Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a tool that allows Android developers to test and debug their apps from the desktop OS of their choosing.

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

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.

Microsoft will retire Visual Studio App Center in a year, listing several workarounds to replace the package of integrated developer services for building, testing, releasing and monitoring ...

Support for Android will be a part of Visual Studio 2015, available now as a Preview release (download link). The toolchain supports the Clang compiler and LLVM optimizations.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...