I have a windows c# application for which I have previously developed a web client (HTML/JS) which accesses the shared data through an oData REST service.
I am now looking to move the entire application to a single platform across all devices. This will be native to iOS and Android, but I am looking to share code as much as possible. I am not interested in hybrid apps.
The two viable options are Xamarin and React Native. Although I hate Javascript, I am leaning towards React, simply because of momentum - the xamarin team seems to be very small and there is not a lot of evidence of extensive support for the xamarin platform from within microsoft.
My concern with React is - although it seems that it will get the job done on iOS and Android, it is not clear how you can run applications on PC/Mac. I am aware there is UWP / WPF support but am unsure if this is of any quality. I expect the best solution would be to run it in a browser on non-mobile platforms.
Is this possible with React Native, and is it something you could use in production in the foreseeable future.
Microsoft ReactXP is exactly what you are looking for.
Although it is still very young (first release at 22 Apr, 2017), Nader Dabit did some really excellent works on it.
Video Tutorial Here
Related
EDIT 1 2017/01/29 - At the moment our choice has gone to electron in combination with EdgeJS and all the power of NodeJS and the packages/resources on npm there.. There is no better alternative for us to create cross platform apps for all three plyers (macOS, linux and windows). Thanks everyone for their input.
ORIGINAL Question:
TL;DR - Backend code written in C# (.Net/Mono). Writing a desktop application that needs low level access to the system (cross platform OSX, Linux, Windows 7 to 10). In search of a one-stop cross platform UI tool/framework that can interface with the status of the backend-code, either by polling/messaging or calling into the code of the backend code. This "backend" includes for example the scanning & listing of process info, taking screenshots, etc.. Sending network information (which websites were visited etc..) It's in essence an exam monitor for students when they're doing an online exam in classrooms.**
Options we are exploring:
electron (formerly known as atom shell) looks nice, but we have no idea whether it can interop/call into/kickstart a C#/Mono application. Posted this as well on their official forum for feedback, and whether it is a good use case for electron. In an ideal world, we'd like to use electron fully, but unfortunately I think we need platform specific logic (which now we handle in C# w/ .net & mono).
Eto.Forms is what we work with now, but is limiting in it's UI's capabilites - as sometimes it still renders differently (sizing of windows) on different platforms. It also has a different look & feel that's tied to the platform of the user - which is a good feature, but it makes it difficult to make dedicated controls to visualise status, which would be easier in html/css.
Another route, is a mix between Eto.Forms (or something else) to bootstrap a native UI that hosts a browser in it's window that cross platform and not dependent on the locally installed browsers, such as Awesomium. This would still require Eto.Forms, or any other bootstrapper to kickstart the application, but all other navigation would go through the Awesomium rendered html.
Thanks,
Yves
AvaloniaUI (A cross platform XAML Framework for .NET Framework, .NET Core and Mono) would be a perfect choice if you are familiar with WPF.
There are many other frameworks to develop cross-platform desktop apps. You can checkout my github repo electron-alternatives for more cross-platform desktop development options.
Xamarin Forms is my framework of choice. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/xamarin/ It's made for mobile but was extended to include desktop as well.
We are planning our first applications on tablets, to run on both iOS, Android and Windows.
We are considering using Xamaring.Forms.
Our applications must be able to access several functions/feature on the devices.
F.ex: OCR, TTS (text-to-speech), installed voiced, use our own installed voices, use our own c++ libraries
Anyone with experience with similar application using Xamarin.Forms?
- Performance, will it work smooth?
- Overhead
- complexity
- UI issues?
- Other issues
Or will native application for each platform be a better alternative?
Any idea/comment/recommendation?
As the team lead of Xamarin.Forms, I also suggest in your case you go with Xamarin platform. You would be basically in the sweet spot for maximal codeshare with minimal pain for a Xamarin platform (non-Forms) project.
If you used forms you would be doing too much DI and custom rendering from the sound of it to actually benefit dramatically.
I currently develop a handful of Silverlight Applications that are hosted on the company intranet. It is my understanding that Silverlight is basically dead, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a good alternative to use for future applications. I have done some research, and I see that Microsoft is recommending to move to WinRT stuff for desktop applications , but I can't find anything about apps that are supposed to be hosted in a browser, like I am doing with Silverlight now. Should I just switch over to using ASP.NET / HTML / CSS ?
The recommended approach would be to use HTML5. The Metro version of IE 10 doesn't support plugins, so Silverlight will not work there. However, the desktop version of IE 10 still has plugin support, so your Silverlight apps are still supported in Windows 8 to a certain degree.
Silverlight is no longer being advanced by Microsoft, but will still be around for a while (i.e. all browsers will not drop support in the near future). Given that you are working on intranet apps, you probably have an opportunity to control the environment to a degree so that the Silverlight apps are still accessible. However, it is probably wise to move to HTML5 for new development and also think about a long-term migration strategy for existing apps if needed.
I've talked to some folks around the office, and it seems that their approach is to just convert their Silverlight apps into WPF apps and use ClickOnce for the deployment. The advantage here is a relatively easy and clean port (compared to HTML/CSS/javaScript) and we still get the benefit of existing code / look / feel.
These apps are all internal as well, so we don't have platform problems or browser issues to worry about.
I need to develop a C# touch-screen desktop application with a "modern good-looking" UI.
How would you approach it? I´ve got in mind using Flash (just for the UI) or WPF... but i´m open to any idea or any third-party C# UI you´d know.
Is Flash easy to integrate with C#?
Thanks for your knowledge!
You should look for a AMF remoting library in C#.
Remoting is when you call a function on your server from flash.
