Issue 214

LUCE CARTER

Hey everyone,

I'm back!

I haven't been as involved as I would like with the newsletter recently due to a mix of crazy schedule and mental health but I am back and raring to go!

Thanks to Kym for helming the ship alone while I took some time out! <3

Lot's of great content as usual this week. XamarinUIJuly kicked off which I am super excited about as someone who makes terrible UI's.

Safe travels to everyone on their way to Xamarin Dev Summit and happy weekend to all our readers!

❤ Luce

NEWS

iOS 13 Preview Release Now Available

A preview release is now available that is focused on support for iOS 13 and Xcode 11! With this preview, you can begin building applications using Xcode 11 and start integrating new APIs for iOS 13. APIs such as “Sign in with Apple”, along with support for watchOS 6, tvOS 13, and macOS 10.15.

DESIGN

Snppts is back: calling all UI rockstars!

Ever looked at your app and thought "this looks ugly"? Ever wanted inspiration and code to help you make beautiful UI's? Made an existing UI that you are proud of and willing to share? Then take a look at Snppts.dev! This is a collection of beautiful UI's, all open source, that you can learn from, or contribute to.

Design Tools for Xamarin Forms

Post 1 in the XamarinUIJuly challenge, this is a great starting post from Luis about some good design tools for Xamarin.Forms!

Design Tools for Xamarin Forms by Luis Matos

OPEN SOURCE

Local network browsing and media playback using LibVLC

One of the great features of LibVLC is that it can play all sorts of network streams. This is possible thanks to a huge number of supported network protocols. If you are writing a media application, you should probably check out this amazing library.

Crossplatform local network browsing and media playback

PERFORMANCE

SQLite Tips and Tricks

Daniel Causer shares some great tips for optimizing your SQLite implementations to squeeze the most out of this amazing and flexible database provider.

SQLite Tips and Tricks for Mobile Developers by Daniel Causer

TOOLS

LiveXaml vs HotReload

Who doesn't want the ability to live reload their UI while developing Xamarin.Forms apps? In this post, Thiago compares two options for this, LiveXaml and HotReload.

LiveXaml vs HotReload by Thiago Bertuzzi

IOS

Custom Haptics designer

Apple introduced in iOS 13 the ability to design your own haptic experiences using the new AHAP file. This awesome tool provides a quick and easy way to graphically design your own patterns.

Captain AHAP - Custom Haptics designer

XAMARIN FORMS

Tips to improve performance in Xamarin Forms

Isn’t it amazing when we use apps that have a quick response time, It’s very nice to see the applications which compromise our waiting time as little as possible. That’s why, as developers, we must put enough effort in ensuring that every application we make has the best performance possible.

Tips to improve performance in Xamarin Forms by Leomaris Reyes

Startup Tasks, Modules, and Stateful Delegates - Shiny Style

Shiny isn't all about backgrounding, DI, RX, and all of that cool stuff. It actually provides a ton of utility functions as well. Modules & startup tasks provide a great way of modulizing your application and providing a rich set of wiring services together without coupling them within your normal application logic.

Startup Tasks, Modules, and Stateful Delegates - Shiny Style by Allan Ritchie

Styling for Multiple Device Resolutions

Charlin had a great blog post featured on the Microsoft blog (nice one Charlin) on handling different resolutions and form factors in Xamarin.Forms. This is a great read if you are supporting multiple devices (and who isn't).

Styling for Multiple Device Resolutions by Charlin Agramonte

Create a kickass banking app using a BasePage in Xamarin

Day 2 of XamarinUIJuly is from the man behind the idea, Steven Thewissen himself! In this post, you will learn how to use a dynamic BasePage to create a kickass banking app.

Create a kickass banking app using a BasePage in Xamarin by Steven Thewissen

What’s new in CollectionView in Xamarin.Forms 4.1

Xamarin.Forms 4.1 was released on Monday (1st July 2019), and as well as new functionality such as CheckBox, it includes a number of updates to CollectionView. The main CollectionView updates are outlined in this post.

What’s new in CollectionView in Xamarin.Forms 4.1 by David Britch

Introducing xUber - Uber clone using Xamarin Forms

Day 3 of XamarinUIJuly and in this post, Rendy shows you how you can create an Uber clone using Xamarin.Forms!

