Issue 185

LUCE CARTER

We had Microsoft Connect(); this week and boy what a week! Previews of Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac are both available publicly. Loads of Xamarin goodness was announced and so much more! Did anyone see Christos Matskas using magnets on a whiteboard and a Xamarin app to spin up infrastructure? Mind blown! Hope you all enjoy this newsletter packed full of goodness and have a great weekend!

NEWS

Office Hours with Matthew Soucoup

Ever wanted direct access to a Xamarin expert for help with all things mobile and cloud? Matthew Soucoup - Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft is offering office hours where members of the community can have 30 minutes of his time to discuss anything you want around Xamarin and Azure. This is a fantastic opportunity to get help from a very knowledgable developer and super charge your own development!

Connect(); 2018 Xamarin Announcements | Xamarin Blog

In this post, Joseph Hill updates you on all the shiny Xamarin goodness announced at Microsoft Connect(); 2018. This includes Xamarin.Forms 4.0 Preview, Android Build improvements, a Property Panel for your Xamarin.Forms UI's and many more great features that we as a community have asked for!

GETTING STARTED

Xamarin and other mythological beasts

There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter and other mediums about the strengths and weaknesses of Xamarin vs other frameworks like Flutter (which has hit 1.0 release!). Personally, I think it's important to realise that most frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses. Different frameworks are appropriate for different types of apps. Just because a framework doesn't suit your current needs, doesn't mean you should bag it out.

Anyway, it's nice to see an article that gives some love to the Xamarin approach.

Xamarin and other mythological beasts by devsdna

Up and Running with Syncfusion, Xamarin, and Visual Studio in 3 Steps

If you’re interested in Xamarin development but aren’t sure where to start, here’s a recipe that will have you building your first Xamarin.Forms app in just a couple of days. In case you’re new to Visual Studio and its support for Xamarin, there are two books you should read.

Up and Running with Syncfusion, Xamarin, and Visual Studio in 3 Steps by Tres Watkins

CODE

Miscellaneous C# Async Tips

There are lots of great async tips out there, here a random few that Stuart Lang has collected over the past couple of years.

Miscellaneous C# Async Tips by Stuart Lang

Take C# 8.0 for a spin

Yesterday we saw the first preview of both Visual Studio 2019 and .NET Core 3.0. One of the exciting aspects of that is that you get to play with some of the features coming in C# 8.0! Here Mads Torgersen takes you on a little guided tour through three new C# features you can try out in the preview.

Take C# 8.0 for a spin by Mads Torgersen

BUSINESS & MARKETING

The Numbers Behind Apple’s Best Apps & Games of 2018

Apple just announced the Best Apps and Best Games of 2018. But, they forgot a critical piece of information for the lists to be meaningful — the actual downloads.

The Numbers Behind Apple’s Best Apps & Games of 2018 by Ariel

Infographic: A Glance at Mobile in Q4 2018

If you blinked, or, for whatever reason, were not paying attention, you missed another notable year in mobile. Especially in Q4 2018. For instance, new behaviors emerged. Some technologies were disrupted.

Infographic: A Glance at Mobile in Q4 2018 by Jeff Hasen

TOOLS

Capture Android Screen Video from Visual Studio

While debugging your Xamarin Android app in Visual Studio you can capture a video of the device screen and upload it to your PC. Peter Foot tells you how.

Capture Android Screen Video from Visual Studio by Peter Freeman Foot

Git Tips and Tricks Advent Calendar

This December Edward Thomas is publishing an advent calendar of Git top tips; a new tip or trick every day. A good mix of basic topics that useful for beginners (or just a good reminder) and a bit more complex topics to make sure that it's approachable for everyone.

Git Tips and Tricks Advent Calendar by Edward Thomson

Visual Studio for Mac 2019 Preview at a glance

To get the Windows and Mac versions more aligned, we now have Visual Studio 2019 preview for both platforms. This shiny new version has been introduced as part of Microsoft Connect(); along with a whole lot of other goodness.

Visual Studio for Mac 2019 Preview at a glance by Gerald

ANDROID

Use Multi-targeting with your app's Android Support Library v28

Starting with Xamarin’s Android Support Library version 28, we are introducing multi-targeting. This includes assemblies for older support library versions when your application’s TargetFrameworkVersion is lower than the expected version.

Use Multi-targeting with your app's Android Support Library v28 by Jon Douglas

IOS

Building an Apple Watch Train Times app

After upgrading from the original Apple Watch to the Series 4 I was pleasantly surprised to be able to use apps on my new wrist companion. Swim workouts, Carrot Weather and Podcasts are all awesome to use, but there was for me an area lacking… Train Times.

