MonoTouch sans Interface Builder

I have nothing against Interface Builder per se, but as I've said before when developing with Visual Studio I shun the design surface (if you've used the Xaml preview feature prior to 2010 you'll understand why). I also think you get a better understanding of your environment (and a greater ability to customize your UI) if you can create it in code.

But for new MonoTouch developers it can be difficult to figure out how to create something in code. I've just been through this adding a UISegmentedControl to the Monospace app... here are my (rather obvious) suggestions:

• Autocomplete/Intellisense™ - the easiest and most obvious thing to try is reading through the properties and methods available to you via MonoDevelop. I got the UITabBarController (mostly) working this way.
• Interface Builder - look closely at the IB Inspector windows to get some ideas about the properties exposed.
• XIB file - further to the Inspector windows, the XIB file (in its weird XMLish format) might also give you some hints. Obviously this means you need to 'draw' the control/s in IB, but just roughly for inspiration...
• Objective-C references - for now most search results will be from Objective-C devs; it isn't hard to decode them (usually) so don't be dissuaded because it "looks different" :)
  Try Miguel's Rosetta stone decoder for Objective-C classes/properties → MonoTouch
• MonoTouch docs - last but not least, the documentation will help you. Bookmark it now.

XIB and Inspector


UISegmentedControl in c#

// Don't forget your using statements 
// this example uses MonoTouch.MapKit 
// as well as UIKit and Foundation
var segmentedControl = new UISegmentedControl();
segmentedControl.Frame = new RectangleF(20, 350, 282,44);
segmentedControl.InsertSegment("Map", 0, false);
segmentedControl.InsertSegment("Satellite", 1, false);
segmentedControl.InsertSegment("Hybrid", 2, false);
segmentedControl.SelectedSegment = 0;
segmentedControl.ControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyle.Plain;

segmentedControl.ValueChanged += delegate {
   if (segmentedControl.SelectedSegment == 0)
      mapView.MapType = MonoTouch.MapKit.MKMapType.Standard;
   else if (segmentedControl.SelectedSegment == 1)
      mapView.MapType = MonoTouch.MapKit.MKMapType.Satellite;
   else if (segmentedControl.SelectedSegment == 2)
      mapView.MapType = MonoTouch.MapKit.MKMapType.Hybrid;
};
// And further down the code, don't forget to Add it!
this.View.AddSubview(segmentedControl);