Issue 218

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Happy Friday everyone!

It's with much sorrow we move to the end of #XamarinUIJuly, it's been super-fun to see so many great articles from the community over the past month. A big thumbs up to Steven Thewissen for spearheading the initiative and if you missed it you can check out a stream wrapping up the event.

Again, we have lots of great articles this week for your enjoyment. Personally, I'm heading off camping with the family for the weekend, so I'm going to unplug. But I leave you with this weeks Xamarin Weekly for your enjoyment.

Seeya next week.

❤️ Kym

NEWS

New Microsoft samples site!

This is awesome. Microsoft announced a unified code samples browser. No more poking around a million different locations and GitHub repos to find a sample. That docs team has really been doing great work in the last few years! You can check it out on docs.microsoft.com/samples.

Announcing docs.microsoft.com/samples by dendeli

Xamarin and Azure Office Hours Recap: Mid-2019

Matt Soucoup has been doing office hours so that he can hear about the good, bad and ugly experiences we are all having with Xamarin. Every six months or so he also provides a recap of most discussed topics, like in this post. So make sure you reach out to Matt and the team to give some feedback or ask questions.

Xamarin and Azure Office Hours Recap: Mid-2019 by Matt Soucoup

TOOLS

Fixing Xamarin.Forms linker issues

We all want our app packages to be as small as possible and the Linker is your best friend for decreasing the size of the app bundler. That's usually easier said than done. This is the story of Mikolaj Kieres and how to tame the Linker.

Fixing Xamarin.Forms linker issues by Mikolaj Kieres

XAMARIN FORMS

Simple data validation in Xamarin Forms

Sometimes when we think about User Experience we just think about flashy animations but things like input validation and smooth data entry are the real heroes of User Experience.

In this post, Pieter Nijs shares how he implements user input data validation in Xamarin Forms.

Over the years I’ve tried a few approaches, some with success, others without. This one is an implementation I’ve used in my latest projects and that I’m liking a lot.

Simple data validation in Xamarin Forms by Pieter Nijs

Awesome animation tricks in Xamarin.Forms

This is Michaels entry into Xamarin UI July. He has reproduced key elements fo the AirNZ app in Xamarin.Forms paying careful attention to user interactions with gestures, translating controls and scrolling, which I can tell you is easier said than done. He does a great job of walking through those complexities and explain a pragmatic approach to the UI.

AirNZClone – Awesome animation tricks in Xamarin.Forms by Michael Ridland

Rapid Prototyping with all the shiny new things

Between Shell, CollectionViews and the Search Handler it is becoming faster to create beautiful prototypes. Alejandro shows you how quick and easy by creating a prototype inspired by the Google Play Music app.

Xamarin.Forms 4 In Action: Rapid Prototyping by Alejandro Ruiz

Social Login with Instagram

Rendy continues his series about Social Media Authentication. This one is all about how to integrate Instagram login into your Xamarin Forms application.

Social Media Authentication – Instagram login in Xamarin Forms by Rendy

Printing PDF’S and Images

Recently Luis Pujols had to implement a Printing feature for one of his Xamarin Forms projects. Printing sounds like one of those nightmare features but Luis discovered it was actually kind of straight forward.

Printing PDF’S and Images Xamarin.Forms by Pujolsluis

Creating a Xamarin.Forms app to control your Philips Hue lights

With smart technology becoming more and more prevalent, a lot of us own Philips Hue smart bulbs or LED strips. In this post, Andreas explains how to combine the awesomeness of Xamarin.Forms with the power of Hue.

Creating a Xamarin.Forms app to control your Philips Hue lights by Andreas Nesheim

Frequency filtering with Xamarin.Forms and SkiaSharp

David Britch goes deeper into SkiaSharp and image processing than anyone else I know. In this post, David continues to evaluate the performance of SkiaSharp by doing something a little more complex than his previous posts. Specifically performing frequency filtering.

This might be my favorite introduction sentence:

As any computer science undergrad can tell you, a Fourier transform takes a signal from the time domain and transforms it into the frequency domain.

:-)

Frequency filtering with Xamarin.Forms and SkiaSharp by David Britch

Working with Firebase Analytics

Delphin shows how to implement Firebase Analytics in Xamarin.Forms app.

Xamarin.Forms - Working with Firebase Analytics by Delpin Susai Raj

An overview of MvvmCodeGenerator

Last week Damien Aicheh presented his tool to avoid writing boilerplate code for ViewModels. This week he has provided a detailed explanation of how to use it. If you are sick of writing infrastructure code, you might want to have a look.

