If you’re developing cross-platform applications using Xamarin.Forms then you’re likely to be using either Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac (as an aside, if you’re new to Xamarin.Forms you can get the tools you need for free, so don’t feel you need to go out and purchase the professional version of Visual Studio!). The question is, what other tools should you be using that can assist you and hopefully improve the quality of your code and the architecture of you application. In this post I wanted to just point out a couple of tools that are worth taking a look at.
Resharper
I think if you’re a .NET/C# developer you’d be remiss if you hadn’t used Resharper at one time or another. For me this is one of the first extensions I add when I’m setting up a new machine. However, it’s also one of the first I disable if Visual Studio is playing up – from time to time different versions of Visual Studio and Resharper just don’t play nicely together.
Also worthy of a note, and also from Jetbrains who make Resharper, is a full IDE called Rider that some developers have taken a liking to.
MFractor
Announced literally days ago – MFractor for Windows is now available. For Visual Studio for Mac users, MFractor has been an essential for Xamarin.Forms developers.
It’s early days for MFractor but the team have been hard at work and I think this will be a tool that every developer should take the time to download and give it a shot.
XamRight
Another tool that can help with coding and refactoring XAML in your Xamarin.Forms is XamRight.
XamlStyler
For keeping your XAML coding in check, XAMLStyler is a simple solution for enforcing consistent layout for your XAML.
It’s great to see all these tools appearing to support Xamarin.Forms developers. Feel free to leave a comment for tools that you use to improve your productivity.