Introducing xUber - Uber clone using Xamarin Forms by Rendy Del Rosario

Tiled image animations with Xamarin.Forms and FFImageLoading

In this post, Marco discusses how you can make a clever tiled image animation using FFImageLoading with Xamarin.Forms. He is even kind enough to provide the code on Github so you too can achieve the same thing!

Tiled image animations with Xamarin.Forms and FFImageLoading by Marco Kuiper

SECURITY

Authenticate your Xamarin applications using your Microsoft account

When developing a mobile application you often need an authentication system for your users. Create a new account for a specific usage this can be a barrier for some users. Your users will probably already have a Google, Facebook, Github or a Microsoft account. In this tutorial, Damien shows you how to authenticate your Xamarin applications using the Microsoft authentication system.

Authenticate your Xamarin applications using your Microsoft account by Damien Aicheh

OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps

David Britch has some great guidance around OAuth in Xamarin.Forms and finally he has gotten around to uploading some samples. Probably some good references in here if you are needing to use OAuth.

OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps using Xamarin.Forms by David Britch

MEETUPS

Xamarin and .NET Community Developer Events in July

Jumpstart your next mobile development project by networking with your local community and getting the latest updates about Xamarin and .NET related technologies. Discover upcoming developer events happening this July, including conferences and virtual opportunities around the world!

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

What Would Mads Do (WWMD)

Mads shows you his coding set-up and favourite extensions.

Code like Mads by Microsoft Visual Studio

Merge Conflict: 156: SwiftUI's Tasty Architecture

All of the excitement from WWDC hasn't worn off just yet and James and Frank are back with something you may not expect... SwiftUI. Apple unleashed a new code first UI framework for Apple platforms and they discuss it in this's week episode of Merge Conflict.

Xamarin Essentials - SMS

Xamarin.Essentials provides developers with cross-platform APIs for their mobile applications. On this week's Xamarin.Essential API of the week, take a look at the SMS API enabling your app to open the default SMS application with an optional specified message to send to a recipient.

Xamarin Essentials - SMS by James Montemagno

Xamarin Introductions

Introducing Tomasz

This week is another great and well-known member of our community, Tomasz Cielecki aka Cheesebaron, from Copehagen, Denmark.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

I have been working with x-plat Apps using Xamarin since 2011. I am a Microsoft MVP and I have been a Xamarin MVP also, both of which I have received due to my engagement with the community and maintaining multiple libraries for the Xamarin ecosystem. I am currently working at TrackMan, where I develop games and tools for when you are on a Golf Driving Range.

Tell us one thing we probably don't know about you?

I am fairly tall 205 cm. People usually don't expect me to be so tall, when they meet me in person.

How did you first get into Xamarin development?

It was part of a Internship part of my B.Sc. at University. Back when it was still called MonoTouch and Mono for Android was just released.

What has been the most enjoyable project you have built using Xamarin?

My latest endeavor into Apps for the Driving Range has been really interesting and fun to work on. However, my involvement in MvvmCross is also something I feel I can be proud of, taking it over from Stuart Lodge, when he found other things to do.

What advice would you give someone looking at getting started with Xamarin development?

No matter whether you are going to start with Xamarin.Forms or not, it is a good idea to get a good grasp of how life-cycles work on the platforms you are going to work with, because at some point they are going to bite you.

If you are using any library dependencies, please report any bugs and issues you find on relevant issue trackers, otherwise we can't fix those problems.

What are the MUST HAVE tools, resources and libraries that you use when building Xamarin apps?

NuGet packages: MvvmCross, Refit, Polly, Serilog, FFImageLoading, Microsoft.AppCenter

Tools: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Rider, Reveal.app, Git Fork, oh-my-zsh with git-extras

Web resources: Microsofts docs are getting very good, if something is missing, raising an issue often gets them updated. Ploeh Blog https://blog.ploeh.dk is a good source of design patterns and discussions about them as well as Martin Fowler's blog https://martinfowler.com Stephen Cleary's blog for TPL (async/await) stuff: https://blog.stephencleary.com

Where do you think mobile will be in 5 years?

I hope there will be more competitors to Android and iOS. It is kind of happening already with the US sanctions towards Chinese companies.

Using AI and ML for personalized content will probably be one of the big things going forward.

In enterprise I can see AR be a very useful tool for a lot of purposes. Either using the mobile camera or head mounted device.

Make sure you keep up to date with updates from Tomasz:

Blog: https://blog.ostebaronen.dk

Twitter: @cheesebaron

Github: https://github.com/Cheesebaron