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So you are a mobile developer who is looking for some sanity amidst a plethora of frameworks, platforms and tooling? Maybe you are wondering if Visual Studio is the right IDE for you?
I believe it is. Let me convince you as to why. Easier Getting Started One of the pain points with any mobile development on Visual Studio is the steep roadblock to getting started in terms of sheer size. Sure Visual Studio is one of best IDEs around, but it can be a beast in terms of massive size of the installation and lengthy setup time. The folks at Redmond are quite aware of this – it's a balancing act is to maintain the richness of Visual Studio with a smaller footprint to get developers started on their development. Takes the first serious crack at this problem – the behemoth installation has now been broken up into smart.
The basic Visual Studio shell is now around 500 MB. Beyond that, developers do not have to wait to get the entire kitchen sink installed. Instead, the required tooling is available through compartmentalized development Workloads. Starting with mobile development? You can now get just what you need by choosing a desired Workload and not bother with any other tooling.
This leads to a much smaller install and a quicker getting started experience. As you start installing VS 2017, you get to see the Workloads installer menu and the plethora of options for mobile development.
Pick your language –.NET, JavaScript, Unity or hardcore C++. Visual Studio has you covered with rich tooling for whatever type of mobile app you are building. You can always add more Workloads as you need them and Extensions for each type of mobile development can make your life even easier. VS 2017 is also heavily performance optimized – you should notice noticeably faster project load times and lower memory footprint with more responsiveness. New Xamarin Templates has almost single-handedly democratized cross-platform mobile development for.NET developers.
If you're building mobile apps in Visual Studio, the Xamarin technology stack is easy to justify – you get to reuse your existing skills in C#/XAML and target all mobile platforms. Microsoft's mantra of ' Mobile First, Cloud First' hits home with a couple of new Templates for Xamarin apps. Mobile and cloud simply belong together – apps don't operate in silos and often depend on the cloud for services/data. Mp3 songs zip file download.
This reality is reflected in the new VS templates as you start your Xamarin projects. First, a new Cross Platform App template lets you pick either Xamarin.Forms or classic Xamarin iOS/Android. The next screen in the template wizard allows you to start from scratch with a black app or the often-used Master/Detail setup. You also get to choose your UI technology (abstraction through Xamarin.Forms or native iOS/Android) and code-sharing strategy. Did you notice the new Host in the Cloud checkbox in the last wizard screen? Check that if your mobile app needs a cloud backend – either data or services. If you checked the box, the template wizard will ask for your Azure credentials and details on how to host your service.
The upside is – once you're ready, one click from inside VS means your backend is deployed and ready in Azure land. Once the templates finish spinning up your app project, everything you expect will be nicely lined up for you.
You'll have the standard Xamarin platform-specific projects as well as the commom code in a shared directory or PCL. In addition, you'll have your cloud backend project – just a simple MVC-type web project with online/offline synchronization – built-in. Define services over your data or serve up JSON through Web API – your mobile backend project is all set for easy hosting in Azure. Have an existing Xamarin project that you have opened up in VS 2017 and now want to add cloud services connectivity?
Just right-click and add a new Connected Services component. This could be a full Azure App Service, Azure data storage endpoint or simply consuming APIs. Better Deployment Mobile developers often have to deploy their apps to real devices, especially as apps get closer to being submitted to stores.