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Video Course: Build Mobile Apps with NativeScript
Developing native Android and iOS mobile applications has never been easier with the incredibly popular NativeScript framework. This on-demand training course will show you how to create fast and attractive cross-platform applications using a single code set composed of common web technologies such as JavaScript and CSS.
While this course normally costs $25, you can sign up for free until April 30, 2017.
NEWS
Announcing Xamarin v15.1 (Stable)
This release is now available in the Xamarin updater channels and as part of the April 5th update for Visual Studio 2017.
MFractor is coming to Visual Studio for Mac
I’m very pleased to share with you that MFractor for Visual Studio Mac is on its way and will be more awesome than ever.
Announcing Mono v5.0.0
Generating SIMD accelerated native code for the classes in the Mono.Simd
assembly is deprecated in this release, and it will be removed in +2 releases. Users should transition to using the Vector classes, which are part of the official .NET class libraries.
NuGet is now fully integrated into MSBuild
In the past, NuGet packages were managed in two different ways - packages.config
and project.json
- each with their own sets of advantages and limitations. With Visual Studio 2017, Microsoft has revamped the NuGet package management experience aka PackageReference
.
CODE
Launching a mobile app via URI schemes
Sometimes, users inside your app will need access to another app to complete their task. Maybe its calling someone, viewing a webpage or launching Skype. Launching another app is rather easy and is done at the OS level. When you call upon another app you need to use its URI Scheme.
LEADERSHIP
Effective pairing
Wise words:
For an idea to go from your head into the computer it MUST go through someone else's hands
OPEN SOURCE
Mono and GNOME. The long reply (2002)
Some people wonder if we have got a Microsoft investment or contract (because I like this Microsoft technology). The answeris no. But I would take one if they wanted to fund my free software project ;-) Man, I wonder what that would be like!
- Miguel de Icaza
XAMARIN FORMS
Announcing Xamarin.Forms 2.3.4 (Stable)
Xamarin has released a stable version of Xamarin.Forms v2.3.4.224. The major themes of this release are quality and performance. It contains nearly 200 bug fixes and over 50 pull-requests were contributed by the community.
Animating Xamarin Forms progress bars
Don't you just hate boring progress bars? Jim Bennett has the solution!
.NET
Add ILLink to the build - #17825
The Xamarin linker has been merged into .NET Core and is enabled by default to trim non-public unreachable IL and metadata from assemblies. It can be disabled by setting ILLinkTrimAssembly=false
.
NUGET OF THE WEEK
Auto generate app icons and splash screens at different resolutions
LogoGen is a tool designed to help quickly convert an SVG logo to the myriad of resolutions required for modern mobile apps, especially when targeting multiple platforms (e.g. when using frameworks like Cordova and Xamarin).