Issue 122

NEWS

netstandard libraries in Xamarin Studio

Personal recommendation: If you are an author of a library, then the clock is ticking. If you are an author an application aka consumer, hold off for a couple of months until the dust settles from the VS2017 launch and the open-source ecosystem adapts to the breaking changes introduced with the one-way project structure migration.

APP OF THE WEEK

Simple Music Player successfully switched to ReactiveUI

Full source-code is available on GitHub; breakpoint the app and take it for a spin!

CODE

Background Tasks

Background Tasks are a way to run a task, in the background, outside the lifecycle of your mobile app. This is different than running in a background thread, in some cases, it is running in a completely different process. Background tasks enable you to run code at specific intervals or have tasks continue to run, even if the app is closed, which is useful in such situations as a large file download. Each platform has a different method of dealing with background tasks.

"So @GeoffreyHuntley, shared project or PCL?"

A colleague from a previous life reached out and wanted to know why I recommend PCL/netstandard over shared projects. If you are writing an open-source library then shared has its merits but actually, the majority of people are writing applications which mean PCL should be used.

With PCL/netstandard, when you press build you know it compiles.
Throwing away bad code and refactoring is easier because of a single build configuration.
You can use NCrunch or the "live tests" feature VS2017 to provide rapid developer feedback.

"So @GeoffreyHuntley, IFDEF..."

The only place IFDEF should be allowed is to plug in different implementations to the interface at the composition root. IFDEF's in any other location unless you are a framework author is a good indicator that a codebase is a plate of gello/unstable app.

OPEN SOURCE

Open-source contribution etiquette

Some developers, when faced with fixing, or adding a feature to an open source project are under the mistaken impression that the first step before any fixing takes place, or before adding a new feature takes place is to make the code "easier for them" to work on.

An open source license with all of these features does not yet exist

Many developers like to believe (or at least act as though) open source is immune from the pitfalls of capitalism. We'll just write our software, release it under an open license, and keep on our merry way. I mean, if we're freely giving away our work to anybody who wants it, what could go wrong?

DEVOPS

Cake.Android.SdkManager by Redth

A set of aliases for CakeBuild to help with Android's sdkmanager command line tool.

XAMARIN FORMS

Developing Xamarin Forms applications with Ammy

Ammy is a UI language that compiles to XAML. Any XAML construct can be directly translated to Ammy syntax, but not vise versa, since Ammy has unique features specific to it - i.e. MixIns!

Fullscreen video background control for Xamarin.Forms

One of the cool trend on mobile UI I've seen a lot is using video as View background. You can see it in the apps by Spotify and Uber. Here's how you can play a video as the page background using Xamarin.Forms and custom renderers for Android and iOS.

REACTIVEUI

The Xamarin Show 17: ReactiveUI with Michael Stonis

This week, James is joined by friend of the show Michael Stonis, Xamarin MVP and Development Lead & President at Eight Bot, who shows us a different way of development with Reactive Extensions (Rx) and ReactiveUI for Xamarin.

NUGET OF THE WEEK

A list of existing Xamarin binding libraries.

An exhaustive list of binding libraries for Xamarin. Add your own bindings to the collection by sending in a pull-request!

AND FINALLY...

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