NEWS
Roadmaps for Visual Studio PC and Mac
If you want to see the roadmap for Visual Studio (PC & Mac) then look no further. These have just been updated. TLDR: lots of Xamarin goodies coming your way.
CODE
New prescriptive guidance for Open Source .NET Library Authors
There's a great new bunch of guidance just published representing Best Practices for creating .NET Libraries. Best of all, it was shepherded by JSON.NET's James Newton-King. Who better to help explain the best way to build and publish a .NET library than the author of the world's most popular open source .NET library?
New prescriptive guidance for Open Source .NET Library Authors by Scott Hanselman
DEVOPS
Building an open source GitHub project using Azure DevOps
In this post, Andrew shows how he added Azure DevOps CI to one of the .NET Standard library he has on GitHub. Walking through the various steps to get CI/CD working for pull requests and the master branch of an open source library.
Building an open source GitHub project using Azure DevOps by Andrew Lock
TOOLS
Design-Time Binding Contexts in Xamarin.Forms Using MFractor
We love MFractor because it makes our developer lives so much easier. In this article Matthew Robbins shows how MFractor resolves binding contexts and view models at design time to power code analysis, code actions and XAML IntelliSense features for Xamarin.Forms.
Design-Time Binding Contexts in Xamarin.Forms Using MFractor by Matthew Robbins
Protect your Xamarin.Android Apps at Runtime with Dotfuscator
Now, in Visual Studio 15.8, Dotfuscator Community can help mitigate this threat by injecting Android root detection and response into your Xamarin.Android applications. This article will explain why and how to do that, and what types of responses you might want your application to perform.
Protect your Xamarin.Android Apps at Runtime with Dotfuscator by Bill Leach
How to Build a Xamarin App: Master Guide from Intro to Features
SyncFusion has a great set of controls to help you with developing your Xamarin Applications. This blog post is a great collection of webinars and getting started resources for Xamarin and more specifically SyncFusion controls.
How to Build a Xamarin App: Master Guide from Intro to Features by Jacqueline Bieringer
Top 10 Debugging Tips for .NET
Being the master of your tools is important. And of course, bugs happen and sometimes you’ll want to jump in and debug an application. Gone are the days when you just jam in a zillion Debug.WriteLine() methods. We have much more awesome tools now. This article covers 10 debugging tips for .NET.
Top 10 Debugging Tips for .NET by Simon Timms
ANDROID
Xamarin Android and DataWedge scanning process
If you are scanning barcodes you can use the natvive APIs but another solution is to use DataWedge, DataWedge enables all apps on the device (whether stock or added later) to acquire scanned data without using scanner APIs directly.
Modern background execution in Android
This is the third in a series of blog posts in which outline strategies and guidance in Android with regard to power. Over the years, executing background tasks on Android has evolved. To write modern apps, it's important to learn how to run your background tasks in modern fashion.
Modern background execution in Android by Luiz Gustavo Martins
Protect your Xamarin.Android Apps at Runtime with Dotfuscator
This is a guest blog by Bill Leach. Bill is CTO and co-founder of PreEmptive Solutions, makers of Dotfuscator and DashO application protection tools.
He has previously discussed protecting your Xamarin applications with Dotfuscator to prevent reverse-engineering. In this article he adds an extra layer of security in the event your device has been deliberately or maliciously rooted, and the default security measures can no longer be relied upon using something called root detection.
IOS
Siri Shortcuts with Xamarin
With iOS 12, Apple introduced Siri shortcuts. For us developers, we can create shortcuts using SiriKit. In this blog post, we will walk through how to do that in an app that we are building with Xamarin.iOS.
Xamarin iOS App Settings
When we talk about app settings we could mean a few different things. The actual settings values which are stored by your app, an in-app method to view/edit those settings or the iOS Settings UI which exposes both system and application settings to the user in the centralised place.
XAMARIN FORMS
Xamarin.Forms 3.3.0: Little Things, Huge Difference
In this post, David Ortinau introduces Xamarin.Forms 3.3. Some nice improvements. He highlights those updates, gives you a taste of what’s happening for Android image performance, and show you how to update your WebView for optimal performance on iOS.
Xamarin.Forms 3.3.0: Little Things, Huge Difference by David Ortinau
TaskLoaderView: async init made easy
Here is a cool article (and nuget) about sorting out the async loading of your pages. It covers those common requirements we have, like Displaying a loading indicator, showing an error screen, and handling when you have no data.
Understanding Converters in Xamarin Forms
Charlin has a good article on Converters in Xamarin.Forms. What I like about this article is she points out some considerations for when to use Converters vs Triggers.
Understanding Converters in Xamarin Forms by Charlin Agramonte
ControlTemplates
Marco highlights a really cool use of ControlTemplate with Xamarin.Forms
ControlTemplates.xaml by Marcos Cobeña Morián
Matcha.BackgroundService
This is the last post in the series by Thiago on creating a RSS Reader. In this post he shows a component called Match.BackgroundService and how that can make updating information in the background easier for a cross platform application (given the differences in backgrounding models between platforms).
NOTE: Post is in Portugese
Meu plugin minha vida — BackGround Services by Thiago Bertuzzi
Using the TitleView
Xamarin.Forms 3.2 introduces TitleView , a new option to customize the upper bar without needing to need specific code per platform. Javier introduces how to work with it and also a few limitations/considerations.
NOTE: Post is in Spanish
Complex Animations in Xamarin.Forms using Finite State Machine
This blog covers off handling animations using a state machine for when you want to transition between multiple states.
Complex Animations in Xamarin.Forms using Finite State Machine by Slava Chernikoff
PODCASTS & VIDEOS
Merge Conflict 119: RESTQL
This week Frank and James take a look at web requests! REST APIs, GraphQL, OData, SOAP, and so much more!
Gone Mobile 78: Building a Software Business with Matthew Robbins
Building a business around software is hard work, and often it's hard to come across detailed advice from those who have dared to give it a shot. In this episode we're joined by Matthew Robbins, founder of MFractor, to talk about his experiences building a company around developer tooling, and what he's learned along the way. If you're curious to peek behind the curtain of building MFractor, this is the episode for you!
Gone Mobile 78: Building a Software Business with Matthew Robbins by Greg Shackles, Jonathan Dick
AND FINALLY...
Configure Sounds for Builds in Visual Studio
Did you know you can associate sounds in Windows to VS events? I didn't.