Xamarin announced the version 2 of the popular cross platform mobile development IDE that allows developers to build native iOS,android and windows phone applications using single code-base.
With the latest Xamarin 2.0 you can write mobile applications using visual studio IDE written using C#.It will be very useful for the developers who don’t own a mac to build iphone or ipad applications because they can build apps in the Visual studio IDE instead of the XCode IDE that only works on the apple devices.Testing the applications would require a mac connected on the network that ports the app code to the device emulator.
The restriction that apple forces on developers is that you need to have iOS device to test the application written on visual studio because it is impossible to create an iOS application without Apples compiler and certificates.
Features of Xamarin 2.0
With the latest update the company offers the component store which provides the UI controls,designs and themes that are pre built and ready to use.For example you can use the notification UI from the component store on your code to implement the iOS style notification interface.
The starter edition is free to use and the best way to check if this works well for your app needs.
For all those who love the visual studio ecosystem this tool will be very useful.
You have go through a complete setup both in your windows machine and a Mac to make this work.
Try Xamarin 2.0 and let us know your comments
