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.
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).