Issue 305

KYM PHILLPOTTS

Welcome back again to another late edition of Weekly Xamarin. I'm still playing catchup, but so many great resources to get you through the weekend.

DESIGN

Design Tool Database

Compare the best UX design tools in the industry and make the best choice for your team.

UX Tools | Design Tools Database by UX Tools

3 Ways to Improve the Mobile App Experience with Animation

When done right, animations add value to the user experience. Here are some tips on how to improve mobile app animations (and some things to stay away from).

3 Ways to Improve the Mobile App Experience with Animation by Suzanne Scacca

Design Mistakes You're Making with Mobile Forms & How to Fix Them

Mobile visitors are still reluctant to take action. Redesign your mobile forms and remove the friction and frustration that keep your visitors from engaging.

Design Mistakes You're Making with Mobile Forms & How to Fix by Suzanne Scacca

BUSINESS & MARKETING

8 Questions to Answer Before Developing a Mobile App

Developing a mobile app is not a simple task - before beginning this process, you should have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish with your app.

8 Questions to Answer Before Developing a Mobile App - DZone Web Dev by Sanjay Ratnottar

TESTING

Introduction to Security in Mobile Development

Mobile app security doesn't start when a new mobile app is released. Rather, mobile app security must be part of mobile app development from the start of the project.

Introduction to Security in Mobile Development by Luis Matos

TOOLS

Build Xamarin apps with VS Code to M1 Macs, iPhones & Android

You don't need to open an IDE, start building apps in the terminal.

Build Xamarin apps with VS Code to M1 Macs, iPhones & Android | by The First Prototype | May, 2021 | Dev Genius by Saamer Mansoor

What's New in the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin

When it comes to design and production, the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin saves a lot of time and money. In our latest update, they have crafted a new page and added many interactions and appearance changes to the existing pages. Now, there are 102 screens in your favorite Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.

What's New in the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin | Syncfusion Blogs by Meikanda Nayanar

ANDROID

Let’s Talk About GPU Rendering Speed and Overdrawing in Android

Most of the time, we software developers focus on optimizing our code. We want it to be fast, easy to understand, and easy to maintain. Many of those codes are related to data handling, API queries, record updates, etc. But how many times do we worry about optimizing the user interface?

Let’s Talk About GPU Rendering Speed and Overdrawing in Android by Walter Aguilar

XAMARIN FORMS

Creating beautiful dual-screen Xamarin.Forms apps

This post discusses changes to animated layouts in a Xamarin.Forms app to adapt them for Microsoft Surface Duo.

Creating beautiful dual-screen Xamarin.Forms apps | Surface Duo Blog by Craig Dunn

Clearable Time Picker in Xamarin Forms

A time ago Charlin did an article on how to create a Clearable Date Picker, recently someone asked her to do the same but with a Time Picker. So why not? In this article, she shows you how to create a Time Picker that can be cleared and set to a null date. .

Clearable Time Picker in Xamarin Forms - XamGirl by Charlin Agramonte

Overview of the Best and Most Popular Xamarin.Forms Controls

This blog contains an overview of the Syncfusion control offerings for Xamarin.Forms.

Overview of the Best and Most Popular Xamarin.Forms Controls by Selva Ganapathy Kathiresan

How to pass data and navigate to another view in Prism

Almir is posting his answers he has been contributing to Stack Overflow, which is a great idea. This answers the question of How to pass data to another view in Prism

[StackOverflow] Xamarin.Forms and Prism - How to pass data and navigate to another view? by Almir Vuk

Authentication in Xamarin Forms using Open Identity Connect and OAuth

Authentication shouldn't be scary (but it is a bit). As Mark says, it's best to follow a standard by using a proven library and not implement your own. In this post, Mark discusses using OpenID/OAuth2 for authentication in a mobile Xamarin Forms application.

Authentication in Xamarin Forms using Open Identity Connect and OAuth by Mark Allibone

Multi-Selection per row with Dynamic Data in Xamarin Forms (Part 4)

this post explores how to do multi-selection per row, reusing the concepts of grouping that we learned in the previous article.

Multi-Selection per row with Dynamic Data in Xamarin Forms (Part 4) - Rendy's Website by Rendy Del Rosario

Creating a clean Style Library for Xamarin.Forms

Daniel has updated his awesome blog post that goes through everything you would ever want to know about Style Libraries for Xamarin.Forms

Creating a clean Style Library for Xamarin.Forms by Daniel Monetelli

Replicating Book Worm UI in Xamarin Forms

This is a post showing how to replicate a Book Worm UI App obtained from Dribble.

