This Week in Mobile: Free Xamarin, Swift Extensions, Android N

A big gesture from Microsoft is the main headline of the week where they made Xamarin free for independent developers. This change in pricing will have a huge impact on the cross platform development market, where it will probably become the default option versus either Appcelerator or React Native. 

iOS 

Creating A Swift Library brings you through the tools and processes for shipping and maintaining a library in Swift. 

Also from Realm, Daniel Steinberg presents how to write better Swift code. Your 30-year-from-now-self will thank you for watching it! 

We all write them, they can be challenging - Table View Controllers. Here we see how to write the Best Table View Controller.

Another excellent post from NatashaTheRobot this week, talking about Using Swift Extensions The "Wrong" Way.

Some projects for you to look at this week: 

• Permission: a unified way to request permissions

• SwiftyStoreKit: Lightweight In App Purchases Swift framework for iOS 8.0+ and OSX 9.0+

• Gifu: High-performance animated GIF support for iOS in Swift

• NextGrowtingTextView: The next in the generations of 'growing textviews' optimized for iOS 7 and above.

• URLEmbeddedView: URLEmbeddedView automatically caches the object that is confirmed the Open Graph Protocol.
  
  

Android 

Android N's freeform window mode looks pretty interesting, although it's in it's early days. It will certainly help with the creation of desktop-style apps on tablets. 

I love this talk on Minimum Viable Development in Android. I'm as guilty as anyone else of getting stuck in analysis paralysis at the start of a new project. Here you learn how to gather the basic tools to get your project out there quickly. 

Every Android developer should be aware of The Shortcomings of Android Thread Annotations. And while you're at it, check out Five Ways to Hang Your Main Thread. 

Some projects worth looking at: 

• TriangleLabelView: A triangle label view to place on top of images and more

• lightcycle: SoundCloud's project let's lightweight classes respond to Android's lifecycle events

• StatusBarUtil: A util for setting status bar style on Android App

• VideoListPlayer: Play video in ListView or RecyclerView

• welcome-coordinator: Welcome Coordinator for Android

General 

Notifications are tricky, and if you get them wrong you are guaranteed that your users will switch them off. Intercom have a great piece on Designing Smart Notifications, and trust me, they would know! 

Working out where to bring your product next is never easy. Stuart Hall shares how they Decide What to Build Next At Appbot. 

I really admire the quality of articles from Airbnb, and while not necessarily about mobile, if you have a passing interest you should read Using R Packages and Education to Scale Data Science at Airbnb.