MobilePro #52: 🎫New version of TypeScript, Flutter How-tos 📳, Android App Development Bundle📚

We're back with another edition of the MobilePro and we've got news from Apple and Microsoft - upcoming price changes and beta updates from Apple, and new version of TypeScript from Microsoft additions!

This week, we have curated articles that teach you:

• Tips for adopting Android's Notification Permissions

• How to experiment with postures in Flutter

• How to build complex UIs in Flutter

• Parameter injection for Android ViewModels

And if you are passionate about the mobile app world, don't forget to check out our book offers - this week, we're looking at Android app development and Flutter.

As always, check out our survey and tell us what you want us to cover - the MobilePro only works thanks to its community, so we need the community to tell us what it wants! Please hit the button to share your inputs, first 50 respondents will receive a free best-selling eBook PDF.

Complete Survey, Get a Free PDF!

Thanks,
Apurva Kadam
Associate Editor-in-Chief, Packt

⚡ Exclusive MobilePro Offer: 3 Titles for only $25 ⚡

Android App Development Bundle 👾

Explore the latest tools and frameworks in the Android ecosystem to build modern applications that scale with users’ needs.
 

Buy 3 Bestsellers for $25

⚡ Exclusive MobilePro Offer: 3 Titles for only $25 ⚡

Cross-platform mobile applications with Flutter Bundle🔮

Get up to speed with the basics of Dart programming and develop your first Flutter app from scratch all the way to production release on your own.
 

Buy 3 Bestsellers for $25

What’s happening in tech? 

The week from Apple and Microsoft rolled out these announcements and updates:

Apple

• Upcoming tax and price changes for apps and in-app purchases - Starting next week, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in Ghana and Turkey. In Ghana, these increases also consider a new value-added tax of 12.5% and additional levies of 6%. In addition, proceeds for e-publications in Estonia have been adjusted to reflect a value-added tax decrease from 9% to 5%
   

• TestFlight Update - Developers can now submit apps built with Xcode 14 beta 6 using the SDK for iOS 16 beta 5, iPadOS 16 beta 5, macOS 13 beta 5, tvOS 16 beta 5 and watchOS 9 beta 5 for internal and external testing

• Beta updates – Developers can now test their apps on iOS 16 beta 7, iPad 16 beta 7, tvOS 16 beta 7, macOS 13 beta 6, watchOS 9 beta 7 and XCode 14 beta 6 versions.

Microsoft 

• Java on Visual Studio Code Update – August 2022 - The August update of Visual Studio Code Java is here! In this month’s update, developers will enjoy exciting features for Spring as well as improvements for build tools and debugging experience.
   

• Announcing TypeScript 4.8 – The stable release now has support for excluding which files are considered in auto-imports. The beta release post also did not document a break around unused destructuring aliases in type signatures. Furthermore, neither the beta nor RC posts documented an API break regarding decorator placement on TypeScript’s syntax trees. These breaks are now detailed in our Correctness Fixes and Breaking Changes section
   

•  .NET MAUI eBook Now Available – Enterprise Application Patterns – The world of .NET and cross-platform user interface development has expanded in the last decade - from .NET Framework to .NET 6, .NET 7, Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI. The Enterprise Application Patterns Using .NET MAUI eBook is there to help introduce all of the great things that we can do with .NET MAUI.

Weekly Picks

We’ve picked out some interesting articles from the tech world for you:

• Experimenting with postures in Flutter – This article is not a tutorial - It is a story of the fun Andrei Diaconu had with flutter and Surface Duo. By the end of it hopefully you will agree with these two statements: Foldable devices are playgrounds for your new interaction ideas and Flutter is great for prototyping your new interactions.
   

• Top Tips for Adopting Android’s Notification Permission - If you need to improve your app’s user experience before you target Android 13 or test your app’s integration with the permission without flashing different OS versions onto your device, you're in the right place! In this blog, Terence Zhang explains how to avoid excess notifications and apply run time permissions.
   

