Issue 223

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Exciting times!! Android 10 is out with dark mode, a new gesture system, and even moar privacy. Not only that, iOS 13 is just around the corner as well as the iPhone 11 event, which no doubt will have Apple seeing exactly how many lenses will fit on to the back of a phone. Can't wait to see what they name it.

Thanks again to the amazing Xamarin community for the articles in this weeks issue.

Enjoy a relaxing weekend everyone.

❤️Kym

DEVOPS

How to use variables inside your Azure DevOps builds

When you create a build inside Azure DevOps you always have a configuration to pass to generate your application package. This configuration can have variables like, environnement variables, folder path, logins, passwords etc. But how do you do this in a way that is secure? This is where variables come in. Damien shows an example of protecting keystore information used for the signing task for an Android build.

How to use variables inside your Azure DevOps builds by Damien Aicheh

ANDROID

Welcoming Android 10!

After more than a year of development and months of testing by early adopters, Google is ready to introduce Android 10 to the world! As Xamarin developers, it's always useful to keep our eye on the ball in regards to platforms.

Welcoming Android 10! by Stephanie Cuthbertson

Xamarin Android Bindings Troubleshooting

Jon Douglas has a great troubleshooting guide for Xamarin.Android bindings over on Github. If you are in the murky world of creating bindings then this is a great resource

Xamarin Android Bindings Troubleshooting by Jon Douglas

IOS

Modernizing iOS Apps for Dark Mode with Xamarin

As developers, a lot of us seem to enjoy Dark Mode on everything possible, from our IDE to our themes. In iOS 13, Apple introduced dark mode and with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Forms you can start taking advantage of this. David Ortinau has written a blog post explaining how to get started supporting this new option in your projects.

XAMARIN FORMS

Compiled Bindings in Xamarin.Forms

Compiled Bindings is a way of telling Xamarin.Forms at compile time the type of data the binding is going to be using. This is means that Xamarin.Forms will not have to use any reflection at runtime to resolve the data binding, which means better performance, and who doesn't want better performance?

Boost Performance with Compiled Bindings in Xamarin.Forms by James Montemagno

How to Use Icon Fonts in Xamarin.Forms App

Iconography is becoming a hot topic in mobile app development/design. In this post from Synction, Selva takes you through the why, where and how of getting started with icon fonts. Selva also shows a great tool called Metro Studio, and how you can create your own icon TTF files from it... who knew?

How to Use Icon Fonts in Xamarin.Forms App? by Selva Ganapathy Kathiresan

Download a .zip file and open it in memory with Xamarin - [Spanish]

Sometimes you may have a lot of JSON data which can be large in size. In this post, Elbrinner talks about how to take advantage of the compression benefits of .zip files, and how to handle these in Xamarin by unzipping and deserializing the contents.

Download a .zip file and open it in memory with Xamarin by Elbrinner da Silva Fernandes

Async Commands

ICommand play a very important role in MVVM and it is usually an important feature in all the popular frameworks (MVVMLight , Prism , …) and even the default xamarin forms implementation. The main problem of the populate ICommands implementations is async support. Learn how to overcome this.

Async Command A Modern Implementation of ICommand by Ahmed Fouad

MVVM Navigation with Xamarin.Forms Shell

Navigation is one of those touchy subjects amongst MVVM developers / advocates. Xamarin.Forms having View-based navigation doesn't help. Nick Randolph knows A LOT about MVVM and in this post, he discusses the ins and outs of different navigation approaches in MVVM.

MVVM Navigation with Xamarin.Forms Shell by Nick

Understanding Visual State Manager in Xamarin Forms

Visual State Management is a concept from Xamarin.Forms 3.0 that allows you to define how components on your UI look based on state. For example a form, it might be that you change the colour of an entry if it has focus. Charlin takes you through the why and the how of visual state manager.

Understanding Visual State Manager in Xamarin Forms by Charlin Agramonte

HTML in Your Xamarin.Forms Label

Gerald recently had a merge for HTML content in Xamarin.Forms labels, merged into the repo. In this blog post he covers how to use as well as some limitations.

HTML in Your Xamarin.Forms Label by Gerald Versluis

Xamarin Forms Accessible Headings

If you are developing a mobile app, it's worth enabling VoiceOver on iOS and considering the usability from the perspective of people who rely on these tools to access your app.

Xamarin Forms Accessible Headings by Stuart Lang

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

FreshMvvm: So Fresh So Clean - MVVM for Xamarin.Forms

This week, James is joined by friend of the show Michael Ridland, Microsoft & XamarinMVP, who shows off his awesome MVVM library for Xamarin.Froms MvvmFresh! He talks about what is built in, why you would use it, and how it can simplify development with Xamarin.Forms.

FreshMvvm: So Fresh So Clean - MVVM for Xamarin.Forms by James Montemagno

Merge Conflict: 165: IoT Gifts Make The Best Gifts

What happens when you combine IoT, 3D Printing, and a 48 hours deadline to come up with a wedding gift? The most amazing IoT Wedding Clock ever created... by Frank for H+J! Frank breaks down how he built it, how it works, and how you can build it too!

Issue 223 6th September 2019