Replicating Book Worm UI in Xamarin Forms by Leomaris Reyes

MAUI

Sands of MAUI: Issue #7

Sam continues his Sands of MAUI updates bringing together latest .NET MAUI content relevant to developers.

Sands of MAUI: Issue #7 by Sam Basu

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

Building Accessible Mobile Apps

This week, James is joined by Rachel Kang, software engineer on the Xamarin.Forms and .NET MAUI team, who talks to us about the importance of building accessible apps. She shows off how you can start today testing your apps and adding features from Xamarin.Forms to make them even more accessible. Then she shows off some exciting work coming in .NET MAUI.

Building Accessible Mobile Apps | The Xamarin Show by The Xamarin Show

Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with Reusable Resources & Styles

Stop copy and pasting code and start creating re-usable styles with Xamarin.Forms. Reusable styles and resources can be anything! From colors, integers, booleans, and full-blown customizations of controls let you re-use and optimize your code. Re-use them on a single page or throughout your entire application. If they sound like CSS they are, but in XAML! I show you how.

Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with Reusable Resources & Styles by James Montemagno

Pick Multiple Images and Videos with This Xamarin.Forms Library

The MediaGallery plugin allows you to pick one or multiple media files from your gallery, something Essentials can't do by default. But why stop there? The plugin also allows you to save an image or video to that same gallery with just a single line of code!

Everything you need to know about this plugin is right here, in this video.

Pick Multiple Images and Videos with This Xamarin.Forms Library by Gerald Versluis

Merge Conflict: 251: #AppleEvent - AirTags, M1 iMac, & Purple iPhone

No upgraded MacBook devices for us just yet, but the M1 is in full force on the new iMac and iPad Pro! We break down the entire apple event.

Merge Conflict: 251: #AppleEvent - AirTags, M1 iMac, & Purple iPhone by Merge Conflict

Perfect Popups for Xamarin.Forms with Xamarin Community Toolkit

Included in the Xamarin Community Toolkit is now the ability to show popups. A popup is basically just another type of page and you can show it through the normal navigation stack.

In this video we will learn how to show out first popup and go about how to dismiss it.

Perfect Popups for Xamarin.Forms with Xamarin Community Toolkit by Gerald Versluis

Play Audio & Video in Background with Xamarin.Forms on iOS

In this video we will learn how to enable playing audio in the background on iOS. Even when your app is not one the foreground we can keep continue playing audio and with video even enable picture-in-picture.

All of this shown in a Xamarin.Forms app together with MediaElement from the Xamarin Community Toolkit.

Play Audio & Video in Background with Xamarin.Forms on iOS by Gerald Versluis

Lifecycle Events (Xamarin Community Toolkit)

Pedro is back for another episode! This time he will tell us all about the Lifecycle Effect that he implemented for the Xamarin Community Toolkit. With this effect you can hook into the Loaded and Unloaded event of any VisualElement and even pages.

Tune in to this episode and learn all about it.

Lifecycle Events (Xamarin Community Toolkit) by The Xamarin Show

Xamarin Quick Tips: Setting Tab Icons with Style Triggers

In this video Ben Buttigieg show you to you Style Triggers to modify Tab Icons based on their selections state.

Xamarin Quick Tips: Setting Tab Icons with Style Triggers by The Xamarin Show

Image Tinting (Xamarin Community Toolkit)

Getting all your image resources in the right color can be a big pain. Between iOS and Android alone you will have to add them in many different dimensions. John has made this a whole lot easier by implementing an Effect in the Xamarin Community Toolkit. This Effect allows you to tint an image with an attached property with just one line of code!

Image Tinting (Xamarin Community Toolkit) by The Xamarin Show

Xamarin Community Standup - .NET MAUI Single Project with Jake Kirsch

Join Maddy Leger and special guest Jake Kirsch for an update on .NET MAUI's new single project architecture, and see how you can start using the preview today!

Xamarin Community Standup - .NET MAUI Single Project with Jake Kirsch by Xamarin Community Standup

RELEASES

Shiny 2.0 For Xamarin - Shinier Than Ever

Shiny is a Xamarin Framework designed to make dealing with device & background services easy by bringing things like dependency injection, logging, and lots of utilities to bring your workflows to the background in friendly, testable, way!

Version 2.0 is out, which is very exciting because it contains a massive amount of improvements.

Shiny 2.0 For Xamarin - Shinier Than Ever by Allan Ritchie