There are a number of big updates to announce this week for Cordova on Microsoft platforms. We’ve had Cordova tools built into Visual Studio for some time now, which allows developers to write and test on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, all from within Visual Studio.

Apache Cordova offers JavaScript APIs that gives Web apps access to most of the platform resources such as camera, battery, contacts, keyboard, geolocation, file system, vibration … This allows for apps built with Cordova to offer a user experience on par with native apps.

• Available on VS2013 and VS2015
• Update on save for Ripple – No need to rebuild!
• The ability to debug an iOS version of your app right from Visual Studio when deployed to the iOS Simulator or a connected device on a Mac
• Improved security and simplified configuration for the included remote iOS build agent
• An improved plugin management experience. Support for adding in custom plugin to your project from git or the filesystem
• The ability to select platform specific configuration options from an improved config.xml designer
• Support for Apache Cordova 4.0.0

 

 

MS Open Tech and Visual Studio

Here’s the MS Open Tech page for our support of Cordova, and what we’re adding.

Visual Studio 2015 Preview supports debugging on the Ripple simulator as well as on Android and iOS devices and emulators. We’ve also updated the Configuration Designer for Android, iOS, and Windows Apps and you can also add or remove core and custom Cordova plugins (including support for plugins hosted on GitHub). Install Visual Studio tools for Apache Cordova.

Visual Studio Emulator for Android

Visual Studio obviously already has a strong emulator for Windows Phone, but as Visual Studio expands to enable you to build apps for more devices, we need to ensure you still get a great emulation experience for those devices. So today we’re releasing an Android emulator that works alongside the other Visual Studio emulators (meaning it’s Hyper-V-based). Read about it here.

Want to get started with writing a Cordova app? I just happen to have completed a sample for you, which works perfectly in Visual Studio as well.

Resources

• Visual Studio 2013 Update (latest)
• Visual Studio 2015 Preview Downloads
• Visual Studio Community 2013 – product info
• Video: Build Cordova Apps with Visual Studio
•  Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova VS2013 CTP3

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@DaveVoyles

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