Xamarin Designer for Android available for Visual Studio and MonoDevelop →

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the arrival of the Xamarin Designer for Android, which makes it incredibly easy for Android developers to visually create beautiful layouts for their applications from directly within Visual Studio and MonoDevelop.

The biggest single complaint we’ve heard about Android development from Mono for Android developers has been the absence of a great Android layout designer. With Xamarin Designer for Android, we’ve delivered the kind of design experience C# developers expect from their favorite IDE. To learn more about the Xamarin Designer, check out our Designer Overview and Designer Walkthrough

Along with Xamarin Designer for Android, we’re also releasing Mono for Android 4.2 and MonoDevelop 3.0 – both monumental releases in their own right.

Mono for Android 4.2

Beyond Xamarin Designer support, Mono for Android sports many delicious improvements.

Android Java Binding Library project and tool

This release introduces a new project type that enables consumption of Android Java libraries (.jar) from C# assemblies (.dll). For a more in-depth explanation, see the Java Binding Library tutorial.

Graceful Degradation of UI

Mono for Android 4.2 includes bindings to Android’s Support Package, enabling developers to use a selection of Honeycomb APIs on devices running Android Level 4 and greater. Learn more about how to integrate this into your application with our Android Fragments Walkthrough.

x86 Support

Android x86 installs are fully supported by Mono for Android, including support for debugging official Android x86 emulator images from a Mono for Android trial installation. Debugging an app deployed against an x86 image offers much better performance compared to ARM emulator deployments. We also have an article to walk you through Configuring the x86 Emulator.

Much more

Additional Mono for Android 4.2 features include a 50% smaller shared runtime, a new device toolbar, non-modal deployment, and integrated logcat for Visual Studio. Even more details can be found in the Mono for Android 4.2 Release Notes

MonoDevelop 3.0

The major focus of MonoDevelop 3.0 is a new C# code completion engine, which provides more accurate and reliable code completion and navigation, semantic highlighting for C# files, and a reliable on-the-fly code formatter.

Other improvements include a revamped Assembly Browser, preliminary support for Portable Library Projects, better handling of large projects, and virtual indenting in the source editor. You can read more about all the new improvements in our complete write-up of What’s new in MonoDevelop 3.0.

AnDevCon III

If you’re in California this week for AnDevCon III, you can come check out demos of all of this and more by coming by the Xamarin booth (401).

Xamarin Adding Support for MIPS Architecture to Mono for Android →

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, we announced Mono for Android will support application development for MIPS-Based Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ devices.

What does this mean for you?

Well, MIPS architecture is expected to drive a whole new class of higher-performance, lower-cost devices, like the $99 Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet that was making headlines recently.

By supporting MIPS processors, we’re enabling millions of .NET and C# developers to bring their tools, skills and creativity to build consumer and enterprise apps, and games, that exploit the predicted explosion of these more efficient and lower-cost mobile Android devices targeting consumers in both developed markets and emerging markets such as China and India.

Lower-cost devices is good news for app developers. More people with more devices increases the market of people looking for cool apps.

Top 5 Features of Ice Cream Sandwich →

Back in December 2011, Mono for Android 4.0 was released and with this release came support for the latest APIs for the new Android OS – Ice Cream Sandwich. The Xamarin documentation team did a great job of getting a Introduction to Ice Cream Sandwich document out of the door for this big release.

To help support this and to show how to use some of this functionality, our Xamarin Seminar on 9th February focused on this topic and showed the top 5 APIs (from our point of view) included in the Mono for Android 4.0 release, these five topics are;

CalendarAPI
ShareActionProvider
ActionBarTabs
TextureView
AndroidBeam

As with all of the seminars, we have put this up on YouTube to watch or you can view it below;

As before, you can view the slides below;

And the code is up on GitHub for you to download and run on your Ice Cream Sandwich emulator or device – https://github.com/xamarin/Seminars/tree/master/2012-02-09-Top5FeaturesOfICS.

We’re still working on the details for our March Seminars so keep an eye out on the blog for an announcement on those and don’t forget it’s not too late to sign up to see James Clancey talk about Third Party Libraries in MonoTouch and Mono for Android on Thursday 23rd February, you can register here: http://bit.ly/xam-feb-seminars

Look forward to seeing everyone at the next seminar,

ChrisNTR

Mono for Android 4.0 is Here! →

Thousands of new API’s, tons of great new features, Ice Cream Sandwich, Honeycomb — There is a lot to get excited about in Mono for Android 4.0!

To learn more, check out our tutorials for using Mono for Android.

Ice Cream Sandwich

Start building apps with access to all kinds of new features found in the latest version of Android: Ice Cream Sandwich.

Easy To Install

Getting started with Android can be time consuming, but the Mono for Android installer will have you up and running with just a few clicks.

Fasters Build, Smaller Apps

With builds that are 40% faster, you spend less time waiting and spend more time creating awesome apps. And with executables up to 70% smaller, your users spend less time downloading, too.

Brand New Tutorials

We’ve released a brand new set of Getting Started Tutorials to get you up and going with Mono for Android as quickly as possible.

Great Tablet Apps

Mono for Android 4.0 adds support for all of the new tablet-specific widgets and APIs that were introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich and Honeycomb.

Google Maps

Integrate Google Maps functionality into your apps easier than ever before with newly bound APIs.

Visual Studio

Mono for Android works with Visual Studio so you don’t have to change IDE. Or, you can use our full-featured MonoDevelop IDE.

If you already have Mono for Android, simply launch MonoDevelop or Visual Studio and you will be prompted to update – it’s that easy!

If not, you can download a trial of Mono for Android.

You can read the full press release at xamarin.com