Issue 205

KYM PHILLPOTTS

It's almost //Build time

Hey Everyone,

It's starting to get busy with the leadup to //Build next week. So many great announcements coming our way - it'll be amazing.

Whilst, I have you here, I was wondering if you could do me a huge favour and give us some feedback on the newsletter by answering a few questions. I promise it'll only take a minute or two.

Okay, have a great weekend everyone.

❤ Kym

NEWS

OMG! Free Weekend for Video Courses on raywenderlich.com!

From Friday, May 3rd, through Sunday, May 5th, all raywenderlich.com video courses will be free for everyone! They have an amazing variety of courses, so go check some out for free. This weekend only!

Free Weekend for Video Courses on raywenderlich.com! by Tiffani Randolph

GETTING STARTED

Getting Started Videos

James over on The Xamarin Show has released some getting started videos which you might find useful:

Installing Visual Studio 2019 for Mobile Development

Build Your First iOS App

Build Your First Android App

The Essential Git Handbook

Git is the most widely used version control system in the world today, but it can be a little scary to get started with. Here is a nice introduction for those of you trying to get to grips with it.

The Essential Git Handbook by Sanjula Madurapperuma

Prism - zero to hero

Here are the slides from a presentation by Charlin Agramonte on "Prism in Xamarin.Forms from zero to hero"

Prism: from Zero to Hero in Xamarin.Forms by Charlin Agramonte

DESIGN

How To Make Your Typography NOT suck

Typography can make or break a design. This article covers off what you need to know and provides some great guidance and links. The article is iOS-centric but applies to all platforms.

How To Make Your iOS App Typography NOT suck by azhar

BUSINESS & MARKETING

Not even worth one star!

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it. We’ve reacted with rage to some frustrating failure in an app, and left a negative, one star review. It’s a different experience though, when you are on the receiving end of these kinds of reviews.

Not even worth one star: Reacting constructively to App Store reviews by damian

TOOLS

Dev and Prod apps using Solution Configurations

Usually, we have at least two environments: development and production. So in order to be able to test both on the same device, we need to be able to install the same application pointing to each environment. In this article, Rendy will show you a step by step guide of doing just that by using the solution configurations.

Multiple application installation based on the solution configuration by Rendy

Make Build Output Useful

Here are a couple of options inside Visual Studio 2019 that might will make your build information a little bit better.

OT: Change Project Options in Visual Studio 2019 to Make Build Output Useful by Nick

ANDROID

Un-distorting ZXing

ZXing is a great library for scanning barcodes and QR codes, but sometimes android can distort your images. But no more!

How to avoid a distorted Android camera preview with ZXing.Net.Mobile [Updated]

IOS

Background uploads and downloads, are you doing it wrong?

URLSession enables you to download and upload from the background. Although the basics seem to be easy, it’s quite hard to do it right. From the available resources and documentation, there are quite a few small things which are really important to make background uploading work.

URLSession: Common pitfalls with background download & upload tasks by Antoine Van Der Lee

WINDOWS UNIVERSAL

Self Signed Certificates and Certificate Pinning

Nick Randolph has delved into the scary, murky world of Certificate Pinning.

Working with Self Signed Certificates (Certificate Pinning) in Windows (UWP) Application with Xamarin.Forms by Nick

XAMARIN FORMS

It's all about the fingers

Gestures on a mobile device are super useful, your users have fingers, right? Here is a blog post that talks about adding gestures to your Xamarin.Forms apps.

Note: Post is in Portuguese

Xamarin Rocket #7 — Gestos by Thiago Bertuzzi

Color picker in Forms

A nice little popup color picker for Xamarin.Forms.

Note: Page is in French

Créer un Color Picker dans Xamarin.Forms

Recording sound in Xamarin.Forms

Ever wanted to record and play back audio in Xamarin.Forms? Juliano shows you how you can achieve this using a nice little nuget called Plugin.AudioRecorder.

Note: Post is in Portuguese

Gravar áudio – Xamarin.Forms by Juliano Custódio

Scaling in Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms contain many Animations API that is accessible in the shared code. Most animation sequences can be leveraged in the shared code reducing the need to implement any platform-specific code to handle animations.

Scaling Animations in Xamarin.Forms by Andrew Hoefling

Xamarin.Forms Android page transitions

This is a UI Challenge with a difference. It focuses on creating funky page transitions. Definitely worth a look.

Note: Post in Spanish

[Xamarin.Forms UI Challenge] Art News, transiciones entre páginas by Javier Suárez Ruiz

Rock Solid REST APIs

Nowadays, most mobile and desktop applications depend on external services for their information. Whether it is for the consumption of data or sending data via a REST API, or the download of data from a third-party source, you have to make sure it's rock solid. This article covers consuming REST API's using a great component called Polly.

Consume REST APIs in Your App in a Resilient Way with Polly and Xamarin Forms by Doumer

NUGET OF THE WEEK

Shiny things

Alan Ritchie has released Shiny - a new framework that tackles a bunch of problems like backgrounding and device hardware. This looks like it could be one of those essential nugets in your toolkit.

Introducing Shiny by Alan Ritchie

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Refit to the rescue!

This week, James is joined by friend of the show & Microsoft MVP Geoffrey Huntley who show us how Refit can greatly simplify HTTP calls in mobile apps or any .NET application. He shows us how to integrate it into our apps, how it works, and how to do authentication too!

Simplify HTTP in Mobile Apps with Refit

Detect Shake (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week)

Xamarin.Essentials provides developers with cross-platform APIs for their mobile applications. On this week's Xamarin.Essential API of the week we take a look at the Detect Shake API to help you detect when a user shakes a device.

Detect Shake (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week) by James Montemagno

Merge Conflict 147: I'm a Mac Developer!

James is official a macOS developer thanks to Xamarin.Forms! He ported My Stream Timer over to macOS from WPF in a matter of hours and he gives a full break down of the good, bad, and the ugly.

147: I'm a Mac Developer!

RELEASES

Grailkit update - Oooh Myyy

Grailkit has released version 3 of their toolkit and it looks amazing!

FFImageLoading 2.4.5

FFImageLoading is one of the essential image toolkits for all xamarin platforms. It's got an update you might be interested in