Chapter 12

Getting Started with MonoTouch and Mono for Android

Developing in the mobile space can be a daunting task for developers. You have to figure out which platforms you should support for your app, purchase the hardware, and join the developer programs for each platform, so the last thing you may want to do is to learn a new programming language.

In 2009 Miguel de Icaza, with a team of other developers, released version 1.0 of the MonoTouch framework. MonoTouch enabled .NET developers to create iOS applications in C# and then deploy to iOS hardware. After the initial launch of the MonoTouch framework, Apple modified the iTunes terms of service to allow only apps that were created using Objective-C into the market, a decision that was quickly reversed.

Although short lived, this edict from Apple is a fact that many developers keep in the back of their mind, knowing that Apple can change the terms of service again at any time. The bright side of this policy was that it was only for apps being deployed to the iOS store; if you created an app for internal company use that was deployed using an ad-hoc method, you were still free to use whatever non-Objective-C framework you liked.

THE MONO FRAMEWORK

MonoTouch and Mono for Android rely on the Mono Framework to function. Mono is a cross-platform open source implementation of the .NET Framework. The Mono project is led by Miguel de Icaza, with the sponsorship of his company Xamarin. The Mono project was started in 2001, with version ...

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