GETTING STARTED
Xamarin in Action!
Luce Carter has been reading Jim Bennett's new book and providing fantastic abstracts of the chapters. You should go purchase a copy of this book - Pro Tip: there is a discount code in this article:). Also, make sure you check out her other follow up posts as well.
Contributing to Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Mac
Do you want to contribute to the Xamarin Open Source community, but not sure where to start? John Miller has some tips for you.
Contributing to Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Mac by John Miller
CODE
Yet another C# style guide
Tabs or spaces? Who cares. But sometimes it's interesting to have a look at other people style guides.
My personal c# style guide by Adam J Wolf
DESIGN
Nifty ARCore tricks
AR frameworks unlock new types of gameplay and user interaction. Here are some practical ideas to inspire you to start building. Even though this is on the Unity blog, it really gives you some great ideas on how you can leverage this amazing technology.
How ARCore enables you to create brand new types of user interaction – Unity Blog by Dan Miller
Good to great UI animation tips
Micro interactions and animations are a great way to take your app to the next level. In this article, Pablo Stanley walks through some examples of UI animations going from good to great. With a little bit of tweaking here and there, you can elevate your UI patterns with animation.
Resources For designing that next great App experience
A nice grab bag of resources you can use to design your next great app.
Top 16 Free Online Resources For UI And UX Designers 2018 by Yuval Keshtcher
TESTING
Unit Testing Tips
I’ve been writing a few unit tests recently. I actually like writing unit tests, I find something very cathartic about seeing those little green ticks show up. However, one thing that can make writing unit tests a drag is setting up testing data for each test. In this post, I share a few little tips you may find useful.
Unit Testing Tips by Kym Phillpotts
Unit testing with Xamarin.Forms' DependencyService
If you are using the Xamarin.Forms DependencyService how do you go about unit testing with that. In this blog post, Rob Gibbens talks through his approach.
Unit testing with Xamarin.Forms' DependencyService by Rob Gibbens
DEVOPS
VS App Center Custom Build Scripts for Production Apps
The unstoppable James Montemagno has created some really great scripts to help developers streamline their build and release pipeline for iOS and Android apps. This collection of tasks contains things that almost every app need at some point. My favourites are updating version numbers and injecting keys.
VS App Center Custom Build Scripts for Production Apps by James Montemagno
ANDROID
Stay up to date with Android Development
As Xamarin Developers, we are also Android developers. So you better keep up to date. Here are some great resources to follow.
Android P is coming...
Last week at Mobile World Congress we saw that Android's ecosystem of developers, device makers, and silicon partners continues to bring amazing experiences to users worldwide. Looking ahead, today we're sharing the first developer preview of Android P, the newest version of Android.
I wonder what the P will stand for... maybe Pancakes?
Previewing Android P by Dave Burke
IOS
Xamarin.iOS WiFi debugging
The latest Visual Studio update makes a XCode iOS/tvOS debugging feature available for Xamarin developers. It’s called WiFi debugging. This means that you can now debug your Xamarin.iOS Apps without having to plug your phone in via USB. How do you get going with this sweet new capability?
Xamarin.iOS WiFi debugging by Sven-Michael Stübe
XAMARIN FORMS
Xamarin.Forms Code You Can Delete Today!
What's more fun than writing code? Deleting it!
Xamarin.Forms Code You Can Delete Today! (part 1) by Tom Soderling
Reading Data From CosmosDB in a Xamarin App
CosmosDB is amazing. In this article (and video) Matthew Soucoup shows how you can pull CosmosDB data down into your Xamarin.Forms apps.
Reading Data From CosmosDB in a Xamarin App by Matthew Soucoup
Using Swagger to automatically generate the client code
Swagger is a very powerful tool that I highly recommend to integrate into your API projects. It will simplify and speed-up both the development and QA processes. This tutorial demonstrates how you can quickly hook up to a swagger based service.
Using Swagger to automatically generate the client code by Evsky
Adding Badge to ToolbarItem in Xamarin Forms
Ever needed to add a badge to a toolbar in Xamarin.Forms? Me neither, but if you did here is how you could do it.
Adding Badge to ToolbarItem in Xamarin Forms by Rendy Del Rosario
Re-Order ListView Items with Drag & Drop
Drag’n’Drop is just another way the user can interact with the data in a mobile application (quite a powerful one I might add). It can be used to move items in a list from one category to another or simply to adjust the priority of list items.
AZURE
Face identification with Azure FaceAPI
Jim has been playing around with the Face API in cognitive services. As Jim says, "This is a stupidly powerful API that can do a LOT of different things". Check it out and see if you can leverage this awesome technology in your next app.
Microsoft Mobile Cloud Workshop
Mike James and Robin-Manuel Thiel have created a Microsoft Mobile Cloud Workshop. Get up to speed with Microsoft's cloud platform to build Data-Driven Intelligent Apps.
MikeCodesDotNet/Mobile-Cloud-Workshop by Mike James and Robin-Manuel Thiel
AI
Introduction to Azure ML Services [Part 1/4]
This episode of the AI Show is the first in a series talking about the Azure ML Services. The new Azure Machine Learning Services provide an integrated, end-to-end data science experience. It enables data scientists to prepare data, develop experiments, and deploy models at cloud scale.
SECURITY
Azure Active Directory B2C Crash Course
One seemingly simple requirement for an app is to allow users to create an account. But the scope of that requirement grows quickly: How do they sign in? Change passwords? Can they sign in with social accounts like Facebook? What about implementing 2-Factor authentication?
codemillmatt/xamarin-u-aadb2c by Matt Soucoup
PODCASTS & VIDEOS
User Interface Automation with App Center Test
This week, James is joined by friend of the show James White, who shows us how to improve the quality of your apps through automated testing, testing on real devices in the cloud, and discuss how existing Xamarin Test Cloud users can get started immediately using App Center.
Play User Interface Automation with App Center Test by James Montemagno
Merge Conflict 87
To Cross Platform, or not to Cross Platform, that is the question. It is also the topic of this week's Merge Conflict.
Merge Conflict 87: Cross-Platform Is So Easy I Don't Even Have to Do It by Frank Krueger & James Montemagno
RELEASES
Xamarin Goodness in Visual Studio 2017 15.6
It's that time again ... a new Visual Studio release! And of course, there's a lot of new Xamarin goodness that goes along with it! And iOS really sees a lot of it!
Xamarin Goodness in Visual Studio 2017 15.6 by Matthew Soucoup
AND FINALLY...
Let's hear it for the Amazing Women of tech
It's International Women's Day. I know, because it's also my birthday. Diversity in technology is incredibly important. Here are some links to celebrate International Women's Day!
International Women’s Day 2018: Bridging the Gender Gap for Women in Tech