Embarcadero Prism XE2.5 includes a variety of new features for Windows 8, .NET and Mono development.

Develop Windows Metro and WinRT Apps

Windows 8 is coming, and with it the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API stack for creating visually stunning touch-enabled Metro applications. Prism XE2.5 provides experimental support for developing Metro apps and for working against the WinRT APIs, based on the current Consumer Preview of Windows 8 (which can also be downloaded for free from Microsoft. Developing Metro apps requires Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8.

Works with Visual Studio 11

Embarcadero Prism XE2.5 brings full support for Microsoft Visual Studio 11. Visual Studio 11, currently available as beta provides a wide range of enhancements and — most noticeably — a brand new and more streamlined look and feel. Prism integrates with the current beta/preview build of Visual Studio 11, and a lot of work has been put into adopting the IDE's new look and feel all-throughout Prism, from redesigned Solution Explorer theme to reworked templates.

While Visual Studio 11 is still in beta, we are not shipping an installer that includes the Visual Studio 11 Shell yet — but that should not stop you from experiencing Prism and Oxygene in the new IDE, because you can download the Visual Studio 11 beta version for free.

Of course Prism XE2.5 will continue to work great with Visual Studio 2010, as well.

Flow Control Analysis

The Oxygene complier in Prism XE2.5 has been extended with an enhanced flow control analysis infrastructure that analyzes your code beyond the basic compile, and gives you additional warnings and hints to point out possibly coding errors, unnecessary code or other code smells". Of course this analysis integrates with existing Inline Error infrastructure, giving you details right inside the editor window.

Await

The Oxygene language in Prism XE2.5 introduces the "await" keyword that is also coming to the next versions of C# and VB.NET. Simply put, "await" lets you unwrap asynchronous calls and write linear code that can use or build on the results of asynchronous operations. Of course "await" integrates seamlessly with and extends the great support for asynchronicity that Oxygene has long provided, by working with our existing "future" types, async statements and async methods. You can read more about the "await" keyboard on our blogs.

Mapped Types

Oxygene 5.1 in Prism XE2.5 adds support for an exciting new language concept, called "mapped types". Mapped types are virtual classes or interfaces that map to existing types in the framework or your own code, exposing them with a different API. One great use for mapped types is the ability to expose similar classes with slightly different APIs in a common fashion: for example the java.lang.Dictionary class in the Java framework could be mapped to look like the System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary class provided by .NET, so that common code can be written to run on both platforms.

New features in the prior version, Embarcadero Prism XE2, included:

• All new Oxygene Compiler 5.0 from RemObjects
• Inline errors in editor with details, ranges & notes
• Fix-It support for selected new errors
• Language soft interfaces and duck typing
• Anonymous interface implementation
• Enhanced Oxidizer integration
• FastReport.net reporting tool

Learn more about the features of Embarcadero Prism XE2 in the full feature matrix and download a free trial to try Embarcadero Prism for yourself.