Xamarin, with an upgrade to its Mono for Android SDK on Monday, is adding a drag-and-drop, graphical designer for building Android application interfaces within either Microsoft’s Visual Studio ...

Did you know you can combine C#, F#, Visual Basic, Razor, HTML and JavaScript within a single app?

Visual Studio 2013 took strides in this direction with its preview support for HTML5/Cordova apps, and with Xamarin, .NET developers can reach multiple platforms.

Google released a Visual Studio extension for creating gaming apps for Android, targeting C++ developers.

Almost ironically, what Visual Studio 2015 doesn't support, at least for now, is the Windows 10 Universal App Platform (UAP). Of course, that's not exactly surprising.

Xamarin partnerships with Microsoft to let developers build iOS and Android applications in Visual Studio. Xamarin University teaches developers how to do that.

Microsoft’s accommodations for iOS and Android in “15” are not its first, however. The company previously has offered capabilities for Android and iOS in Visual Studio.

The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a tool within the full Visual Studio 2015 suite, which Microsoft brought to Mac users for the first time back in April.

Xamarin has integrated its cross-platform development tools with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Community 2013, allowing developers to build native Android and iOS apps for free.