Cross-platform development provider Xamarin has announced major enhancements to all of its platform’s core features today during its annual developer conference, Xamarin Evolve 2016, reports TechCrunch.
Most of the new features are related to Xamarin’s integration into Visual Studio after the service’s acquisition by Microsoft. The new iOS Simulator for Visual Studio let developers test out iOS apps in their development environment, with support for multi-touch on capable Windows devices. App deployment and debugging on iOS from Visual Studio is also made easier with the new iOS remoting function. New improvements to Visual Studio Team Services will make building and continuous integrating both Android and iOS apps easier through the Xamarin Test Cloud, and new Test Recorder function makes testing apps in real-time a breeze with automated test scripts generation.
Apart from Visual Studio-related goodness, Xamarin is also improving its other services, some of which were touched upon during Microsoft Build 2016 earlier this month. Microsoft previously announced that it is open-sourcing Xamarin’s cross-platform UI framework, along with other SDKs for Android, iOS and Mac, while keeping the Xamarin IDE for Mac closed-source. Xamarin Studio IDE for Mac is also getting a UI update, adding a dark theme, as well as a new compiler that essentially makes it as powerful as Visual Studio with Intellisense.
Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft earlier this year and made available for free along with Visual Studio, which was one of the biggest news from Microsoft Build 2016. The acquisition has not slowed down the platform’s growth in the least: in fact, its downloads have increased massively since the acquisition, up three and a half times in the last two weeks, according to former CEO and co-founder Nat Friedman.
Xamarin is growing strong, and we’re excited to see what they will accomplish now that they are part of the Microsoft family. Be sure to check out our other reports on Xamarin, and stay tuned for more exciting news in the future.
