Xamarin releases same-day support for iOS 6 →

Continuing our long history of delivering same-day updates for device platform upgrades, MonoTouch 6 is available today and includes support for all of the new iOS 6 features that will be running on millions of devices before the day is through.

We have in-depth documentation on the new iOS 6 APIs as well as detailed release notes, but we thought we’d highlight a few of our favorites here:

New Collection View control Collection Views bring rich layout support to iOS applications. Using Collection Views, you can easily layout content in grids with minimal effort. Additionally, the layout system that works with Collection Views allows applications to create custom layouts for complete control of how content is presented. The new UICollectionView control offers much more flexibility than the traditional UITableView. Checkout our Introduction to Collection Views.

In-App Content Purchasing & Hosting Enable users to purchase and download iTunes content from within your app, and host your own content for purchase on Apple’s servers for a seamless buying experience. Checkout our Changes to StoreKit guide.

Facebook Your app users will be able to connect and share seamlessly through deep Facebook integration throughout iOS 6 and the new Social framework. See our Introduction to the Social Framework.

Passbook Users now have an easy way to organize boarding passes, tickets, gift cards and loyalty cards. Leverage the new Pass Kit APIs to create and access passes within your app and send them via email or post them on the web. See the Introduction to PassKit.

Reminders Keep your users on track and on task with the EventKit framework. Your app can create and modify reminders, assign due dates, priority, and set alarms. See our Introduction to EventKit.

To get started using these new APIs today, start with our Introduction to iOS 6 tutorials. This release also includes numerous performance improvements and other niceties from MonoTouch 5.4. For an extensive list of all the new enhancements, please see our MonoTouch 6 release notes.

Current subscribers can fire up MonoDevelop, update to MonoTouch 6, and grab Xcode 4.5 to get started right away. For those customers without a current subscription, visit store.xamarin.com or download our free trial.

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).

MonoTouch 5.2 is Here! →

Build Great iOS Apps in C#

We’re very proud to announce the availability of MonoTouch 5.2. This release represents months of improvements, with over 300 new features, bugfixes, and enhancements. This is without question the best release of MonoTouch to date.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the new features in MonoTouch 5.2.

Faster and easier creation of iPhone/iPad Dialogs

MonoTouch.Dialog is a new API that allows developers to create HIG-compliant native iOS screens and dialog boxes and to show table-based information easily. It removes the burden of creating callbacks, data sources and delegate implementation to render tables. MonoTouch.Dialog comes with a range of custom cell renderers that vastly reduce the time it takes to build complex screens and you can even create user interfaces dynamically on demand from JSON data served up online! You can learn more in our MonoTouch.Dialog tutorial and you can also browse the online API documentation.

Memory Profiler

The new MonoTouch memory profiler enables you to identify memory usage hotspots and fix them quickly, tracking the memory usage of managed objects, showing which objects are still referenced, and who is referencing them.

New Garbage Collection Engine

This version of MonoTouch also includes Mono’s new generational garbage collector. You can opt into this new garbage collector by selecting “SGen” as one of the options in your build settings. For certain apps, this can lead to lower memory usage and better performance.

On-device unit testing

Ensure that your app is ready to release with our built-in unit testing framework for running unit tests on both the iOS simulator and your device. You can run your tests manually, or automate them with Instruments. Check out our tutorial on writing unit tests for MonoTouch for more information.

New Libraries

From Mono, we brought the System.Numerics library that brings the Complex and Big Integer data types as well as support for Memory Mapped IO.

But wait, there’s more…

MonoTouch 5.2 also includes more than 300 customer requested enhancements that make it easier to develop great iOS applications. See a full listing of new features and capabilities here.

MonoTouch 5.2 is available immediately to all MonoTouch customers currently within their annual subscription period; just run MonoDevelop and select the Check for Updates menu item.

For complete product information about MonoTouch, and to download a free trial, visit http://xamarin.com/monotouch.

To see example apps built with Xamarin technology, visit: http://xamarin.com/apps.

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