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1st Aug
Category: Programming , Mobile Apps Xamarin , Industry news

Xamarin Evolve 2016 - Webigence's 7 favourite features

Xamarin Evolve happens every year and this year was exciting as it was announced that the Visual Studio family now also includes (for free) the Xamarin Platform. Here are some of the features announced at the Xamarin Evolve 2016 conference which I am looking forward to using.

  1. iOS Simulator (for Windows):

    This is one of the important features which enables developers to test and debug iOS applications entirely from Visual Studio (using a networked Mac host) on Windows. It was a hassle to debug and test iOS apps, as developers had to use Mac to debug the app and the code was in Windows, but they have now removed the hassle of switching between Mac and Windows. The big advantage here is the multi-touch interactions built into the simulator, which can be invoked from touch-supported Windows machines.

  2. iOS USB Remoting:

    You can’t replace testing on physical devices but simulators are helpful in starting off the process. iOS USB Remoting provides direct debugging from Visual Studio to a connected iOS device, and the best part is you don’t have to leave windows. It is currently available only in Alpha channel.

    blog/XamarinEvolve2016/Xamarin-OopenSource2-crop-v1.jpg 

  3. Open source:

    Microsoft have made Xamarin open source via the .NET foundation enabling developers to build native apps for any device (iOS, Android and Mac) in C# and F#. Read our blog to find out more about F# vs C# - what is this programming key change all about?

    And you can find out more about Open Source Xamarin on the website.

     

  4. XAML Previewer:

    This previewer offers instant feedback which allows us to see the effect from the mark-up or data bindings on the UI visual tree. XAML Previewer is currently available only in Xamarin Studio in Alpha Channel and there is currently no Visual Studio support but it should be added in future releases. I personally use Visual Studio for development but would like to try the previewer in Xamarin Studio, as this will save time in debugging and testing the XAML.  

    blog/XamarinEvolve2016/xaml-previewer-crop-v1.png

  5. DataPages:

    Needing an efficient and time saving solution for retrieving and displaying data from an existing datasource is just what developers want, making the DataPages solution the answer to this need. It also allows the built-in UI framework to be easily customised with themes. 

  6. Themes:

    Developers can now form rich and complex hierarchies from the new Forms theming feature that looks similar to CSS in XAML. It only takes one property to define a style and it is called StyleClass. You can change the appearance of the view using the StyleClass property by a theme definition.

  7. Workbooks

    A blend of documentation and C# code makes this is great feature for experimenting and learning APIs for Android, iOs, Mac or WPF.
    Workbooks code editing is Roslyn-powered, thus improving the productivity with live code analyzers. Workbooks are simply saved in MarkDown format, making them great for sharing or collaborating. This can change the way we  as developers document.

 

Blog written by Dakshal

 

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