Xamarin has released the latest version of its mobile developer suite, along with a real-time app monitoring service.

Xamarin gives developers a way to develop apps for iOS and Android using C#. It is based on Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework. The introduction of Xamarin.Forms in Xamarin 3 added the ability to build native UIs for iOS, Android and Windows Phone from a single, shared C# codebase. Xamarin.Forms provides cross-platform controls and layouts which are mapped to native controls at runtime, which means that your user interfaces are fully native. Xamarin developers have a choice of coding in Visual Studio, or in Xamarin Studio, which runs on Windows and Mac.

The new version, Xamarin 4, has an updated version of Xamarin.Forms. Version 2.0 is faster, more reliable, and more functional than ever before, according to a post about the new version on the Xamarin blog. The new version adds support for pre-compiled screens defined in XAML for faster app loads, preview support for Universal Windows Platform apps, support for iOS 9, Android Material Design, and new gestures like pinch and pull-to-refresh.

The support for developing iOS apps in Visual Studio has been reworked to be smoother, less hard to set up, and more reliable. You can now develop, build, deploy and debug iOS apps without leaving Visual Studio, and communication with the Mac build host is now handled via a secure SSH connection. The Mono/.NET compatibility has also been improved. According to the blog post:

"In Xamarin 4, we have incorporated large portions from Microsoft’s open sourced .NET codebase into this release, increasing compatibility, performance, and reliability for all use cases."

Alongside the new version of Xamarin, the company has also released Xamarin Insights, an app monitoring and crash reporting utility.

It handles both managed and unmanaged mobile crashes, and lets you explicitly report errors or warnings to Xamarin Insights and track them through the its dashboard. You can also use it to work out how your app is being used by tracking and timing step-by-step event data, and to see which events led up to a crash.  You can add Xamarin Insights to existing apps, and there are new templates that mean new apps will use the SDK from the very beginning of a mobile project.

More Information

Xamarin

Introducing Xamarin 4

Xamarin Insights

Related Articles

Xamarin 3 Released

Xamarin Platform Previews

Xamarin Mac Updates

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