MonoTouch 5.2 is Here!

Build Great iOS Apps in C#

We’re very proud to announce the availability of MonoTouch 5.2. This release represents months of improvements, with over 300 new features, bugfixes, and enhancements. This is without question the best release of MonoTouch to date.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the new features in MonoTouch 5.2.

Faster and easier creation of iPhone/iPad Dialogs

MonoTouch.Dialog is a new API that allows developers to create HIG-compliant native iOS screens and dialog boxes and to show table-based information easily. It removes the burden of creating callbacks, data sources and delegate implementation to render tables. MonoTouch.Dialog comes with a range of custom cell renderers that vastly reduce the time it takes to build complex screens and you can even create user interfaces dynamically on demand from JSON data served up online! You can learn more in our MonoTouch.Dialog tutorial and you can also browse the online API documentation.

Memory Profiler

The new MonoTouch memory profiler enables you to identify memory usage hotspots and fix them quickly, tracking the memory usage of managed objects, showing which objects are still referenced, and who is referencing them.

New Garbage Collection Engine

This version of MonoTouch also includes Mono’s new generational garbage collector. You can opt into this new garbage collector by selecting “SGen” as one of the options in your build settings. For certain apps, this can lead to lower memory usage and better performance.

On-device unit testing

Ensure that your app is ready to release with our built-in unit testing framework for running unit tests on both the iOS simulator and your device. You can run your tests manually, or automate them with Instruments. Check out our tutorial on writing unit tests for MonoTouch for more information.

New Libraries

From Mono, we brought the System.Numerics library that brings the Complex and Big Integer data types as well as support for Memory Mapped IO.

But wait, there’s more…

MonoTouch 5.2 also includes more than 300 customer requested enhancements that make it easier to develop great iOS applications. See a full listing of new features and capabilities here.

MonoTouch 5.2 is available immediately to all MonoTouch customers currently within their annual subscription period; just run MonoDevelop and select the Check for Updates menu item.

For complete product information about MonoTouch, and to download a free trial, visit http://xamarin.com/monotouch.

To see example apps built with Xamarin technology, visit: http://xamarin.com/apps.