Cross platform applications development is the strategy adopted by modern enterprises looking to target mobile media for marketing. In today’s world where there are so many types of mobile phones, mobile operating systems and devices with variety of screen resolutions and parameters, it is extremely difficult for the enterprises to target all the variations or to hire human resources skilled in all the different platforms. As a result, cross platform mobile application development has come to the rescue.

Cross platform development for mobile apps is the strategy where one can easily develop custom apps to target the major mobile OS like Android, iOS and Windows Phone with single shared code base and platform. There are different mechanisms to implement this modern app development strategy like some may prefer using C# and Xamarin, while others would go for technologies like PhoneGap, iFactr, Appcelerator and others for the purpose. However, Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2015 seems to be the popular of the platforms used for developing cross platform mobile applications.

So, now let us have a look at the interesting features that make Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 the best choice for cross platform mobile application development.

Visual Studio 2015 is the latest, highly featured version of Visual Studio software developed by Microsoft. The platform provides a powerful IDE for development of iOS, Android and Windows based applications.  It provides maximum capabilities to the developers so that they can achieve more with their applications and extend the same productivity across various platforms including Windows, Android and iOS.

Native and Hybrid App Development
Visual Studio supports native and hybrid application development while allowing to develop applications for different platforms with their native user interface, platform-specific capabilities and performance while sharing the same code base. Hence, your apps will look great and feel the same way across mobile platforms. The time required in developing apps for different platforms will be greatly reduced as you are able to share the single code between the applications across the platforms.

Coding language is not an issue
With Visual Studio, one can use or choose any programming language for their app development needs. The platform supports programming in several languages like C++, C#, VB, Jscript etc. Hence, there is no need to learn a specific language to develop platform-independent mobile apps with VS.

Cross-Platform Tools to Code, Debug, and Test your Mobile Apps
Visual Studio supports various tools for coding, debugging and testing the mobile apps across various platforms. For example, it is possible to create universal apps using universal Windows apps development tools in Visual Studio 2015. Similarly, the platform allows development of apps with specific development tools supported by the specific platform. Hence, coding, debugging and testing applications in VS is much easier.

Rich Extensions Support
Extensions are a great feature of this app development platform which allows developers to work more efficiently and with much broader perspective to meet custom mobile application development needs. For example, it is possible to develop and maintain even Python applications in VS with the help of Python Tools extension supported by the platform. Similarly, Node.js Tools extension helps developers to make use of Visual Studio for development and deployment of the NodeJS applications with features like IntelliSense, npm, cloud deployment, advanced debugging etc.

Hence, Visual Studio has bag full of supportive features to enhance the way cross-platform apps are developed. So, why not use it to enhance the platform-independent application development.