Data Binding with Xamarin and iOS (iPhone & iPad)

Url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/04/01/a-simple-data-binding-trick.aspx

Applications and businesses live on data. Data is what makes a business a business, generates value for customers, and allows a company to generate income. Displaying data to a user is a common operation, especially in mobile. It might be immensely important for a salesperson to get the last bit of information before visiting a client or to display the location of a restaurant via a local consumer-oriented app. In this article, I'll look at the UITableViewController class that allows you to get at and display that data in an iOS app.

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I Get XAML, You Get XAML, Everyone Gets XAML with Xamarin.Forms

Many of you in the Microsoft .NET Framework world are familiar with XAML. XAML is an XML-based language for working with objects. It has been used extensively in developing UIs in Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation and is used in the Windows Runtime. Unfortunately, XAML support isn't a feature that's built into iOS or Android. With the release of the Xamarin cross-platform toolkit, Xamarin.Forms, XAML can now be used with those platforms, as well as Windows Phone.

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/03/01/everyone-gets-xaml-with-xamarinforms.aspx

Article - Q&A: Xamarin's Jonathan Pryor on Android 5 Lollipop

Article Url:  http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/02/09/xamarin-android-5-lollipop.aspx

Jonathan Pryor, a Xamarin.Android Development Lead, was kind enough to take some time out of a busy weekend to answer a few questions regarding Xamarin.Android and the company's support for the new Android 5 Lollipop update. Here's an interview conducted in late 2014.  At the end of this interview, I've also asked two fellow Android developers, Kevin Darty and Stephen Long, to chime in on their opinions of the new Lollipop features.

Working New Android 5 Lollipop Features into Your Apps

Url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/01/01/new-android-5-lollipop-features.aspx

Who doesn't love some sugar? Android 5, code-named "Lollipop," is Google's latest release of the Android OS for phones, tablets and wearable devices. There are a large number of new features, some you should be aware as you develop apps going forward:

• Material Design and UI controls and capabilities. Material Design is a bold, colorful, and responsive UI design for consistent and intuitive experiences across all devices. This includes responsive, natural motion, realistic lighting, shadows, and visual elements that make it easier for users to navigate on their device, and new colors, typography, animations, and edge-to-edge imagery assistance to focus user attention.
• Notifications. The new Notifications provide ways to control when and how users receive messages. Users are able to view and respond to messages directly from the lock screen as well as hide sensitive content for these notifications.
• New runtime and performance improvements. ART is the new Android runtime (replacing Dalvik). Let's be honest -- who hasn't had problems with a poorly performing app in Dalvik on some device? I know that my Nexus 7 2013 seems to have problems. Over time, I find that apps run slower and slower until a reboot resolves that problem. ART improves application performance and responsiveness.
• 64 bits. Apple released 64-bit support in iOS in the fall of 2013. The competitive marketplace requires that Android does likewise. With Android 5.0, Google supports the current 32-bit ARM architecture, as well as 64-bit chips from ARM, x86 and MIPS.
• Accessibility. I have a large number of users at one of my clients that have accessibility issues. Given the vision problems that they have, I personally feel that it's important to make their interaction with my applications work as well as possible. Previously, Android hasn't done a good job in this area. With Lollipop, Android has improved accessibility.

These are some of the high-level improvements in Android 5, but there are many more. Clearly, one article cannot do justice to an update of this magnitude.

This column will focus on one of the new controls in Android 5. Let's get started!

Xamarin and iOS 8: New APIs Training

Url: http://www.learnnowonline.com/course/i8x2/xamarin-and-ios-8-new-apis

Course description

In this course, we will look at how to create an App Extension. Specifically, we will create a today app extensions that shows hot to create an app extensions with a countdown. Then we’ll look at how to use the TouchID to provide local authentication. This is useful for an app where people are buying things. Next we’ll look at several new features of working with images and the camera. We’ll look at manual camera controls as well as photokit. To close this course we’ll look at storing and saving health data using healthkit.

App Extensions (17:33)

• Introduction (00:16)
• App Extensions (01:06)
• Types of App Extensions (02:25)
• Overview (01:04)
• Limitations (01:00)
• Distribute, Install, & Run (00:58)
• Extension Lifecycle (02:00)
• Demo: Today Extension (04:25)
• Demo: Controller (03:48)
• Summary (00:26)

Touch ID (11:04)

• Introduction (00:14)
• TouchID Authentication (01:46)
• Keychain (01:23)
• Secure Enclave (00:55)
• Strategies (00:57)
• Demo: Touch ID (05:33)
• Summary (00:15)

Images (22:33)

• Introduction (00:16)
• Image Detection (00:44)
• CIDetector Class (01:11)
• Demo: Rectangle Detector (02:15)
• Pre0iOS 8 Camera (01:17)
• Manual Camera Controls (01:38)
• Process (00:58)
• Manual Controls Provided (01:27)
• General AV Capture Setup (01:27)
• Demo: Manual Camera Controls (05:18)
• Resources (00:10)
• PhotoKit (00:12)
• PhotoKit Objects/Methods (01:47)
• Demo: PhotoKit (03:32)
• Summary (00:14)

Health Kit (15:36)

• Introduction (00:09)
• Health Kit (00:59)
• Creating and Provisioning (00:38)
• Entitlements.plist (00:47)
• Programming Health Kit (01:29)
• Types (01:11)
• HKSampleType (00:46)
• Requesting Permission (00:56)
• Permissions - AppDelegate.cs (02:18)
• Demo: Health Kit (06:12)
• Summary (00:07)

Building Your iOS User Interface with Xamarin and C#

Url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2014/12/01/designing-uis.aspx

In September, Apple released the most recent version of iOS, iOS 8, and since then the iOS 8.1. The company also released two new phones -- the iPhone 6 with a 4.7-inch screen, and iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5-inch screen -- and refreshed the iPad line with new versions of the iPad Air and iPad Mini. And those iPads, interestingly, have different screen resolutions and pixel densities than the iPhone. At the same time, Apple continues to sell older versions of its devices.

For developers, all these new releases represent the dreaded OS fragmentation that developers fear. How are developers going to handle the variations in old and new devices and screen sizes? Thankfully, Apple and Xamarin have thought this through and have created some flexible UI tools that I'll look at.