I'm thinking of developing a desktop app in C#. Although windows will be my main target, later I'll try and run the app in MacOS X and linux. Can I do this today, in a simple way?
I'm aware of the mono project, but it is not clear to me if I can do this in a simple way.
Also, what is the relation between WPF and Silverlight? AFAIK Silverlight follows a plugin model much like Flash or Java. Can I develop my desktop app with Silverlight and deploy it on windows, linux and os x without much changes?
Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
The Mono project does not support .Net 3 and WPF yet, and it will probably been some time before that happens.
Silverlight might be sufficient for your needs.
As of Silverlight 3.0 you can run Silverlight outside the browser, even create a shortcut to it on the desktop.
Last I heard, the Mono project has no plans to implement WPF, however they are working on other .NET 3.5 features, especially LINQ and ASP.NET MVC. The problem with implementing WPF in Mono (beyond the size and complexity of the API) is that on Windows it uses DirectX for rendering, so an implementation for Mono would need to use OpenGL. Definitely not a trivial undertaking.
WPF is used to build desktop applications for Windows only. Currently no other platforms are supported. If cross-platform support is a must, you can create a browser-based application and use Silverlight. Silverlight runs applications in the browser, though, so you cannot make a "desktop" application using that.
Mono is working hard to make sure that Silverlight runs cross platform (as mentioned on one of the stack overflow podcasts). So that seems to be a good way to go.
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.
thanks for reading this and helping.
I am comp sci intern, I mostly code winform applications using C# .net framework on windows. Recently, for job requirement, I have to make an application on Mac OS, which could be opened by just one doubleclicking the application. No script, command line or anything.
I research a bit about MONO and I successfully wrote an applescript application to do shell script and mono the Winform application. It does the works just like it does on windows, but the thing is it does the works very slowly on Mac. Therefore, I look more into Xamarin.Mac, and started learning to make a cocoa application.
However, here comes the question. If in the cocoa application, I still use the .net framework stuffs like List, Linq, System.IO like File.WriteAllLines instead of native cocoa stuff like NSMutableArray, NSFileManager, would it be slow just like MONO the Winform application?
Hypothetically, if I wrote pure objective-c in Xamarin comparing pure .net stuff to do the same job, would the .net one run slower than the objective-c one?
MonoMac was the framework (open source) to develop desktop OS X applications (32 bit). But it is now obsolete in favor of the commercial Xamarin.Mac platform (32 bit/64 bit).
If you are still a student, please get academic licenses from Xamarin,
http://blog.xamarin.com/xamarin-for-students/
The difficulty is that whether you can later find an employer that embraces Xamarin platforms. Good luck.
Any time you introduce an abstraction layer into your app it's going to be slower than native code. Whether or not that's a trade off you're comfortable with is up to you.
I am trying to build a Windows 8 "metro-style" app that will operate as a "app killer". For those of you who have used Win8 (Tech Preview) you'll notice that once you open a metro-style app you cannot close it (without going into Task Manager and ending the process).
My challenge is that I cannot access 'System.Diagnostics.Process' from my metro-style app, nor do I know if there is an comparable alternative within the WinRT. I also thought of building a separate app that hosts a service for my metro app to interface with, but I'd like to do this with a single app.
Fundamentally, I am looking for a pattern for building Metro-style apps that leverage .NET 4.0 components, specifically to be able to enumerate and kill other processes running on the PC.
CLARIFICATION: I am less concerned with this specific application than I am with access that type of .NET functionality within a Metro-style app
Thanks
To your specific question, this functionality is not available. Apps are not allowed to interact or interfere with other apps.
To answer your more general question, the APIs available to Metro style applications is limited compared to what is available to desktop applications. C# has a subset of the .Net library available, much like Silverlight does. The same is true for C++ where a subset of the desktop Win32/COM APIs are available.
From what I understand (watching Build2011 videos) a Metro App won't be able to do that...
Interaction between processes is severally limited to specific Contracts (the charms on the right: Search, Send-to).
Think Phone, not Desktop.
You might be able to build a non-Metro Win8 app though.
Don't waste too much time on this. I expect that in a beta a close option (perhaps even a charm) will be included. Until then use a keyboard Alt-F4 or the Task Manager
C++:
Window::Current->CoreWindow->Close();
or
Window::Current->Close();
I haven't explored the difference between these two (more precisely, I don't know how CoreWindow differs from Current. I could assume though...
I'm using an Oracle VBox with Win8 on my Win7 machine to develop a C++ Metro App using VS 11. I used both of the above methods. I verified in Task Manager the app was not running on both Win8 and the Simulator.
I have .net c# background(don't mind to learn new language to get the things right). Right now i want to make some small applications for Iphone/Android phones.Basically, i will show some graphs with data retrieved through my webservice.
Can anyone tell me which developing tool should i use to create those small apps quickly?
I don't have any experience with Flash.And i just know that Flash builder 4.5 can convert Flash applications to Iphone/Android. However, i don't feel like that it is a native way to build Iphone/Android app
But if you advise that, i might go that way.
thank you
Xamarin has products that allows you to use C# (and your existing skills) for both iOS (iPhone / iPad) and Android devices : MonoTouch and Mono for Android.
disclaimer: I work for Xamarin
You might want to use frameworks that help build apps for multiple platforms with the need to know native programming languages. PhoneGap is one of these popular frameworks.
You can use C# to create a WCF service. There are a few different libraries to develop Android applications. If you want to work with C#, you can check out Mono for Android.
http://docs.xamarin.com/android
From my knowledge, however, Java is the preferred language to develop Android application. Eclipse has a great plugin which integrates with the Android SDK / Emulator.
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