides a list of tools and hardware used to get him through the day as an iOS developer... Applies to any mobile developer though.

Here are 181 tools that I use on a daily basis to write Swift code, research API changes, design UI, edit graphics, write articles, take notes, and record videos with high quality audio. Getting things done is super important when you work on iOS app development as a hobby, or even as a career.

181 iOS Developer and Productivity Tools (for beginners) by Paul Solt

ANDROID

How to Fix the dreaded 'Version conflict' NuGet error in your Xamarin.Android projects

It's a sunny day, your coffee is still hot, and you're ready to take on the world. You go to install a NuGet package into your Xamarin project, and that's when your day starts to fall apart:

Package restore failed.

This is not what you wanted to see. All you wanted was to install a new package, or update an existing package, and your day just got more difficult. But fear not, Redth is here to help you.

How to Fix the dreaded 'Version conflict' NuGet error in your Xamarin.Android projects by Redth

Use MSBuild to Define Advanced Android VersionCode

With the introduction of Xamarin.Android v7.2, two new MSBuild properties were also introduced in order to make maintaining Android VersionCode for Android apps even easier:

AndroidVersionCodePattern

AndroidVersionCodeProperties

Learn more about them here.

Use MSBuild to Define Advanced Android VersionCode by Dean Ellis

What's New In the Xamarin Android Designer :

The Android Designer is getting some love. Find out the juicy details here on the Xamarin Blog.

What's New In the Xamarin Android Designer : by Jon Douglas

IOS

Apple Platform SDK API Differences

API diff reports for Apple platform SDKs as generated by objc-diff, which has a few limitations: Objective-C only Does not detect relocations across frameworks Excludes: /usr/include IOKit.framework Kernel.framework Tk.

Apple Platform SDK API Differences

"iPhone Only" apps on the iPad

Since the launch of the iPad in 2010, any app that runs on the iPhone will also run on the iPad in a scaled format. This is normally1 in the 3:2 aspect ratio which the original iPhone had all the way up until the iPhone 5 when they changed to the 16:9 ratio. It looks like this is set to change with iOS 12 as beta 2 is now running iPhone apps in their 16:9 ratio on all iPads rather than the 3:2 ratio.

"iPhone Only" apps on the iPad by Ben Dodson

XAMARIN FORMS

Building a “Next Entry” Effect for iOS and Android in Xamarin.Forms

A couple of techniques you can use to set the focus to a field when the user hits the return key on the popup keyboard.

Building a “Next Entry” Effect for iOS and Android in Xamarin.Forms by Joe Meyer

TinyMvvm – The best MVVM library for Xamarin.Forms!?

Daniel Hindrikes talks TinyMvvm and why it might be a good choice for your Xamarin.Forms MVVM library

TinyMvvm – The best MVVM library for Xamarin.Forms!? by dhindrik

AI

What’s New in Core ML 2

Core ML is Apple’s Machine Learning framework. Released just a year ago, Core ML offers developers a way to integrate powerful and smart machine learning capabilities into their apps with just a few lines of code! This year, at WWDC 2018, Apple released Core ML 2.

What’s New in Core ML 2 by Sai Kambampati

NUGET OF THE WEEK

Jint - A Javascript interpreter for .NET

Jint is a Javascript interpreter for .NET which provides full ECMA 5.1 compliance and can run on any .NET platform. Because it doesn't generate any .NET bytecode nor use the DLR it runs relatively small scripts faster. It's available as a PCL on Nuget at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Jint.

sebastienros/jint

HttpClient Lifetime

Flurl is a modern, fluent, asynchronous, testable, portable, buzzword-laden URL builder and HTTP client library for .NET.

HttpClient Lifetime

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Using Entity Framework Core 2.1 with Xamarin.Forms

The amazing Rene Ruppert has released a Xamarin University Lightning lecture to get you started with Entity Framework Core and Xamarin.Forms

With the release of Entity Framework Core 2.1 you can integrate a powerful ORM (object relational mapper) into your Xamarin apps with ease. This lecture explains how to add EF to a project, how to implement CRUD methods, how to seed data many other exciting features of Entity Framework Core.

Using Entity Framework Core 2.1 with Xamarin.Forms - Rene Ruppert - Xamarin University by Rene Ruppert

Merge Conflict 103: .NET Everywhere with Miguel de Icaza

What more do we need to say? We sat down with Miguel de Icaza to pick his mind about the past, present, and future of .NET. Miguel gives his insights into where the entire industry is moving and why GUI based console applications are so important. We start first how .

103: .NET Everywhere with Miguel de Icaza

Gone Mobile 70: A Xamarin.Forms 2018 Update with David Ortinau

David Ortinau stops past the Gone Mobile podcast and talks about all the new and shiny things coming your way for Xamarin.Forms.

Gone Mobile 70: A Xamarin.Forms 2018 Update with David Ortinau by Greg Shackles, Jonathan Dick

AND FINALLY...

This weeks Xamarin Monkey