Hi.

i’m very happy to announce the immediate availability of Oxygene 5.1 for .NET and Java.

What’s new in Oxygene 5.1

We’ve kept busy since the initial release of Oxygene 5.0, which introduced Oxygene for Java, last fall. With the exception of March and December, we have shipped monthly interim releases in September, October, November, January and February, each containing literally dozens of fixes and minor enhancements.

Now the time has come for Oxygene 5.1 (and Embarcadero Prism XE2.5), our next feature release. So, what’s new in this .1?

Visual Studio 11. Oxygene 5.1 brings full support for Visual Studio 11, the latest and greatest version of Microsofts’s development environment. 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. Oxygene 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 Oxygene, from a 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 Oxygene in the new IDE, because you can download the beta version [for free](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us).

Of course Oxygene 5.1 will continue to work great with Visual Studio 2010 as well.

Metro and WinRT. Windows 8 is coming, and with it the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API stack for creating visually stunning touch-enabled Metro applications. Oxygene 5.5 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.

 **Flow Control Analysis**. The Oxygene 5 complier 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 possible coding errors, unnecessary code or other code smells. Of course, this analysis integrates with our existing Inline Error infrastructure, giving you details right inside the editor window.

Await. Oxygene 5.1 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 exiting “future” types, async statements and async methods. You can read more about the “await” keyword in my previous blog post.

 **Mapped Types**. Finally, Oxygene 5.1 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.  # Get Your Copy Now!

Oxygene 5.1 is now available for download, both in our registered downloads section on the customer portal, and on our free/trial downloads page. Enjoy!