Issue 175

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Another week full of great links. This week Microsoft Ignite has been running with a whole truckload of announcements. Check out those and even more community links in this weeks edition.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

NEWS

Introducing Microsoft.com/Learn

Microsoft Learn is a new learning platform released at Ignite. It's an amazing set of resources for keeping up to date with the rapid change of technology. Think of it as your one-stop shop for self-paced, guided learning on all of Microsofts platform products and services.

Ignite Book Of News

There was so many announcements at Microsoft Ignite 2018 that Microsoft created a book to highlight them all. Wow, just wow!

GETTING STARTED

Starting out right with Xamarin (2018 Edition)

At the Queensland C# Mobile Developers meetup group's September event, Ryan Davis gave an updated version of his 'Starting out right with Xamarin' presentation from 2015. Since the last iteration, quite a lot has changed in the Xamarin space but many of the principles still hold. An excellent presentation and collection of resources.

Starting out right with Xamarin (2018 Edition) by Ryan Davis

DESIGN

Adapt to the new iOS and Watch Screen Sizes

Apple has released new devices, and along with new devices comes the need to handle different screen sizes. Here are a couple of articles which cover how apple uses these screen sizes.

How Apps Adapt to the Series 4 Apple Watch Screen Sizes by Geoff Hackworth

and

How iOS Apps Adapt to the iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR Screen Sizes

5 Steps to a Better Onboarding Experience

Likely, your app’s onboarding experience isn’t very good. This isn’t because your product isn’t well designed or easy to learn; it’s because building successful onboarding experiences is just hard. Here are some steps to improve your onboarding.

5 Steps to a Better Onboarding Experience by Peter Livesey

DEVOPS

Keeping Secrets Secret with AppCenter

Jim Bennett covers an approach to keeping your secrets safe for open source projects using scripts in AppCenter.

Updating your google-service.json from an AppCenter environment variable by Jim Bennett

ANDROID

Using the Android Designer Split View

The ability to see the design view and layout XML at the same time, side by side, was one of our most requested features for the Android Designer. With Split View, new in Visual Studio 15.8, you can switch back & forth freely between both modes of working.

Using the Android Designer Split View by Bret Johnson

IOS

TestFlight public invite links

Apple is rolling out a new TestFlight feature which enables developers to share a public URL for an app beta. Customers can simply open the link on their iPhone or iPad and automatically enroll into the beta testing group through the TestFlight app.

Apple rolls out TestFlight public invite links to make it easier for developers to distribute iOS app betas by Benjamin Mayo

Designing and Developing for Siri Shortcuts

Siri Shortcuts is a new feature for iOS apps that promise to allow apps to become more than just a world hidden behind an app icon. It's probably something you want to look at seriously integrating into your applications.

Designing and Developing for Siri Shortcuts by Max Rudberg

XAMARIN FORMS

Transparent Navigation Bar in Xamarin Forms

In this article, Charlin shows you how to make the navigation bar transparent in Xamarin Forms. Make sure to set the color BackgroundColor to Transparent and set the property NavigationPage.IsNavigationBarTranslucent=“True” on iOS.

Transparent Navigation Bar in Xamarin Forms by Charlin Agramonte

Popups with Rg.Plugins.Popup

Popup pages are something that Xamarin.Forms doesn't include out of the box. It's a really common requirement so, RG.Plugins.Popup was created to help you. Thiago Bertuzzi shows you how to get started.

O X do Xamarin Forms — Pop-ups by Thiago Bertuzzi

Xamarin.Forms Performance Reminder – Fast Renderers

This post is first of a series of “reminders” that will help your Xamarin.Forms apps become as performant as possible. This time we will use Fast Renderers to squeeze additional performance from our apps when running on Android. Xamarin.

Xamarin.Forms Performance Reminder – Fast Renderers by Martin Zikmund

OnPlatform/OnIdiom markup extensions

Xamarin.Forms has a great new way of declaring OnPlatform and OnIdiom. Check it out.

[Xamarin.Forms] Nueva extensión de marcado para OnPlatform y OnIdiom by Javier Suárez Ruiz

Checkbox For Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms is great. But, every now and then, it falls short on some basic modern controls e.g checkbox, radio buttons, cards, etc. Luckily, Xamarin community is large and very engaged with the platform.

Checkbox For Xamarin.Forms by Hussain N. Abbasi

Xamarin.Forms.Console... OMG!

Why not add the possibility of creating console applications with Xamarin.Forms?

Primer vistazo a Xamarin.Forms gui.cs Backend by Javier Suárez Ruiz

NUGET OF THE WEEK

How to create a Nuget Package

Here is a nice tutorial on creating a nuget package. It's easier than ever.

Criando o seu pacote nuget by Juliano Custódio

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Byte-Sized Mobile Dev Tips, Episode 02 - Apple Developer Enterprise Program

Tommy Baggett has started a video series where he is sharing solutions to common Xamarin problems. In this episode, he discusses the Apple Developer Enterprise Program and how to handle app updates.

Byte-Sized Mobile Dev Tips, Episode 02 - Apple Developer Enterprise Program by Tommy Baggett

Merge Conflict: 116: iOS 12's "Revolutionary" Shortcuts

It is time for a new iPhone, a new version of Xcode, and a new version of iOS that we get to explore as developers. This week we take a look at our new favorite app and API: Shortcuts!

Issue 175 28th September 2018