Issue 253

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Happy Friday,

So April 1st has come and gone but unfortunately the global pandemic wasn't an April Fools joke. So stay inside and stay safe everyone.

In this weeks issue we have a truck-load of resources, including some great tools, training resources and articles.

Have a great weekend everyone.

❤

Kym

NEWS

Free Pluralsight!

Pluralsight is opening up their entire training library for the month of April. No credit card required. So if you are stuck inside it might be a great time to feed your brain and upskill.

Stay Home and Skill Up for Free by Aaron Skonnard

APP OF THE WEEK

Xamarin App to Track and Manage COVID-19

It is great to see a Xamarin app stepping up to the challenge of helping with the current pandemic.

Volunteers re-engineer cancer treatment software to monitor coronavirus pandemic using Microsoft’s Xamarin mobile framework with Azure. Mobile Angel has released a new mobile application built on the Xamarin platform to manage potential and at-risk coronavirus patients in real-time.

New Xamarin Application Developed to Track and Manage COVID-19 in Real-time by Mobile-Angel

CODE

What's the Difference between .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Xamarin?

Naming things is hard. Learn the difference between .NET Core, .NET Framework and Xamarin and which you should use for your application development.

What's the Difference between .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Xamarin? by Peter Mbanugo

DESIGN

Interface Design Patterns Checklists

Smashing Magazine has a nice free PDF Checklist of great Interface guidelines and checklists.

Note: You will need to signup to the newsletter in order to access them (but it's totally worth it)

Smart Interface Design Patterns Checklists PDF

Animockup —Free Animated Mockup Maker

With Animockup, you can showcase your product in action within a device mockup. Just drag some screen footage into the browser-based tool, and Animockup automatically places it into your desired mockup. You can add text, images, and adjust the styling, and choose from a selection of presets to optimize your mockup for sharing on Twitter, Dribble, Instagram and the like. A useful little helper.

Animockup —Free Animated Mockup Maker by

OPEN SOURCE

Cross platform xamarin and windows plugins for PCLs

James has updated the readme for the Xamarin.Plugins repo to include a fantastic list of the finest plugins and packages available for us Xamarin devlopers.

Cross platform xamarin and windows plugins for PCLs by James Montemagno

TOOLS

Paste A Class From The Clipboard In Visual Studio Mac

MFractor has some new features including the ability to generate a new class file using the contents of the clipboard in Visual Studio Mac. Copy pasta has never been so delicious!

Easily Add A Class From The Clipboard In Visual Studio Mac by Matthew Robbins

Surface Duo Emulator

Microsoft announced they will be releasing the new Surface Duo in December of 2020. The Duo runs on Android and is one of their dual-screen devices that gives users new ways to interact with their apps. It also introduces new challenges for developers to provide the optimal experience for our users. This article will help you get started with getting those emulators running

2 Ways to Run Surface Duo Emulator by Kenzie Whalen

Shared Whiteboarding App

Not anything to do with Xamarin, but did see this excellent lightweight web based tool for doing collaborative drawing. Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.

Excalidraw

ANDROID

App size reduction at Microsoft SwiftKey

This is an interesting article on real world experience reducing the App package size of SwiftKey.

App size reduction at Microsoft SwiftKey by SwiftKey

Android Color Picker Library

The Cheesebaron has packaged up some nice color pickers into nuget packages for use with Xamarin.Android Applications.

Released a Color Picker Library by Tomasz Cielecki

XAMARIN FORMS

Image Classification with TensorFlow Lite & Azure Services

Image Classification allows our Xamarin apps to recognize objects in a photo. Being able to take a photo and recognize its contents is becoming more and more common. We experience it in our banking apps when making a mobile deposit, in our photo apps when adding filters, and in our HotDog apps to determine whether or not our meal is a hotdog. #hotdogornot

Image Classification with TensorFlow Lite & Azure Services : Xamarin Blog by

Databinding Scope in Xamarin.Forms

Gerald has a post that tackles a common problem people have with scope in databinding in relation to commands and ListView Items.

Databinding Scope in Xamarin.Forms by Gerald

Learning About Material Design in Xamarin Forms

Wondering how to achieve the same look for your Xamarin Forms application on both Android and iOS? Learn how to implement Material Design in your Xamarin Forms apps and make this easy.

Learning About Material Design in Xamarin Forms by Leomaris Reyes

Replicating Exotic Fruits App

Leomaris is back with another Xamarin UI Challenge, this time with a great looking Fruit app.

Replicating Exotic Fruits App in Xamarin Forms by Leomaris Reyes

SECURITY

Social Authentication with Xamarin.Essentials and ASP.NET Core

Many apps require adding user authentication. This often means enabling users to sign into existing Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and (now) Apple Sign-In accounts. Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) provides an excellent turn-key solution to adding authentication to your app.

Social Authentication with Xamarin.Essentials and ASP.NET Core by Jon Dick

MEETUPS

Virtual Xamarin and .NET Events in April

Just because we are all locked in our houses, doesn't mean that we can't connect up. Here is a great list of events happening online this month.

Virtual Xamarin and .NET Events in April by James Montemagno

NUGET OF THE WEEK

TinySvgHelper

Daniel Hindrikes has packaged up some useful helper code for working with SVGs in Xamarin.Forms.

Introducing TinySvgHelper by dhindrik

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Theme Detection (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week)

On this week's Xamarin.Essential API of the week we take a look at the App Theme API that enables developers to detect if the device and app should be running in dark mode.

Theme Detection (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week) by James Montemagno

EliteKit - Awesome Xamarin.Forms Controls

This week, James is joined by friend of the show Dominik Ganic, founder & creator of eliteKit, who shows off what the amazing team at eliteKit has been up to for Xamarin developers. He shows off everything that eliteKit has for Xamarin.

eliteKit - Awesome Xamarin.Forms Controls | The Xamarin Show by James Montemagno

Merge Conflict 195: The Hanselman Machine Learning Model

We dive back into machine learning with more automagical ML. James tries to pull off some sentiment analysis for his app and we discuss a few options.

195: The Hanselman Machine Learning Model

RELEASES

Syncfusion Essential Studio 2020 Volume 1 is Here!

Syncfusion is glad to announce the Essential Studio 2020 Volume 1 release. We have introduced some new components and enhanced various other components by adding new features. Also, several bug fixes are included for this release.

Syncfusion Essential Studio 2020 Volume 1 is Here!

Issue 253 3rd April 2020