Portable Mobile/Tablet application proof of concept - android

I need to develop a portable application mainly for Windows 8.1 and iPad, but could be expanded for Android, WP and iOS later.
The application consists of calling web services to display data in grids and it contains CRUD operation, and it may save some local data for offline mode then synchronizes later when connectivity is up.
I'm torn between too many solutions, I need your advise for better solution.
1- Solution 1: Go Native for each OS (VS for Windows 8.1 [RT and pro] and xCode for iPad): this solution requires code duplication, logic and UI.
2- HTML5 with WebView app: I think this is a weak solution especially that we have local storage, checking for connectivity and calling ws ...
3- Using Xamarin: I think Xamarin does not support WinRT or Windows 8.1 to share logic code between iPad and Windows 8.1
4- Using Xamarin.Forms: Building the UI is tough and also it does not support Windows 8.1.
From your perspective, what is the best solution? please advices if you have any other proof of concept.
Many Thanks.

Most of the html/hibrid frameworks like Cordova (cordova.apache.org), Ionic (http://ionicframework.com/), etc, uses a native WebView on Android. Until Kitkat the performance of WebView is not production-ready and if you've a list with a lot of elements, the scroll experience is really bad.
If you want to do a simple proof of concept, prototype or whatever, I think that html frameworks are a good alternative. But if you are going to put your bussiness on top of one of this framworks, I would not recommend.
There is an alternative to embed a Chrome using Cordova & crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/documentation/cordova.html) but you will end with an APK ~40Mb for a simple hello world.

Just my 2 cents. I don't see a point in using libraries that are unsupported across the platforms you plan to release and support on. Personally, I'd code natively for each platform. While this takes a lot of work, if you have to ask for direction on which path you want to take your application, then this type of project sounds more like a "you reap what you sow" application. Also, you'll be able to directly support each problem without having to wait for patches, but there are 2 sides to that coin as well. Your opportunity cost is missing future features the library will provide, if it's worth it to you.

If you aim at quality, going native is the only way... You can reduce the amount of work like Google is doing: writing the business logic and unit tests in Java, then converting it to ObjC with J2ObjC and to Javascript with GWT.
In your case, being that Java is a dumbed-down version of C#, you can easily find tools to convert to the latter, finding yourself with native business logic for every platform! That should account for 50%-70% of the codebase...

I think going with HTML5 with webapp view is better option.
Using Cordova (Phonegap) most of the native features are easily achievable in HTML webapp.
PhoneGap Platform Guide
Alot of other plugins are available for the advances features like BLE, NFC.
Calling webservice is really not an issue in HTML5.
Simple ajax is enough, however now a days many advanced frameworks are available which makes your work easy. One of the best among them is Angular JS(maintained by Google ).
Angular JS
For database you can access native database of the target OS or SQLite db of the mobile device.
You can check this link
Storage options
So developing a webapp can be a more efficient solution in your case. It can be best way for you as per my view point. However, you can do some R & D and can find the appropriate for you.

Related

What should i select for my mobile applciation development? Native way or cordova or react,Node.js like things

I want to develop application in android and iOS both.
But i am confuse between native development and development using react and node.js etc.
Please help me to choose (If possible specify reason).
P.S Here cost is not an issue.
If you need high performance and attractive UI and don't want to be blocked by some functionalities that may not br provided by cross platform, I recommend you to use native platform. But if your app doesn't need to be very attractive and doesn't need too much processing, then you can use cross-platform. Actually for many features you need to add plugins if you are building cross platform app and adding number of plugins makes your application slower.
OK, well there isn't much data to go on, but there are several options if you want to write cross platform apps.
There is:
Sencha Touch - HTML and JavaScript
PhoneGap - HTML, JavaScript and CSS
QT - C++ and QML
Appmethod - C++ and Object Pascal
Xamarin - C#
Visual Studio - looks like you can do C# or C++, or Unity for games.
and probably a lot more...
Why would you choose one of these instead of writing in the native language for the platform?
Well, the pros seem to outweigh the cons. If you are targeting several platforms, I would choose one of the options above, simply because you only have to write everything once. If you did it native for each platform, you would write everything twice or maybe three or even four times. Using one of the above tools will be much easier and save you time, and they might be just as seamless and workable as native development.
To simply answer your question, If you would like to be able to write your app once, and be able to manage all future updates by managing only one code base, do cross platform using one of the above tools. The only downside is that you might have to learn a new language (but with a place like Stack Overflow, learning new languages is pretty awesome). It will save you time in the long run.

