Adapting to Enterprise and B2E Xamarin Forms App Development

microsoft xamarin heros c# iOS Android UWP

Enterprise or Business to Employee (B2E) mobile apps can be quite different from their B2C counterparts. B2C apps, tend to focus on a small number of screens or feed for their main usage, and additional screens are not as frequently used, but there to serve ancillary functionality as needed. B2E apps, are focused on function, normally recording or accessing data for their day to day job. Many of them are replacing hand written recordings, for digital records, that are automatically synchronized to the main database. The fact that these users…

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Xamarin Forms Dependency Injection

microsoft xamarin heros c# iOS Android UWP

Calling native platform code in your portable class library (PCL) is achievable via Dependency Injection. It’s a common question for people starting out, who are using a PCL or .NET Standard Library for developing their Xamarin apps. Dependency Injection involves creating an interface that can be commonly applied across all native platforms, then coding the actual implementation, or the native platform code, on each platform. This interface and instance is then given to a container. The PCL or .NET Standard Library, then goes to the container with only the interface…

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Working with CarouselView in Xamarin Forms

microsoft xamarin heros c# iOS Android UWP

Xamarin.Forms code runs on multiple platforms – each of which has its own filesystem. This means that reading and writing files is most easily done using the native file APIs on each platform. Alternatively, embedded resources are a simpler solution to distribute data files with an app. CarouselView CarouselView is available in Xamarin.Forms 4.3. However, it is currently experimental and can only be used by adding the following line of code to your AppDelegate class on iOS, or to your MainActivity class on Android, before calling Forms.Init: Prerequisites Visual Studio…

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Using functions as values in F#

Microsoft F# Fsharp

In my previous post, we discussed about immutable data structure. Now, imagine that we want to write a method similar to SumList but that multiplies the numbers rather than adding them. Making this change looks quite easy: we can copy the SumList method and tinker with it. There are only two changes in the modified method: The first change is that we’re using multiplication instead of addition in the branch that does the recursive call ❷. The second change is that the value returned for an empty list is now 1 instead of 0 ❶. This solution works,…

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Microsoft brings 8,000 royalty-free images and icons to Office for Windows users

Microsoft Office stock pictures

Microsoft yesterday released the new Version 2004 update (Build 12730.20024) for Office for Windows Desktop Insiders in the Fast Ring. This new update brings high quality, curated images, stickers, and icons to Office 365 subscribers. Over 8,000 royalty-free images and icons will be available in Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint apps for users. In the coming months, Microsoft will be adding more premium content for Office 365 subscribers. Here’s how this feature works: Select Insert > Pictures > Stock Images. Select the content type you want to explore: Stock Images, Cutout People, Icons, or Stickers. Enter some keywords in the Search box.…

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Windows 10: The new hidden features found in preview builds

Windows10 What's new settings

With the latest Windows 10 Insider build, new hidden features have been found that add long-awaited media controls to the volume flyout and a new settings page that shows a ‘What’s New’ section for the current Windows release. As Microsoft developers work on new features for Windows 10, they hide them from being used by users. These features, though, can be enabled by the developers as needed for testing. These hidden features can be enabled using tools like Mach2 or ViVe (ViVe is a C# library you can use to make your own…

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A guide to remote development with Visual Studio Live Share

Visual Studio Live Share

Working in a fully distributed, remote team requires sophisticated collaboration technology, which needs to be both supercharged and frictionless. Visual Studio Live Share was built on the bold principle of making remote developer collaboration as powerful and natural as in-person collaboration. We knew that our paradigm: “share your context, not your screen,” was only feasible, if we allowed the power of the modern IDE translate to remote collaboration sessions. Just then the world changed drastically and everyone was forced to be remote. It wasn’t just professional developers who needed Live Share; there were students, teachers, and interview candidates who needed a real-time collaboration service. So the Live…

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Microsoft Editor, an alternative to Grammarly

Microsoft Editor Explain

Last week Microsoft announced a new service called Microsoft Editor, an AI-powered writing assistant that takes on Grammarly, available for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. Microsoft Editor helps you write with confidence in 20+ languages. Since it is a browser add-on, it will help you whenever you are on the web, right from writing emails to posting your story on Facebook. Microsoft Editor tiers Microsoft Editor has two different tiers. The free edition includes basic features such as spelling and basic grammar across Word, Outlook.com and the web. But with…

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New Xamarin Application Developed to Track and Manage COVID-19 in Real-time

Xamarin Application Developed to Track and Manage COVID-19 in Real-time

Volunteers re-engineer cancer treatment software to monitor coronavirus pandemic using Microsoft’s Xamarin mobile framework with Azure Mobile Angel has released a new mobile application built on the Xamarin platform to manage potential and at-risk coronavirus patients in real-time.  The free application monitors patients in clinics across the country through self-reported symptoms and prioritizes them in a triage list based on fever and other symptoms. With built-in telemedicine features, clinic staff can directly monitor patients while reducing in-person visits and potential exposure. The application also aggregates reports across the country so…

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Microsoft News Bar beta now available

Microsoft News Desktop beta

Microsoft launched a new app for newshounds on the Microsoft Store today, dubbed Microsoft News Bar. The app is essentially a persistent news ticker for your desktop, serving up the latest headlines as they happen. There’s also a fair bit of customization to get the right fit for your desktop setup. On launch, News Bar takes up a portion of the right side of your screen with a list of images for each news story. Hovering over each image will give you a preview of the story’s headline and a…

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