What's new in Oxygene 5.3

This page will give you an overview of what's new in Oxygene 5.3 for .NET (also known as Embarcadero Prism XE3.1) and for Java.

Oxygene 5.3 is a minor feature update, and free for all users with an active Oxygene subscription. Users of Embarcadero RAD Studio will need to contact Embarcadero support to obtain a new "Prism XE3.1" serial number as part of their Software Assurance package.

Windows Phone 8 is the next iteration of Microsoft's new mobile phone platform (first introduced with v7), and this release adds full support for the Windows Phone 8 toolchain to enable you to create applications for this platform. This includes project templates, support for the visual designer, and the Windows Phone 8 emulator.

With Android and iOS supported by Oxygene for Java and Oxygene for Cocoa, Oxygene now lets you build truly native apps for all major mobile platforms of today.

Several new Fix-Its have been introduced for Oxygene 5.3, making you yet more productive when dealing with and fixing coding errors.

A team favorite is the new fix-it for the "Statement expected, did you mean ':=' instead of '='? error that comes naturally when switching between languages or porting C# or Java code. Oxygene can now fix your assignment operators with a single click — and the fix-it is supported for "Treat Fixable Errors as Warnings" and for Auto-Fix, as well:

Fix-It support has also been expanded to handle mismatched parameter names in the interface and implementation sections, allowing you to correct either version. Among other things, this makes renaming parameters easier, as you no longer need to manually locate and fix both occurrences of the name — just change the implementation. This Fix-It also allows the error to be treated as a warning.

Finally, Fix-It can now also handle extra ";" in the class declaration or in method headers in the implementation section.

Long available via the Delphi compatibility option, Oxygene 5.3 now fully supports deprecated as class member modifier across all three target editions, mapping it to the appropriate platform flag (such as the [Obsolete] attribute on .NET).

In addition to the above features, Oxygene 5.3 has seen thorough enhancements to ASP.NET support, including new templates and fixes pertaining to Visual Studio 2012.

New Features in the January 2013 release (5.2.41)

The January 2013 update of Oxygene introduced significant enhancements to the {$IFDEF syntax for conditional compilation. in particular, it adds support for

• the new {$IF x} directive, which is identical to {IFDEF x}, but recommended for future use.
• the new {$ELSEIF x} directive, for allowing more than one conditional case without nesting.
• the use of the logical operators AND, OR, XOR and NOT in the above directives, in order to check for combinations of conditional defines (such as for example {$IF NOUGAT AND NOT TARGET_OS_MAC}).

• and as a combination of the above, {$IF NOT x} working as a replacement for {$IFNDEF x}.

   

Also new in January 2013, Android emulator and device selection is now handled via the new CrossBox toolbar drop-down, which will be shared with device selection for the upcoming Oxygene for Cocoa, as well.