• Swift Package Manager, build configurations and non-compiling iOS projects - In this article Tomasz goes through struggle of adding SPM to legacy project containing frameworks not compatible with Apple Silicon iOS simulators (arm64).
   

• How to build complex UIs with Flutter for beginners — Track Order Screen - In this article, you will learn how to code a simple UI – a track order screen. If you are a beginner then this is a good resource to understand how to analyze and code any UI, both simple and complex.
   

• Parameter Injection for Android ViewModels - Injecting dependencies into our ViewModel is already a good practice, it keeps the implementation flexible and easy to test. But what about parameters provided to the screen or Fragment? This adds extra steps to our ViewModel we needs to be aware of which Alex will guide you through the dependencies and parameters in the constructor.

Tutorial of the Week

Publishing your app to the stores

Once you have released your app as a beta version in the Google Play Console and in TestFlight, publishing it to production is very easy. In this recipe, you will see the steps required to finally see your app in the stores.

Getting ready

Before following along with this recipe, you should have completed all the previous recipes in this chapter, or at least those that target your specific platform (iOS or Android). 

How to do it...

You will now see how to move your beta app to production, both in the Google Play Store and in the Apple App Store. 

Moving your app to production in the Play Store  

Using the following steps, you will move your Android app from beta to production:

1. Go to the Google Play Console at https://play.google.com/apps/publish and select your app.

2. In your app dashboard, click on the Releases overview link on the left.

3. In the Latest releases section, click on your testing release.

4. Click on the Promote release link, then select Production, as shown in the following screenshot:

5. Add or edit the release notes in the text field, then click the Review Release button. 

6. Check the release summary then click the Start rollout to production button.

Moving your app to production in the App Store

In the next steps, you will move your iOS app from beta to production:

1. Get to the App Store Connect page at appstoreconnect.apple.com, then click on the My Apps button and select your app.

2. On the Prepare for Submission page, make sure all the required previews, screenshots, and texts are complete; otherwise, add the missing data.

3. In the Build section, click on the Select a build before you submit your app button.

4. Select the build you have uploaded through fastlane, then click on the Done button.

5. Click on the Submit for Review button at the top of the page and confirm your choice.

How it works...

After pressing the Start rollout to production button, you can expect to see your app in the Play Store within 48 hours. In my experience, this time is much shorter after you first publish your app (even 2 hours in some cases). For iOS, you can expect to have your app published within 4 days. 
 

This how-to was curated from the book Flutter Cookbook.

👇 Hit the button to take a deeper dive into the world of Flutter! 👇

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Events and Conferences

Devopsdays Beijing
The same group of seasoned organizers that brought you DevOpsDays DFW several years in a row are back again another year in 2022 to celebrate our 5th Anniversary. We were encouraged and motivated by the feedback received from previous year's events, which is why they are determined to bring an even better experience this year and improve the DevOps conversation throughout the DFW Metroplex.

When: August 26-27th, 2022
 
360iDev
We started 360|iDev to support the iOS community. To foster that specialness that comes from the magic that comes from cool people all in the same room. People are constantly telling us how much the conference changed their lives. They found a new full-time gig, or they got the inspiration to go indie and build the game or app they’ve been dreaming of. They got hired at Apple. And much more.

When: August 28-31st , 2022
 
Flutter Vikings
FlutterVikings is a community-driven event made up of GDGs and other Nordic user groups focused on Flutter and Dart, as well as the global Flutter Community. With a fantastic lineup of Google Developer Experts and top-notch international speakers the FlutterVikings Conference boasts two of the best Flutter and Dart tracks anywhere, offering some of the most informative, technical and actually useful talks anywhere.

When: August 31st – September 1st, 2022

J Forum
Ahead of this September's release of Java 19, join us as we welcome Holly Cummins, Ben Evans, Heather VanCura and Martijn Verburg for 4 keynotes exploring the current state of the Java ecosystem.

When: August 31st, 2022
 
See you next week!