7 January 2016 / XAMARIN

Xamarin Link Roundup – 6 January 2016

Happy New Year! here are links from the community to start your New Year.

Xamarin.Forms

Specify the default value for a dependency property – Geoffrey Huntley shows how to specify a default value if the consumer does not bind to the property
Creating a Left ToolbarItem in Xamarin.Forms – Amy Burns jumps into Xamarin.Forms and investigates writing a custom renderer for iOS to add left toolbar items
Using Ninject for Prism for Xamarin.Forms | Alteridem [al′tər ī′dem′] – Rob Prouse walks through using Ninject with Prism for Xaamrin.Forms
Xamarin Forms : Behaviors – Mostefaoui Anas introduces behaviors in Xamarin Forms

Using C# for Cross-Platform Development With Xamarin – DZone sits down with Jim Bennett to discuss the Xamarin platform and it’s benefits for cross platform native development
Why should enterprises use xamarin for app development – Slideshare presentation overview of benefits of Xamarin in an enterprise environment
Getting Started with Game Development in C# – Another great Xamarin podcast. This time about Game Development
Mobile Testing Approaches – Noel Rice starts a series on Mobile testing approaches.
The Top 12 Xamarin Blog Posts of 2015 – “12 Days of Xamarin” is the top 12 Xamarin posts from 2015. I remember it like it was only last year.
The MVVM pattern – Introduction – Matteo Pagani provides a nice introduction to the MvvM pattern, concepts and implementation.

Material Theme for Sublime Text – Mattia Astorino has a Material Theme for Sublime Text 3
Fluent Assertions for Xamarin 4.1.1 – Update to FluentAssertions which is an extensive set of extension methods that allow you to more naturally specify the expected outcome of a TDD or BDD-style unit test. Now with Xamarin Support
Extending Refit (to decompress files) – Geoffrey Huntley shares a tip on how to extend Refit to decompress files (or do whatever you want)
ASP.NET 5 and DNX support in Xamarin Studio – Matt Ward shares the good news: Xamarin Studio and MonoDevelop now have support for ASP.NET 5 and DNX with an alpha release of the DNX addin.
Share Plugin for Xamarin and Windows – Jakob Gürtl has an updated share plugin
Xamarin Studio Launcher for Xamarin Studio 5 – Marco Kuiper pushes out a new release of Xamarin Studio Launcher with flashy new icon
Continuous Deployment for Xamarin Android & iOS with Build vNext & HockeyApp – Alberto Aguzzi walks through setting up a continuous deployment environment using VSTS and HockeyApp.

Optimizing Your Design For Rapid Prototype Testing – Michelle Chu talk about the crucial role of prototyping your application.
What It Takes to Succeed As a Product Designer (Part 1) – Tomas Laurinavicius talks key skills you need to be a product designer
Zopfli Optimization: Literally Free Bandwidth – Compress your images for smaller package sizes
Free Parallax Backgrounds – GameDev.net – Because you can never have enough graphic resources
Design Principles To Evaluate Your Product – David Schools via SmashingMagazine teaches us about some core design principles and how you can apply these principles in practical terms

Making your iOS app sleeping beautifully – Gerald Versluis on backgrounding iOS apps.
Binding Objective C into Xamarin | cocoa juice – Saurav shares some information on how to bind a native library into xamarin
Fun with Swift – Joe Armstrong plays around with Swift
iOS User Interfaces with MvvmCross | Kerry’s Blog – Kerry talks crafting native iOS user interfaces with MvvmCross

A “Sticky” Intent Service, for long running tasks, with Xamarin Android – A class combing the ease of use of the Intent Service, with the long running features of the Sticky services
Xamarin.android memory management gotchas – Matthew Robbins slide deck from his Sydney Mobile .NET User Group presentation.