A complete overview of MvvmCodeGenerator by Damien Aicheh

Telerik has an ImageEditor for Xamarin.Forms

The RadImageEditor in Telerik UI for Xamarin allows you and the end-users of your mobile application to easily view and edit images in different file formats.

Easily Edit Your Images with an ImageEditor for Xamarin.Forms by Dobrinka Yordanova

Creating a Gradient Flyout in Shell

If you use Shell and feel the need to customize the Flyout menu, you can by using Renderers with Xamarin.Forms.

#Xamarin Forms #Shell: Creating a Gradient Flyout by Ian Vink

How to Clip Images with Rounded Corners

James Montemagno shows how you can apply round corners WITHOUT using his amazing Circle Image plugin.

Xamarin.Forms: How to Clip Images with Rounded Corners by James Montemagno

SECURITY

Microsoft Authentication Library

Authentication is one of those tricky things I dread putting into an application. It turns out that using the Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) seems to be quite simple to use. I will have to dig into this source code some more to see if it can cure me of my fears.

Use Microsoft Authentication Library(MSAL) in Xamarin.Forms by Miguel Angel Barrera Munoz

NUGET OF THE WEEK

ApertureView

Here is a funky little nuget package that has an aperture control in it. You might argue that an aperture view is a pretty special use case, (and you'd be right), but if you need one here it is. ;-)

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Cross-platfom apps using F# and Fabulous.

On episode 16 of DevTalk, I speak to Mark Allibone about using F# and Fabulous to develop cross-platform mobile apps.

16: Cross-platfom apps using F# and Fabulous. With Mark Allibone by kerry

OnIdiom (Adjusting UI Based on Device Type)

In this episode of Xamarin.Forms 101 we will look at how to optimize user interface based on the type of device that your app is running on with OnIdiom.

Xamarin.Forms 101: OnIdiom (Adjusting UI Based on Device Type) by James Montemagno

Merge Conflict 160: Infrastructure as Code, Signing Packages, & 1 Million Downloads

It is time for lightning topics! 6 topics, 5 minutes each, from you, our listeners. This week we cover package signing, infrastructure as code, ML for everyone, Skia on the web, and tons of fun podcast facts.

160: Infrastructure as Code, Signing Packages, & 1 Million Downloads by soundbite.fm

Xamarin Community Standup - XAML Hot Reload

Catch up with the latest news around the Xamarin community with the Xamarin .NET Community Standup. Much discussion around community links and the new Hotness of Hot Reload!

Xamarin: .NET Community Standup - August 1st, 2019 - XAML Hot Reload with Alex Corrado by Xamarin Developers

Xamarin Introductions

Introducing Andrew Hoefling

This week we are dropping in on Andrew Hoefling, a keen Xamarin community contributer based in Rochester, NY.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

I'm Andrew Hoefling, and I work for FileOnQ as a Lead Software Engineer building mobile technologies for Government, Financial and First Responders using Xamarin.

Tell us one thing we probably don't know about you?

I used to be a Fire Fighter/EMT and have always wanted to make software better for first responders. I also played Roller Derby up until this year

How did you first get into Xamarin development?

I was working on a WPF app and saw how similar Xamarin was and decided that I would spend my nights learning how to set up a Xamarin Project. It was not very easy back then, I wrote a blog about how I got it all working. At the time I couldn't figure out how to get the android emulator working and only had an iPhone to test on with no macOS to build. https://www.andrewhoefling.com/Blog/Post/how-to-develop-ios-without-a-mac

What has been the most enjoyable project you have built using Xamarin?

I really enjoyed building the mobile app for DNN Summit 2019. While at the conference I saw everyone using the app which is something you never get to see as an app developer.

What advice would you give someone looking at getting started with Xamarin development?

There is a lot of content on Channel 9 and throughout the community about building Xamarin Apps. Find the popular Xamarin Twitch streamers and watch them build apps.

What are the MUST HAVE tools, resources and libraries that you use when building Xamarin apps?

I love building my apps with Prism Library. I have used many of the popular MVVM technologies and when building Xamarin.Forms apps I use prism.

Where do you think mobile will be in 5 years?

Mobile is starting to blend with IoT devices such as wearables. I can see mobile being thought of no longer as the smart phones we have today but just small devices that perform some type of task. This could be a watch, glasses, AR, etc.

To keep up with everything Andrew is up to, hit up some of these links

Blog: andrewhoefling.com

Twitter: twitter.com/andrew_hoefling

Github: github.com/ahoefling

Twitch: twitch.tv/ahoefling