Xamarin announces new Release candidate for cross platform development, try it now

Xamarin has announced a new release candidate for cross-platform development and you can try it now. The new release brings features to all platforms, including Android, iOS, Mac, Visual Studio, and Xamarin Studio.

The new additions to this release candidate include a Forms Previewer, multiprocess debugging in Visual and Xamarin Studio, Connected Services and .NET Standard support, and NuGetizer3000. Please have a look at the official descriptions of the features below.

Forms Previewer:

• The Xamarin.Forms Previewer renders a live preview of a page side-by-side with the XAML markup, allowing you to see your user interface come to life as you type. With this release, we’re promoting the Xamarin.Forms Previewer feature to stable and bringing many enhancements to it to increase the range of supported controls and XAML constructs.

Multiprocess Debugging:

• Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio now allow you to launch and debug multiple projects at once, giving you the ability to debug, for example, a phone and a companion watch app at the same time. Multiprocess debugging works just like single-project debugging—you can set breakpoints, add watches, view locals, and inspect variables—and will seamlessly jump back and forth between each process.

Connected Services and .NET Standard support:

• This RC introduces the ability to log in to Xamarin Studio with your Microsoft account. This enables Xamarin Studio to provide you with several benefits, including the ability to provision new Azure App Services with our Connected Services feature and automatic subscription management—no more need to have both a Xamarin account and a Microsoft account!
• Xamarin Studio’s new Connected Services feature brings cloud capabilities, such as data storage and authentication with Azure Mobile Apps, to your mobile app with the click of a button. Adding a service to your project will add all required dependencies and any required initialization code to your mobile targets.
• Xamarin Studio can now load projects that target the .NET Standard framework (or .NETPortable,Version=5.0). The Project Options panel for Portable Class Library (PCL) projects allows you to switch back-and-forth between PCL and netstandard code sharing projects.

Other notable features in this release candidate include the NuGetizer3000, which aims to help you create your own, with integrated IDE support and build tooling for creating NuGet packages. To get this Release Candidate now, nonetheless, you can click this link for Mac, and this link for Windows. Once you’ve checked it out, let us know what you think by dropping us a line below.