Issue 194

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Welcome back for another week of Xamarin Community news and contributions. We have some many great posts this week, no small thanks to the Xamarin Month of Love and Friendship initiated by Luis Matos!

Personally, I've spent the last week getting my "geek on" with the lovely people of snowy Seattle. It's great to see so much excitement in the community. I'm about to board a plane back to Australia where I will be treated to the opposite of temperature extremes.

Whilst I'm doing that, please enjoy this weeks Xamarin News! ❤️ Kym

GETTING STARTED

10 lovely things you should tell your friends about Xamarin ❤

This article is part of the Xamarin Month February 2019. Thanks, Luis Matos (@luismatosluna on Twitter) for the cool initiative! Xamarin is a fantastic platform, indeed one of a kind. I was its fan from its humble beginnings and have witnessed its incredible growth. In this article, Martin lays out what he loves about the platform.

10 lovely things you should tell your friends about Xamarin ❤ by Martin Zikmund

APP OF THE WEEK

The Graham & Brown AR App

It's always great to see the apps people build with Xamarin and this AR app built with Xamarin is a great example of the flexibility of the platform.

The Graham & Brown AR App

CODE

Tracking Dependencies With DEPENDENCIES.md

As software developers we often take dependencies on other libraries. On many projects it can be hard to figure out why a certain dependency was added, or whether it still makes sense to keep it. Here is a nice little idea to track dependencies through a DEPENDENCIES.MD file.

Tracking Dependencies With DEPENDENCIES.md by Karol S. Mazur

DEVOPS

Make Your Own Azure DevOps Build Light

Learn how to make your DevOps build statuses light up in the real world using a Micro Controller Unit (MCU). And all for the bargain price of $10

Make Your Own Azure DevOps Build Light by Tomasz Cielecki

Instantly releasing features in a world that never sleeps, using Feature Flags

Now more than ever, businesses need to be nimble and continue to ship features at the speed of light™. This is even more true in the very competitive world of mobile apps. Long gone are the days where we could wait several months to release a new version of our app. How can you use feature flags to test features out with a sub set of users without breaking the world!

Instantly releasing features in a world that never sleeps, using Feature Flags by Claudio Sanchez

TOOLS

[VS4Mac] Samples Importer

When it comes to learning a language or framework it is ideal to have good documentation, but having complementary examples is even better if possible. To be able to see the code, modify it and test the results. Much of the Xamarin documentation has official associated examples available on GitHub. What if we could access the examples even more easily?

This is a great little add in for VS4 Mac.

Note: Post is in Spanish

[VS4Mac] Samples Importer, acceder a ejemplos nunca fue más fácil by Javier Suárez Ruiz

We worked with Xamarin for almost three years, this is what we learned

At In The Pocket, we used to be mostly focused on native development. However, we recognized the benefits of working with cross-platform frameworks: a single code base leads to a better management of feature parity and maintenance, while equally decreasing client costs.

We worked with Xamarin for almost three years, this is what we learned by Thomas Smolders

Use NuGets for your common Xamarin (Forms) code (and automate the creation process)

When it comes to cross-platform development, some of you probably have code they use again and again - just like I do. Some time ago, I started to organize these snippets into libraries and pack them as NuGet packages. In this post, I'll show you how to do the same and automate package creation and (local) distribution.

Use NuGets for your common Xamarin (Forms) code (and automate the creation process) by Marco Siccardi

IOS

Simple tips to make your Xamarin Experience on iOS

There are certain topics that are simple but often really hard to find online and we can spend dead hours only to find out how simple they are!, Today I will share with you some tips that are really simple, but can ease our Xamarin experience on iOS a lot.

Simple tips to make your Xamarin Experience on iOS by Leomaris Reyes

XAMARIN FORMS

Crossplatform Gestures

Touch management is handled quite differently on Android and iOS. Xamarin.Forms offers a nicely designed abstraction, inspired from the iOS APIs, which works across Android, iOS and UWP. Gestures can be useful to provide effective UX for seeking on videos and changing volume.

Fun with crossplatform gestures and 360 videos by @martz2804

Using Xml Namespaces to optimize your imports in Xamarin.Forms

Hi techies, today we're going to review a little, but important XAML feature in Xamarin.Forms, that we can use to optimize importing of classes, controls and effects in our XAML code. This feature has just seen the light with the release 3.5 of Xamarin.Forms.

