[Mono-list] Some general advice for a newbie, please

[peter]

Hi,

I am a Windows .NET developer with an interest in learning how to 
develop cross platform applications using mono.  At work I use, 
unsurprisingly, Visual Studio 2003 (Enterprise Architect).

I've installed mono on my SuSE box at home, along with monodevelop, and 
I've created a project of each of the available types.  This hasn't 
actually taught me a lot :) - But at least they work.  Also the 
documentation seems to be full of placeholders at just the places where 
it starts to get interesting: and the monodevelop web site appears to be 
refusing connections so I can't go there for help.

I'm running SuSE 9.2 Pro.  Mono came with the OS, and I downloaded and 
installed monodevelop separately.

Would anyone be able to give me some advice as to how I could get 
started?  In particular I'd like some advice about GUI development (Can 
I use Glade?  How?), about X-platform portablility, and about XSP (I 
can't even see it.  Do I have to download it separately?)

If you've read this far and are still interested, it might be worth me 
saying that I am studying (part time) for an MSc and would like to do my 
dissertation on the development of scalable, secure, cross-platform, 
distributed applications with .NET.  As part of my submission, I'd like 
to write an example n-Tier, thin client application.

Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give me.

Cheers

Peter