Wallace B. (Wally) McClure: Xamarin 4 Overview – Article

Url: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2016/01/11/xamarin-4-improvements-upgrading.aspx

November 17, 2015 was a great day for mobile development. That is the day that Xamarin shipped the latest major update to its mobile development suite of tools, and with this one there’s lots to like:

• Xamarin.Forms. With Xamarin.Forms 2.0, there are updates for iOS9, Material Design, pre-compiled screens, preview support for Universal Windows Platform apps, and gestures support like pinch.
• Visual Studio iOS Support. Xamarin has reengineered for iOS support for Visual Studio in a way that should improve iOS app reliability.
• Mono Upgrade. Microsoft has open sourced portions of the .NET codebase, and what that, Xamarin has incorporated the open source code into the Mono framework. The move should improve the compatibility and performance of the framework.
• The iOS designer. The iOS designer can now load and save XIB files in addition to storyboard files.
• The Android designer. The Android designer now supports Android Material Design.
• Xamarin Test Cloud. To support the Xamarin Test Cloud and its 2,000+ devices that are accessible to developers, Xamarin has introduced a preview tool named the Xamarin Test Recorder, Xamarin.UITest 1.0, and Xamarin Insights, has been released with free crash reporting for all Xamarin customers (and, finally, additional plans for users).

PS. I was told that Listing 5 should have the following change:

protected override void OnCreate(Bundle bundle) {

 FormsAppCompatActivity.ToolbarResource = Resource.Layout.toolbar; FormsAppCompatActivity.TabLayoutResource = Resource.Layout.tabs; base.OnCreate(bundle); 

 global::Xamarin.Forms.Forms.Init(this, bundle); LoadApplication(new App()); 

}