MonoDroid (Part 1): Installation

Since the last couple of days, I have been playing with Android devices and started looking into development options. I personally do not like Java development, so what’s left? Introducing MonoDroid:

“MonoDroid is a development stack for using C# and core .NET APIs to develop Android-based applications.”

Here are the basics of getting the MonoDroid environment installed…

1. Install the Java SDK
2. Install the Android SDK
3. Configure your simulator
4. Install the MonoDroid for Visual Studio 2010 Plugin

NOTE: Please remember to install the x86 version of the Java SDK, it will not work with the x64 version.

Once installed, it’s pretty easy to get started… Open Visual Studio and there should be a new project type called MonoDroid.

This creates a VERY simple hello world application…

So, what did I think of MonoDroid? Not bad, not bad at all… The biggest issue for me currently is the fact that it doesn’t have a built in UI designer… Android uses a very similar UI description language to WPF/Silverlight, but it doesn’t have a built in designer for it yet so you have to use some 3^rd party tools like DroidDraw. Also the APK that gets created is relatively big and performance isn’t exactly what I expected!

MUST READ

• Installation
• Hello World
• Mono for Android