AMF (version 0 or 3) is a binary format used to encode object transfered
between client and server
Weborb and fluorine are solutions for this.
see : .NET and AMF
You will probably be doing well with a third party framework to avoid the overhead of writing user interactions, controls, etc.
A couple of options are
http://xamarin.com/
http://www.resco.net/developer/mobileformstoolkit/
A review of these options is provided here.
I recall combining a flash interface with a C# back-end back in university. There's a method called fscommand() that will take a couple of string parameters (I may be mistaken, read up on it) to pass to and from the interface and the C# "code-behind".Flash is an ok option, but if I were you I'd opt for a WPF interface. I'm a huge fan of the telerik libraries, their WPF one allows you to create the most modern-looking interfaces and dashboards. Not to mention that the skills you will acquire while learning enough about wpf will be hugely beneficial in your career as a developer the way things are going (depending, obviously, on what direction you're heading).
FlashBuilder 4.6 has some nice functionality for quickly building a UI that work on a desktop or mobile device. You could use FluorineFX (free) or webOrb on a webserver to send data back and forth to a database server if that were needed. If you build it with the Flashbuilder 4.6 mobile project template, it would work on a iPad, mac, windows pc, or android device as well. Since a pc touchscreen should use the same type of finger gestures as a mobile app, this might be a nice way to go. (I don't actually have a touchscreen on my pc, but it runs well with a mouse, so I'd assume it worked with gestures too).
Adobe.tv has lots of examples of building a mobile app project (Which also runs on a PC) and there is a Flashbuilder 4.6 free trial.
http://flex.org/
We want to write a client for an online service which should be available on as many platforms as possible. This question is about what programming language and framework we should use to create this client.
These platforms are required: Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS (iPhone, iPod, iPad) and Android. The more the better.
For the mobile platforms there is Titanium Mobile. I haven't tried this thing yet, the website says you can develop for both iOS and Android using web skills such as Javascript. I don't know yet if you can deploy for both platforms using the SAME code. It would be great!
There is also Titanium Desktop but I don't like the idea that the complete source code is shared with the final application. Titanium does this for Mobile too but it isn't that easy to modify an app loaded via App Store.
So, what other way is there to create an application which runs on at least the three major desktop platforms? I thought c# with mono would be the way to go but I just realized that you need to use mono with MonoMac in order to publish it on the Mac App Store and use things like Growl. And since MonoMac is naturally only available for Macs, it's again not possible to deploy the mono app on all platforms without rewriting it for at least the Mac. And it would be nice if the app looks "native" on all platforms. Gtk# just does not look good on a Mac. It's "okay" on Windows and great on Linux.
I know we could use Objective-C for iOS and Mac, Java for Android, C#.net for Windows and C#.mono for Linux but the main point is that we don't want to write the same app in a lot of different languages. That would make development and maintenance really hard.
And we prefer languages with C-style syntax which are much easier to learn for us PHP web developers. Btw: We dislike Air and I'm not sure about Java since I never used it but it also does not look "native" and it feels kinda slow.
Edit:
Just a note: It wouldn't be a problem to create an own form for each platform if at least the remaining code is the same. Is it possible to use MonoMac, Gtk# and Win Forums in the same C# application? And I'd prefer C# over C++ as I have no skills in C++, so I first need to check how hard it is to write with Qt.
Another note: We don't plan to spend much money and because we need to pay Apples Developer Programs we want to use free or cheap technology. Preferable Open Source.
Just use C# for all of the above.
The mono project will cover Mac and Linux, with monodroid your android requirements are covered and monotouch will take care of iPod/iPad/iPhone.
In regards to UI - mono has full support for the System.Windows.Forms namespace, so you don't have to use GTK# if you don't want to.
I don't think I need to mention windows support ;)
If you really want to support all those platforms from a single application, your best bet will be to create a web application. With HTML5, such an application can even be cached on the device and used when no connection is available. Also, that strategy would make it feasible to customize the UI based on the device running the app.
You will not have good luck if you set out to build a single native app that runs on Android and iOS, let alone all the other platforms you mentioned. The reason that they're different platforms rather than the same is that they're, well, different. They have different capabilities, run on different hardware, are built with different languages, employ different application models with different user interfaces, and have audiences with different expectations.
The best solution I've come across over the years is Qt SDK.
Great support for all major platforms, Symbian, OS X, Linux flavors, Windows, Windows CE (mobile), Android and iOS partial support and etc.
Its base is C++ but bindings for almost every language (like C#) is available. Lots of help and support is also covered.
The core Qt libs are very fast and extensive, And the whole KDE desktop (of Linux) is done with it. Famous software like VLC and VirtualBox are done in Qt.
Another relatively new way of doing cross-platform development is to use the open source Eto.Forms, which allows you to have one UI codebase target each platform's native toolkit. It is a UI abstraction layer that can target GTK#, MonoMac/OSX, WinForms, and WPF.
There is also an iOS port in the works.
Java sounds like the best fit. It is cross-platform, easy to understand, has a huge userbase and android is based on it.
Depending if you need an offline interaction mode, it sounds like you should develop a web application. You can develop a mobile version and a desktop version and thus support all the of the above platforms. Look at youtube's application for Iphone, it retains the same functionality as the the iphone app but is purely html. Furthermore, html5 capable browsers could also have the ability to run offline.
Crazy as it sounds, check out Flash/Flex - it is cross platform, code once, run everywhere ,now compiles down to native code on e.g. Android and iOS and the 10.1 player is shipping all over. I had to solve exactly this problem and when Flash Builder Burrito catered for mobile after working with it for a while I have switching from C#/Flash hybrid to Flash only for clients. (Our backend is C#/Node/C++, etc).
Depending on your timelines and needs it is something look into.
Some random links to peruse:
Blog post about performance and video to single app multi device
Developing flash and flex applications