Building an Apple Watch Train Times app by Alex Penfold

XAMARIN FORMS

Xamarin Forms 4.0 Preview

Yesterday at Microsoft Connect(); 2018 we announced our plans for Xamarin.Forms 4.0 and shared a public preview. Let’s now take a deeper look at the big changes, starting with Xamarin.Forms Shell, and then touch some of the other highlights.

Xamarin Forms 4.0 Preview by David Ortinau

Shell, Visual and CollectionView: New features in Xamarin.Forms 4.0

Shell, Visual y CollectionView are the new features highlighted in the new version of Xamarin.Forms. Once but the Xamarin team launches great new features with the new version of Xamarin.Forms 4.0. If you missed the new in its 3.4.0 version, you can see it here.

Shell, Visual and CollectionView: New features in Xamarin.Forms 4.0 by Luis Matos

Xamarin.Forms in Space!

Steven Thewissen gets funky with design again.

As you may have seen from reading other content on this blog I dabble in the world of cryptocurrency. To help me on my position sizing I figured I’d create a little calculator app. Obviously, if you know me, that has to look sexy. So I decided to go on a journey into space using Xamarin.Forms!

Xamarin.Forms in Space! by Steven

TableSection TextColor for Xamarin.Forms

A new feature was merged into the Xamarin.Forms repository. This time: TextColor for the TableSection control. With this new feature, you can specify the color of the text that is used in a table section.

TableSection TextColor for Xamarin.Forms by Gerald

Xamarin.Forms - Face Detection Using Cognitive Service

In this blog post, you will learn how to detect human faces using Cognitive Service in Xamarin.Forms.

Xamarin.Forms - Face Detection Using Cognitive Service by Delpin Susai Raj

Xamarin forms – Switch custom font on Style Trigger

A nice little trick to use a Style Trigger to change the font for a particular font attriburte.

Xamarin forms – Switch custom font on Style Trigger by Depechie

Monkey See

Monkey See is a sample app for Xamarin.Forms that uses the cross-platform OrientationSensor included in Xamarin.Essentials. Monkey See runs on iOS, Android, and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), but you'll need to run the program on an actual phone or tablet rather than a simulator.

Monkey See by Charles Petzold

ImageButton: New Features Xamarin.Forms 3.4.0

ImageButton the new control. Once again the Xamarin team launches new features with the new version of Xamarin.Forms 3.4.0. If you missed the new in the last version 3.3.0, you can see it here. We will focus on the features incorporated in the new update of Xamarin.Forms.

ImageButton: New Features Xamarin.Forms 3.4.0 by Luis Matos

Xamarin.Forms Controls: RepeaterView

Sabastian Jensen goes through the basics of creating a repeater control in Xamarin.Forms without any custom renderers.

Note: Page is in German

Xamarin.Forms Controls: RepeaterView by Sebastian Jensen

Paginator: a platform-independent infinite loading component

Jean-Marie talks about composition vs inheritance and his Paginator component. Definitely an interesting read.

Paginator: a platform-independent infinite loading component by Jean-Marie Alfonsi

AZURE

Azure Blob Storage with Xamarin.Forms

When we develop mobile applications, sometimes we need to store images, PDF files, text files… actually, we need to store any type of file on the cloud, so they can be available to our users across devices.

Azure Storage, one of the services included in the Azure offer, can be used to solve this need. You can use it to store unstructured data such as text or binary data (blobs), messages (queue), rows of information (tables), or file-systems (file). Microsoft provides SDKs for our apps in several languages and technologies (C# and .NET included of course) or we can also use the REST API to implement it.

Azure Blob Storage with Xamarin.Forms by Luis Beltran

SECURITY

Xamarin Tizen Networking: Under the covers of HTTP/2 in .NET

My current side/passion project requires the use of HTTP/2: It’s a .NET implementation of the Alexa Voice Service and I use it to drive Voice in a Can: Alexa for iOS, Apple Watch, Mac, Android, Android Wear, and … Tizen.

Xamarin Tizen Networking: Under the covers of HTTP/2 in .NET by damian

NUGET OF THE WEEK

Xamarin.Essentials.Interfaces released

Nestled amongst the impressive number of announcements related to Xamarin made during Microsoft Connect was the anticipated GA of Xamarin.Essentials. Since Essentials is no longer in preview, Ryan Davis also moved his interfaces autogeneration experiment out of preview too, and outputs are being packaged up on NuGet for easy consumption.

Xamarin.Essentials.Interfaces released by Ryan Davis

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Merge Conflict: 126: Collaborative Coding Magic

Paired programming has helped us through the years to solve critical problems together. It is also great for learning new skills or teach it to others and the space for collaborative paired programming has exploded recently with the introduction of VS Live Share. We discuss the past, present, and future. Episode 126 - Collaborative Coding Magic by Merge Conflict