Microsoft launches Visual Studio Online and partners with Xamarin

Although Visual Studio 2013 could already be downloaded for a few weeks, today Microsoft officially presented it. And while there hasn't been any news in the IDE, there have been other additional announcements.

The first is the Microsoft partnership with Xamarin For those of you who don't know, Xamarin is a solution that allows you to create mobile applications on iOS and Android using C and .NET as if they were Windows or Windows Phone apps. That is, it allows sharing a large part of the code between applications and reducing development time.

Although the partnership is long-term, they already have three news for developers. The first is the extension of the support of PCLs (Portable Class Libraries) in iOS and Android, in such a way that a single project can be referenced in any mobile or desktop application. Xamarin also supports Visual Studio 2013, and there are also offers for MSDN subscribers (though not if you are through BizSpark or DreamSpark).

Why is this partnership important? The first thing is obvious: if it's easier to code for multiple platforms at the same time, there will be More apps for Windows and Windows Phone. But things go a little further. For Microsoft, the .NET platform was focused solely and exclusively on Windows. Yes, there is Mono, but it is a separate project. Partnering with Xamarin marks a shift, an attempt to expand your development platform to other operating systems, and that is something that can only pay off for developers and users alike.

On the other hand, Microsoft has released a new tool based on Azure: Visual Studio Online, focused on collaboration in agile teams, application management and support for Azure. Basically an extension to what Microsoft has now with Team Foundation Service.

In addition, there are two features that remain in private beta for now. The first is a very detailed monitor of the performance and operation of web applications in Azure, seamlessly integrated with Visual Studio Online.

The second is Monaco, a lightweight code editor for Azure websites. With it you can make changes quickly without having to use Visual Studio. In the future, Microsoft will expand Monaco with other similar use cases, more focused as a complement to Visual Studio than as an online replacement.

In summary, quite interesting improvements that mark the path that Microsoft is following: focusing on the cloud as a support for current platforms, and aiming more at multiplatform than before. There will be new developments in this regard with the next version of Visual Studio.

Via | Tech Crunch | Xamarin