Xamarin adds Android designer to Visual Studio

Xamarin, with an upgrade to its Mono for Android SDK on Monday, is adding a drag-and-drop, graphical designer for building Android application interfaces within either Microsoft's Visual Studio or Xamarin's own MonoDevelop IDE.

Xamarin Designer for Android is featured in Mono for Android 4.2. Developers can edit properties for native Android widgets and interface controls from within a visual designer and produce standard Android XML layout files. "It produces layouts in the standard Android format -- XML format," said Joseph Hill, chief operating officer at Xamarin.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Xamarin was formed a year to take over development of Mono technologies, which had been under Novell's domain. | For more news on software development, subscribe to InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]

The designer follows conventions of Visual Studio and supports Android API levels going back to level 4 of the Android platform. Also supported are the "Froyo," "Gingerbread," "Honeycomb," and "Ice Cream Sandwich" releases of Android. Developers have  control over form widgets, text fields, layouts, images, and media. Support also is featured for dock-specific layout configurations, including car, desk, and television. Users can view and edit layouts by language, region, country, and telephone carrier.

The SDK, which starts in price at $399, includes the Mono runtime for running .Net applications on non-Microsoft platforms. Also featured in Mono for Android 4.2 are capabilities for integrating Java libraries and the ability to take advantage of recent Android features on older phones. Developers get x86 support, as well, to boost emulation.

This article, "Xamarin adds Android designer to Visual Studio," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld on Twitter.

Read more about application development in InfoWorld's Application Development Channel.

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