April Mad Releases
Shiny v3.3
This release was mainly a large bugfixing release with some cool additions around Push Notifications
However, we did decide to remove two modules from the Shiny offering
- Shiny.Logging.AppCenter - this was an easy one. Microsoft is shutting down AppCenter in 2025.
- Shiny.SpeechRecognition - this was a tough one. The plugin was never really that great and it was a pain to maintain. The MAUI community toolkit recently released a plugin here that you can use.
We’ve improved the push delegate to handle MORE native stuff, more events like UnRegister to centralize your registration & now the unregistration process.
Apple Privacy Info - May 1, 2024 Deadline is Approaching
Apple has a new privacy requirement that you must disclose what you are doing with the user’s data. This is a requirement for all apps in the App Store. The Shiny templates have been updated to include a new file under the iOS platform that you can fill out to help you comply with this requirement.
We’ve introduced two “guestimate” type helpers to get users rolling. Our Shiny Templates and our App Builder tool will help you generate these files. We generate what most user app requirements will be in terms of user identity info, as well as all of the necessary Shiny & .NET BCL requirements. We also insert any necessary location permissions if you select one of our location based components.
Shiny Templates v2.5
The templates have been great for Shiny discovery. Wiring up all of the permissions with Android & iOS is difficult. I find that I’m constantly using App Builder here on shinylib.net to generate them all for me because I constantly forget them all. Cutting a new proof-of-concept or test with Shiny or any of the whack of 3rd party libraries that are included with the library is a breeze.
This release got the following love:
- Removal of AppCenter - maybe this is the opposite of love - but don’t use it since it is officially done in 2025
- Updated to the latest versions of many nuget packages
- Updated some of the Shiny stuff to 3.3
- NEW base template for the upcoming Apple Privacy Manifests under Platforms/iOS
The MAUI Project template is so large that it takes 3 screenshots to get it all.
Push Notification End-to-End Tester for Azure Notification Hubs & Firebase
Setting up push notifications with Apple & Google can be a real pain. This tool will help you test your setup end-to-end. It’s a simple mobile app that will send a push notification to your app using Azure Notification Hubs or Firebase Cloud Messaging. It’s a great way to test your setup without having to write a bunch of code.
It isn’t pretty, but it does a good job of helping you test your setup without having to wire up a backend or write a bunch of code.
Firebase - Specifically iOS
There is work being done to create fresh new slim bindings for Firebase on iOS. I’m working with Jon Dick on some SLIM Bindings over at https://github.com/Redth/DotNet.Platform.SlimBindings
Slim bindings are revolutionary by any means, but they allow you to control the native API surface that you have to bind to. With Swift becoming increasingly popular and not having a true native binding solution with .NET at this time, Slim bindings allow us to control this narrative by building swift code, but still marking the code properly with objective-C headers to be able to bind within .NET
If you’re a user of Shiny.Push.FirebaseMessaging, the good news is that there will be a direct nuget package update in v3 that will allow you to continue using Firebase messaging on iOS without any other code updates. This update for Shiny will be available long before the Firebase June 2024 deadline
Shiny 4.0 Roadmap
We are starting to plan out Shiny 4.0. We are looking for feedback on what you would like to see in the next major version of Shiny.
Currently on the roadmap are:
- Simplifying the Job framework
- Allow for more native configuration of Push & Local Notifications
- More BLE methods to help with some of the fun edge cases that have been rolling in
- Removing the old Xamarin/Netstandard targets. This will help with new targets moving forward
- Continue to improve the hosting model to work with other platform vendors like Uno
- Trying to get RX out of the core for those that don’t want the fat (MAYBE)
So it’s a “smaller” major release.
Bonus - ACR User Dialogs
There are still people using my old dinosaur of a package, so I updated it to the latest AndroidX stuff and .NET 8.
Unfortunately, classic Xamarin and netstandard targets are now gone, but at least it pushes the needle forward if you’re still using
this package.
We may introduce Windows support back into the mix in the future, but it’s not a priority right now.
