Speaking at DevTeach

This week I’m going to be presenting two sessions at DevTeach 11 in Montreal.

Preview of Xcode 4 Support for MonoTouch

In their recent update of the iOS and Mac developer tools, Apple removed the standalone Interface Builder application and integrated the GUI designer functionality directly into Xcode 4. This was a very significant change and removed several features that were necessary for MonoTouch and MonoMac to integrate with the designer. As soon as Xcode 4 went final, we started working on MonoDevelop support for integrating MonoTouch with Xcode 4’s GUI designer, but it’s a complex project and will take some time to complete.

Speaking on MonoMac at NDC 2011

I’m going to be at NDC 2011 in Oslo, and I’ll be speaking about Developing .NET Applications for the Mac App Store. The talk will provide an introduction to MonoMac and the native Mac APIs that it exposes to .NET developers, explain the structure of MonoMac apps and how they can be deployed to the Mac App store, and discuss strategies for code reuse across the platforms supported by Mono and .NET.

MonoDevelop Tips will Resume in May

In early February I started writing a series of MonoDevelop Tips, and after a solid run of a couple of months, I found it difficult to keep up with the challenging Mon-Tues-Weds-Thu-Fri schedule I originally set for myself, and had to take a break to catch up with all the other things I need to do. I’m building up a buffer of new posts, and I’ll resume posting tips in May, on a Mon-Weds-Fri schedule. Now that MonoDevelop 2.6 beta 2 is out, I’ll also start covering some of the new features in 2.6.

Please go back and read the past tips in case you missed any, and rate your favourites — comments and ratings encourage me to keep doing this.

MonoDevelop Tips: Navigate to Line in File

In an earlier post, I introduced the Navigate To dialog, which allows quickly navigating to any file or type in the solution. It has a couple more useful capabilities which are not immediately obvious.

MonoDevelop Tips: Document Outline Pad

One of my favourite pads in MonoDevelop is the document outline pad, which provides an overview of the current document and a way to jump quickly to any part of it. I like to keep it autohidden on the left side of the MonoDevelop window, so that I can quickly bring it up. You can show it using the View->Pads->Document Outline menu item, and change its position and docking to fit your workspace layout.

MonoDevelop Tips: Navigation History

MonoDevelop keeps track of your navigation history, like a web browser. If you jump to another file or another position inside the same file, you can easily navigate back. This is particularly useful combined with MonoDevelop’s other code navigation features that make it easy to jump around your code, such as the “Go to definition” command and the Navigate To dialog. The Navigation History can get you back to wherever you were before.

MonoDevelop Tips: Code Focus

Code focus is a useful feature that helps to show the structure of your code. It’s activated by hovering over one of the fold markers in the text editor margin for a few seconds. The activated fold region and its parent regions are highlighted using graduated colour differences on the text editor background.

MonoDevelop Tips: Preferences, Policies and Project Options

There are several different kinds of settings in MonoDevelop — Preferences, Policies and Project Options — and the distinction between them is not immediately clear. This post aims to provide an explanation of them and what they’re used for.

MonoDevelop Tips: Opening Multiple Solutions

Normally, MonoDevelop only allows a single instance of itself to be open, since many of its data files (preferences, code completion databases and so on) are not designed to be accessed by multiple instances at once. However, it is possible to open multiple solutions at once. In the Welcome Page, hold down the Control key while clicking in an item in the Recent Projects list. There is a hint about this feature in the status bar while you hover over these items: “Hold Control key to open in current workspace”. Do this, and the solution will be opened without closing the old one.