Issue 159

KYM PHILLPOTTS

So much happening...

I've been travelling the outback with my monkey and whilst I've been gone so much has happened. Apple had the WWDC, Microsoft is sending Azure to the bottom of the ocean and Github has been acquired.

I've got to take fewer holidays, there's too much to catch up on when I get back :)

Enjoy the links.

LUCE CARTER

Guess what lovely readers? I became a Microsoft MVP last week for my passion and love for Xamarin! :)

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for taking the time to read this newsletter each week. Your interest and love is what motivates us to want to share what we love with you!

I also want to thank all the awesome authors who write articles and create content we want to share with you, we would not exist without you!

The Xamarin/DotNet community is one of the best and I hope you enjoy being part of it as much as I do.

Enjoy this week's issue, lots of great stuff for you to read and listen to.

NEWS

Microsoft + GitHub = Empowering Developers

Microsoft announced an agreement to acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform. What does this acquisition mean for our industry and for developers?

Also, make sure to check out Nat Friedmans Reddit Ask Me Anything

A bright future for GitHub | The GitHub Blog

This is the official blog post from GitHub about the acquisition so you can hear the opinion of both sides.

WWDC 2018 Links

WWDC Happened! Here is a good source for links to the interesting announcements and details from WWDC.

WWDC 2018 Links by Michael J. Tsai

Xamarin University Monthly Update - June 2018 — Xamarin Community Forums

Lot's happening at Xamarin University with New Courses, Lightning Lectures, a bunch of upcoming Guest Lectures and Badges to add to your collection! Check out what's new.

Microsoft is leveraging technology from submarines and working with pioneers in marine energy for the second phase of its moonshot to develop self-sufficient underwater datacenters that can deliver lightning-quick cloud services to coastal cities. An experimental, shipping-container-size prototype is processing workloads on the seafloor near Scotland’s Orkney Islands, Microsoft announced today.

APP OF THE WEEK

Build 2018: Conference Vision Demo App

David Ortinau walks through the Conference Vision App that was built for the Build 2018 conference. It's got some great little tricks and tips in there and showcases some of the new features of Xamarin Forms 3.0.

Build 2018: Conference Vision Demo App by David Ortinau

DESIGN

Refactoring UI

Learn how to design awesome UIs by yourself using specific tactics explained from a developer's point-of-view.

RefactoringUI.com

Splash Screens and Creating Great First Impression for Mobile Users

First impressions matter! How do you design a delightful Splash Screen for your app? Check out some ideas and guidelines.

Splash Screens and Creating Great First Impression for Mobile Users by Nick Babich's Picture

DEVOPS

App Center Auto-Provisioning

Getting your app onto your own device, or in the hands of potential testers, can be one of the most time-consuming challenges when developing an iOS app. To install an app on a single device, you must register the device with Apple and sign the app with the relevant provisioning profile. While this isn’t much of an issue for a single device, you need to register and re-sign the app each time you install the app on a new set of devices. For a developer, this repetitive action is a huge loss of time; for a tester, it’s a disruptive experience to receive an app and not be able to install it because your device hasn’t been provisioned, yet.

App Center has announced the release of auto-provisioning capabilities, enabling iOS developers to spend more time creating and shipping great apps, rather than managing device provisioning. With the new auto-provisioning capability, you no longer need to know the device IDs of testers, coworkers, or stakeholders when building a new beta version of your app for testing. We’ve integrated this capability directly into the install portal, so you can automate the distribution process and enable testers and team members to install your app with one click.

TOOLS

These are a few of my favourite things...

Glenn Stephens got asked if there are any particular tools that he likes to use. Tooling is an important issue, just like you would make sure your IDE is as productive as you can, as mobile developers we need to use other tools from time to time.

Here are the ones he uses on a day to day basis.

These are a few of my favourite things by Glenn Stephens

What’s Next for Visual Studio

Since we launched Visual Studio 2017 in March of that year, it has become our most popular Visual Studio release ever. Your feedback has helped our team publish seven updates since our initial GA, which have improved solution load performance, build performance, and unit test discovery performance. We’ve also made Visual Studio 2017 our most accessible releases ever, helping developers with low-vision or no-vision be more productive.

Our team is focused on introducing features that make every developer more productive: better navigation features like “go to all” (Ctrl + ,), features to improve code quality like Live Unit Testing, and most recently, to enable real time collaboration with Live Share. And we have even started to show how we will use artificial intelligence to assist developers with IntelliCode.

Now, it’s time to start to look at what comes next.

The short answer is Visual Studio 2019

ANDROID

Xamarin.Android Firebase Job Dispatcher: Background Scheduling for all Android Devices

Running tasks in the background is important for Android apps. It’s what helps keep an app responsive to the user and allows work to get done even when the user isn’t actively engaged with the app. As an example, consider uploading a large file or trying to apply a filter to a picture.

Xamarin.Android Firebase Job Dispatcher: Background Scheduling for all Android Devices by Tom Opgenorth

IOS

Apple's Software Chief Details How iOS Apps Will Run on Macs

Near the end of yesterday's WWDC keynote, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, acknowledged that people have been asking for a long time whether Apple would ever merge the iPhone and Mac operating systems. His short answer? "No."

Apple's Software Chief Details How iOS Apps Will Run on Macs by Lauren Goode

MAC

Xamarin with macOS 10.14 (mojave) – Mike James

It’s that time of year again where we all ask ourselves “should I install this beta software on my devices and risk my development setup?”. If you’ve only one iPhone and Mac then it can be difficult to decide when it’s the right time to install the latest and greatest offerings from Apple, for fear of breaking your development environment.

This year I’ve not needed to be so worried about breaking my environment as my current projects see me developing more with ASP.NET and Swift than Xamarin, so I went ahead and downloaded both iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 as soon as I could.

Xamarin with MacOS 10.14 Mojave by Mike James

XAMARIN FORMS

Xamarin.Tip – Dynamic Elevation Frames

How about some more Material Design based controls for Xamarin.Forms? Alex Dunn doesn't disappoint.

Xamarin.Tip – Dynamic Elevation Frames by Alex Dunn

Try the Latest Release of Xamarin.Forms 3.0!

Here comes the latest stable release of Xamarin.Forms, version 3.0. This is our fastest, richest release to date coupled with fantastic improvements up and down the Xamarin stack such as the latest XAML IntelliSense experience in Visual Studio 2017. Read more about it here.

Try the Latest Release of Xamarin.Forms 3.0! by David Ortinau

Bottom Tabbed Page Xamarin Forms

Since the beggining of the time ( 2014 For Xamarin.Forms ) It was "difficult" display a TabbedPage on the bottom for Android in Xamarin.Forms but thanks to @mikescandy and @PureWeen the time has come to easily do this without a Custom Renderer or a NuGet package.

CAREER

Road to Microsoft MVP - My Journey

So as mentioned by Luce herself, she became an MVP this week and decided to write a blog post on her journey and contributions for anyone interested in her story or how they too might join the esteemed ranks of MVP.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Merge Conflict: 100: Rambling Our Way Through 100 Episodes

We did it! 100 episodes of Merge Conflict! Somehow with your support Frank and James rambled their way through nearly two years of podcasting. We celebrate with questions from our listeners, some inside info on the podcast, chit chat about how we started, and a contest!

James has also written a blog post to celebrate 100 episodes.

AND FINALLY...

Monkey of the week

Have you got a good Xamarin Monkey photo... send it through.

Issue 159 8th June 2018