Silverlight/Moonlight on Android devices

Question

I just got my first Android device, I love it... I also love the fact that you can create your own applications and distribute them as you please.

I've read a little bit about Monodroid, and also that apparently Microsoft wants to put Silverlight on these devices, although there is not too much information about either of them... but what about Moonlight?

If Monodroid is like Mono... why do we need it? wouldn't be better having Moonlight instead? Therefore we could create rich applications for Android devices. In Silverlight 4, if you install the app locally as full trust, it won't depend on the cross domain policies and you can connect wherever you want...

What do you think?

Answer 1

MonoDroid IS Mono, and not from Microsoft. I think it's highly unlikely Microsoft will ever announce anything for Android, as they're working on Windows Phone 7.

The Novell team is indeed working on MonoDroid, which is announced to be released in the fall/2010, if I'm not mistaken. They're also working on a port of Moonlight, which will probably come out later on.

MonoDroid will allow you to develop Android applications using C#, instead of Android's java. While the language is different, MonoDroid will still allow you to develop directly against the UI available in android, so the applications will look native.

Answer 2

This is a work in progress by the Mono team.

You can see a preview here:

http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2011/04/moonlight-on-android.html

I guess it will be included in the next version of Monodroid.