LUCE CARTER
Happy end of the week everyone! Lots of great links as usual this week including quite a few videos. Some great content as ever.
As I mentioned in a tweet a few days ago, we hit the 3500 subscriber last week, it blows me away how many of you join us each week in reading great content created by you!
As for me, I am back at work this week after holidaying in Center Parcs last week. I had a great time and was nice to take a break but it's nice to be back writing C# code again.
NEWS
Introducing the .NET Community Standup Series
I mentioned the Mobile Community Standup last week, but here are some details about all the .NET Community Standups.
Introducing the .NET Community Standup Series by James Montemagno
DESIGN
Embracing Your Animated Future
A collection of articles and guides for UX designers getting serious about UI animation. We cover UI animation principles and best practices, what-not-to-do, and tutorials on a new animation tool for UX designers using Sketch.
The surprising complexity of divider lines
Dividers are used throughout all types of design to establish content hierarchy and separate themes. Deceptively simple, they are one of the main contributors to your brand’s visual style.
BUSINESS & MARKETING
Consumer Study: App Discovery, Downloading, and Purchasing
In collaboration with a few indie app developers, we ran a study looking to see how consumers discover, decide on which app to download, and some underlying economics around the app ecosystem. This study had respondents from the US and key parts of Europe.
Consumer Study: App Discovery, Downloading, and Purchasing by factor1
Get Your iOS App Featured on the App Store
Getting featured on the App Store is one of the best ways to get a lot of exposure for your app, and best of all, it's completely free! Over the years we've observed thousands of apps and games getting featured and have noticed a few patterns.
Get Your iOS App Featured on the App Store with These 11 Tips
OPEN SOURCE
Xamarin Native Custom Bottomsheets
If you need a "BottomSheet" like Google Maps (or whatever else you want) then you could check out this Nuget for Xamarin .iOS and Xamarin Android.
PERFORMANCE
Find, Fix, and Avoid Memory Leaks in C# .NET: 8 Best Practices
Anyone who worked on a big enterprise project knows memory leaks are like rats in a big hotel. You might not notice when there are few of them, but you always have to be on guard in case they overpopulate, break into the kitchen, and poop on everything.
Find, Fix, and Avoid Memory Leaks in C# .NET: 8 Best Practices by
DEVOPS
Enhanced Mobile App Versioning in Azure DevOps (VSTS) with Mobile Tasks
A little over a year ago, I introduced my Mobile App Tasks Extensions for iOS and Android into the Azure DevOps (VSTS) marketplace. For iOS and Android developers it made the tasks of versioning and adjusting package names a breeze.
Enhanced Mobile App Versioning in Azure DevOps (VSTS) with Mobile Tasks by James Montemagno
TOOLS
Fiddle with SkiaSharp with this awesome idea.
I saw on Twitter that Matthew Leibowitz created SkiaSharp Fiddle! It is like a mini IDE that compiles C# code and runs it to draw images. It even has syntax highlighting and compiler warnings in the editor!
Matthew Leibowitz on Twitter by Matthew Leibowitz
Visual Studio for Mac Tips and Tricks
There is a new series being created that covers Visual Studio for Mac tips and tricks series. The first two videos were just posted which are introductions to Visual Studio for Mac, but much more interesting stuff should be in the pipeline.
XAMARIN FORMS
Xamarin.Forms 3.5: A Little Bindable Love
Andrei Nitescu shares some information about his Bindable Layout contributions to Xamarin.Forms which is making a welcome release in Xamarin.Forms 3.5.
Sharpen your UI development in Xamarin Forms
Leomaris Reyes gives some tips for sharpening your UI skills with Xamarin.Forms.
Tips to practice UI development in Xamarin Forms and not die trying by Leomaris Reyes
Lazy load tabs in TabbedPage
In Xamarin Forms, we sometimes need the TabbedPage to display a tab layout. One issue is that Xamarin.Forms (by default) requires you create those pages all up front. This article presents some options if you want to load pages on demand.
Xamarin Forms: Lazy load tabs in TabbedPage by Andrei Nitescu
Introduction To Image Assets In Xamarin.Forms
Images are usually a key ingredient in all apps and in this great guest post from Ben Reierson he explains how they work and how MFractor can help make managing those image assets much easier. Introduction To Image Assets In Xamarin.Forms by Ben Reierson
Sticky Headers in Scroll Views
Here is an interesting article on how to keep a title fixed to a page as it reaches a certain anchor point on screen, while the user is scrolling the text content.
Xamarin forms – keep visual element in view linked to content scroll view
.NET
.NET Standard and Multi-targeting
Wanna run some platform specific code inside a .NET Standard library?
PODCASTS & VIDEOS
Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Mobile Apps
This week, James is joined by friend of the show Marc Mercuri, Program Manager on the Azure Blockchain Development Kit Team, who introduces us to the world of blockchain. He shows us a full end to end scenario of why and how you would use blockchain in applications.
Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Mobile Apps by James Montemagno
Merge Conflict: 132: The Life & Times of Frank Krueger
It is a very special week on Merge Conflict as James Montemagno gets to sit down and interview Frank Krueger about his childhood, life, career, move to independent developer, and future plans.
From humble beginnings in New York, to electrical engineer, internship at Microsoft on the WPF team, business owner, world traveler, and now independent developer.
You do not want to miss this episode.
Visual Studio Mobile Developer Episode 57: New Year - New Pod! Office Hours, Hockey App Moves, XamU Retires, and Essentials Becomes a Video Star!
In this first episode of the New Year - and the second month in a row - James and Matt chat about the office hours that Matt's been hosting with the community. James has some big news about Hockey App ... or is that App Center now? Xamarin University is retiring, but Xamarin.Essentials is now a star of its own video series!
James will give you a rundown of his hands on experiences with Xamarin.Forms 4.0 and introduce you to the new .NET Community Stand-Ups. In cloud news - there's a new Azure Cosmos DB SDK in town and Matt loves the auth - and there's news about auth in Azure Functions!
And we have new release news for you too! Xamarin.Essentials, Visual Studio 2017, Android Support 28 Libraries, and Unity support in App Center. Plus the Pick of the Pod!
Gone Mobile: Gone Mobile 83: Diving into GrialKit and Gorilla Player with UXDivers
We finally sit down with Leonardo and Diego from UXDivers to talk about their products GrialKit and Gorilla Player.
GrialKit is a collection of Xamarin.Forms user controls, templates, pages, and basically a really simple way to make your app look great.
Gorilla Player lets you live preview and hot reload XAML from your Xamarin.Forms products on a device or simulator.
Preferences (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week) | The Xamarin Show
In this new episode of Xamarin.Essentials API of the week from the Xamarin Show, James Montemagno discusses preferences. Not iOS, Android, Native or Xamarin.Forms development though but instead a neat way to store application preferences in a key/value store.
More Prism Video Love
Brian Lagunas has been creating a series of Prism Videos which you should check out if you are using (or considering using) Prism.
AND FINALLY...
A new Xamarin.Forms book
Johan Karlsson and Daniel Hindrikes have released a book full of Xamarin.Forms Projects. These guys are champions of the Xamarin community, so please go and check out their book.