Test Xamarin Forms app for Android 10 and iOS 13

Google and Apple have both released their new OS for mobile. Google with Android Q and Apple with iOS 13.  Have a quick look at the new features of iOS 13 and of Android Q.

I work on Xamarin Forms and I was eager to test my app on the new releases. So these steps are specific to Xamarin development with Visual Studio on Windows and Visual Studio for Mac.

Let's start with iOS.

iOS 13 Setup

To use the iOS 13 simulator, you would need to install xCode 11 beta. You can download this from the apple developer website. 

Once you install the XCode 11 beta you can configure the new simulators for iOS 13. 

If you open with Visual Studio it will not show you the iOS 13 simulators for your iOS project. To make them available, we would need to change the SDK to point to xCode-beta. To change the SDK location Goto Visual Studio - Preferences - Projects - SDK Locations - Apple and change the Xcode location to xCode 11 beta as shown in the image below. 

You will need to restart Visual Studio.

Web vs Native vs Hybrid Applications

In my previous blog Introduction to Hybrid Application development, we talk about different technologies which we will can use to build a Hybrid Application development.

However, before going into deep with Hybrid Application Development I was thinking to do a comparison between Web vs Native vs Hybrid Mobile applications.

Web vs Native vs Hybrid Mobile Applications

What I think about these different techniques for Mobile Application Development is that we should go with Hybrid Mobile Application development as over the past couple of years the Tools which are being used for Hybrid App development are matured and have been popular enough.

I didn't want to mention this but if you are a mobile app developer than you can see that the jobs in the IBMWorklight are more than any other Tool being used for Hybrid Mobile Application Development. If you would ask me what I am favoring the Hybrid App development is because

1. Single CodeBase for all the platforms. You need to maintain only one code for different platforms like iOS, Android and Windows.
2. Development is faster. As we are using the existing Web application development technologies like JavaScript, HTML and CSS with Apache Cordova
3. Deployment as Native apps by wrapping the web app using native framework.
4. IBM Worklight provide Single Notification server which can be used to deliver notifications to all the different platforms.
5. Integration with native features is very easy.
6. Offline databases can be used to store data when network is not available which huge advantage for offline support is.
7. There is huge repository of Cordova Plugins which can be integrated easily.

I would like to know your opinion on this before I start the Hybrid application development series and please suggest if there is anything specific you want me to include in the series.

Swift – All you need to know – Part 1

As we are studying the Swift programming language for past couple of months. While studying the language I cam across many features of the programming. So I thought to compile all those features with some brief introduction so that if some one just want to have a sneak peak at the features he/she can just go though this blog.

So this is the part -1 of the series I am thinking to write. Hope to complete it soon and cover the features in its entirety.

Objective C has been the core programming language for Apple software Development. It has been there for 20 years and serving us well. As per Apple they have worked for 4 years to design Swift Programming Language.

So what is it that they wanted to achieve with Swift? As per Apple during the Swift Programming language intro in WWDC 2014 they want “Objective C without the baggage of C”.

Swift is Fast, Safe, Modern and Interactive programming language. Here are the few key points of Swift programming language:

•       Adapts safe programming patterns by using the Type Inference and Generics.

•       It adopts the readability of Objective-C’s named parameters and the power of Objective-C’s dynamic Object Model.

•       Provides seamless access to the existing Cocoa Framework and Objective-c code.

•        Develop apps for iOS and Mac OS both.

You might have heard about the playgrounds the new feature in XCode 6 where you can use Swift language and see the output of the programming as you finish typing the code. We can discuss Playground and its features in other blog. Today we will talk about what all features Swift Programming language has come up with and will have brief introduction about each feature for you to kick start the language.