Using Xml Namespaces to optimize your imports in Xamarin.Forms by Read More

Plug and play animations

Animations are important when developing a mobile app, it can make any boring application into a super fun one. Xamarin Forms makes it really easy to work with animations in the code behind but what if we want to create some simple animations that we can add to any control in a very easy way.

Plug and play animations in Xamarin Forms by Charlin Agramonte

Creating an encyclopedia page in Xamarin.Forms

Steven Thewissen is back with even more amazing looking Xamarin.Forms UI's! If you are trying to create a professional layout for your app, you owe it to yourself to go and have a look at Steven's work.

Creating an encyclopedia page in Xamarin.Forms by Steven

Zooming the Android WebView in Xamarin.Forms

Gerald has yet another change merged into Xamarin.Forms, this time adding the ability to set op zooming on the WebView on Android. In this post, he shows what was added and how you can use it.

Zooming the Android WebView in Xamarin.Forms by Gerald

Easily Check Mobile Device Connectivity with Xamarin.Essentials

One of the best parts of a mobile device is their instant access to the internet. As a mobile app developer, it’s great to be able to pull data from the server to our apps to provide users with a delightful experience.

So one of the challenges that we continually face is, "Are we connected to the internet". Each platform has different API's for working this out, but the good news is that Xamarin.Essentials can take care of all that for you.

Easily Check Mobile Device Connectivity with Xamarin.Essentials by James Montemagno

Xamarin.Forms: Drop Shadow/Elevation on Android Bottom Navigation TabbedPage

James shows a nice simple way of combatting Elevation with the Android Button Navigation bar.

Xamarin.Forms: Drop Shadow/Elevation on Android Bottom Navigation TabbedPage by James Montemagno

AZURE

Azure Table Storage with Xamarin.Forms

This is the second post of the series on Azure Storage & Xamarin. In this post, you’ll learn how to develop a mobile application which stores information on the cloud by using the WindowsAzure.Storage SDK!

Azure Table Storage with Xamarin.Forms by Luis Beltran

5 Azure Offerings I ❤️ For Xamarin Development

Matthew Soucoup loves Azure and loves Xamarin. Here are his picks for the finest Azure features that Xamarin devleopers should be using.

5 Azure Offerings I ❤️ For Xamarin Development by Matthew Soucoup

NUGET OF THE WEEK

aloisdeniel/SkiaSharp.Components

Producing rendering code for SkiaSharp can be extremely verbose and repetitive. SkiaSharp.Components are higher level views that make declarations more concise.

A great Nuget to make your SkiaSharp life just a little bit easier.

aloisdeniel/SkiaSharp.Components by

CAREER

Why becoming a Blogger help you grow in your career: My Personal experience as Xamarin Blogger

I have been received messages from many different people, inspired by my work, asking me about how can they grow up in their career, how can they start becoming a Xamarin Blogger, what skills do they need to have, which advices can I give them, among other questions.

Why becoming a Blogger help you grow in your career: My Personal experience as Xamarin Blogger by Leomaris Reyes

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Xamarin Podcast - Releases and Previews and Roadmaps!

In this episode, James and Matt discuss the latest previews of Visual Studio and Visual for Mac. There's new stuff for Xamarin.Forms, Android keeps on getting faster, App Center's new features are mapped out, and C++ makes an appearance?!? Tune in for all of this and more!

Releases and Previews and Roadmaps! by Xamarin

Merge Conflict 136 - I Love PInvoke

When you need to get something done, sometimes you have to write some C++. Or sometimes you have no choice because you were handed a C++ library and why not expose a beautiful C# layer to call form your mobile apps. Seems easy right? We take a look at the why, how, and struggles with doing so.

136: I Love PInvoke by soundbite.fm

Clipboard (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week)

Xamarin.Essentials provides developers with cross-platform APIs for their mobile applications. On this week's Essential API of the week we take a look at Clipboard, which enables you to easily get and set text to the system wide clipboard.

Clipboard (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week) by James Montemagno

Xamarin.Forms 101: Command Parameters

Let's take a step back in a new mini-series that I like to call Xamarin.Forms 101. In each episode we will walk through a basic building block of Xamarin.Forms to help you build awesome cross-platform iOS, Android, and Windows applications in .NET.

Xamarin.Forms 101: Command Parameters by James Montemagno