Build natively for Apple Silicon with Xojo 2020 R2

Xojo, Inc., the company that made it easy for more than 400.000 developers to build cross-platform native applications, today announced the availability of Xojo 2020 Release 2. Xojo is an integrated RAD application development environment and programming language for creation of applications for desktop (macOS, Windows and Linux), web, iOS and Raspberry Pi.

Through Xojo, developers of all skill levels and experience can build native desktop applications, including macOS, Windows and Linux, mobile devices (iOS - iPhone and iPad, with Android support throughout 2021), web and Raspberry PI.

Application development with Xojo is easy and straightforward as user interfaces can be designed by dragging and dropping components from a library with native controls.

The Xojo language is intuitive and powerful, making it an ideal development environment for both casual and professional developers. It's the result of over 20 years of development, and Xojo itself was actually built with Xojo.

This latest version adds 232 enhancements, with 57 new features, many of which focus on developing iOS apps with Xojo. The new mobile framework greatly improves code compatibility with desktop and web applications, making it even easier to support multiple platforms.

New features have also been added to the mobile framework, including notifications, URL schemes, modal screens and more. Finally, plug-ins for iOS are now supported, thus allowing plug-in developers to create plug-ins for iOS.

This release now supports native compilation for Mac with processors  Apple silicon  (M1) recently announced, making Xojo the first Mac-supported cross-platform development tool that uses new processor technology.

Being a highly demanded feature request, the  new Worker class  provides an easy way in desktop application development to take advantage of the multiple cores available; thus significantly increasing the performance in data processing.

“Xojo 2020r2 is a big step forward in building native iOS apps. It's no secret that my business has focused on iOS for the past two years, ”says Packr and Secret Santa developer Jérémie Leroy. “After publishing ten apps on the App Store, I was looking forward to receiving this update. New Xojo 2020r2 features such as notifications, modal screens, search fields and plugins are a great addition to the framework. The new mobile classes will set a new standard of ease of use for sharing code between iOS and Android in the near future. The ability to combine iOS-specific features with the new Mobile Multiplatform classes will greatly help ease the transition. Now I'm looking forward to building Android applications with Xojo. "

Here are some of the highlights of Xojo 2020 Release 2:

API 2.0 for iOS

• The new mobile framework supports API 2.0, using String and Variant to greatly improve code compatibility with Desktop and Web.
• Updated mobile controls, including a new MobileMoviePlayer and MobileMapViewer.
• New iOS features like URL schemes, app shortcuts, modal screens, badges, and more.
• Many of the framework's common features are now available, including URLConnection, XMLDocument, RegEx, UDPSocket, and more.
• Support for plugins on iOS.

Native build for Apple Silicon (M1)

• Build native apps for Apple Silicon (M1) on Mac.
• Create universal binary apps that will run on both Intel-based and Apple Silicon-based Macs.

desktop

• Worker class, through which more CPU cores are exploited for faster data processing.
• New SearchField and DateTimePicker controls.
• ColorGroups to facilitate dark mode support.
• Graphics enhancements including LineCap, LineJoin and Brush properties with support for LinearGradientBrush, RadialGradientBrush, ShadowBrush, and PictureBrush.

Xojo 2020 Release 2 is available for download from https://www.xojo.com/download. You can use Xojo for free to learn and develop. For more information on licensing options and pricing, visit https://www.xojo.com/store