React Native & Android?

I'm contemplating on using React Native for a new web app. Is it possible to ship both iOS and Android apps using it?
I know that it's on the roadmap, but it's unclear to me whether it's going to be a separate open-source project (e.g., React Android vs React Native), or just one (e.g., React Native).
TLDR: Most likely you can. But it depends on your use cases.
You can aim for about 80~99+% code reuse (depending on how much Android/iOS native views/modules you use eg. Do you have custom graphics code or low-level TCP networking code; Those can only be done in native code; And expose as API to your JS code. The amount of the platform-specific JS code is actually minimal. Plus you can also use platform check like if (Platform.OS === 'android'){} to solve that) of code reuse, which is pretty nice. Dropbox and other companies have done similar projects: using c++ to build a 'shared' component between iOS and Android project, while implementing most of the UI code in native iOS(Objective-c or swift) and Android(java). But now you are doing C++ with Java and Objective-C or Swift, more language to master, more complexity and more brain juice went down the drain. And it probably took some super tough gymnastic move to make different native code work in both iOS and Android, plus debugging...
React Native just makes it a lot easier to write almost everything in JavaScript. But there is a catch, only about 80% of the JS code could be shared. In the foreseeable future, you still need to write 'platform-specific' JS code for Android and iOS versions.
That's why FB said they aim for 'Learn once, code anywhere' instead of 'run' everywhere.
But it's still very nice other than code reuse(80+% code reuse is still a big improvement comparing to maintaining 2 entirely different versions: Android and iOS ya?)
Cmd +R to refresh the app is a GREAT boost for development speed. Waiting for a big project to compile just makes you felt you were dying inside.
Declarative UI you get for free, because of using React. This is another great plus! As you don't need to 'dig' into your specific UI code that often anymore. Data changed? Just 'flush' it and UI just update accordingly. No brain juice wasted.
I just ported my not so complicated Android React Native App to iOS. And it took me 3 days. The request for and iOS version for the App came as a rather abrupt and unplanned move. So could definitely be even faster had I built the Android with a plan for iOS too. Huge win:)
Another great benefit is able to do hot code push without going through the hellish 1 week app store review process. So no more, "YAY, our app is approved. Let's release. Oh Shiiit. Critical bug and our app keeps crashing(that's gonna keep happening for at least a week before your fix is live). And you have to beg Apple to speed up the process". This is possible because the major part of the code base would be written in JS and with tools like AppHub or CodePush, you could almost instantly deploy code to your users. This is conditionally allowed by Apple.
3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code, and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.
Lastly, as an open-source project, project longevity tends to be a concern. Not an issue for React Native. Internally used by(FB Ads Manager) and backed by FB(a dozen FB Engineers?) by Facebook, with close to 500 contributors and 25k Stars, React Native is full of life. Seeing is believing :) (https://github.com/facebook/react-native)
EDIT 1
I realized that I am apparently a bit biased and only talked about the good stuff about React Native. So do checkout https://productpains.com/product/react-native/ and Github issues to have a full picture. It's definitely not silver bullet. That being said, it satisfies most of my use case and I couldn't see me use native iOS or Android anytime soon.
EDIT 2
The Facebook F8 conference app released by Facebook (duh..) is 100% open source and they have a really nice tutorial to show you how you could have both iOS and Android native experience(90% as good as native ?), and at the same time, achieved 85% code re-use. check it out --> https://makeitopen.com
EDIT 3
You may also want to checkout Flutter and its pros & cons :)
It doesn't make sense to have a single codebase if you want a truly native experience. At the moment we have things like NavigatorIOS in React Native which provides an iOS-style UI for navigating between app screens, but if we were to just start using that on Android it wouldn't feel like a true Android app.
Therefore I'd expect to see a NavigatorAndroid component or similar when the time comes, and the same for various other components that behave differently between the platforms.
One benefit that you would get is that any application logic - maybe a store, or your backend interactions - could be written in a JavaScript file and then included by both iOS and Android.
So while you won't get that write-once run-everywhere developer experience from React Native I would expect to see a solution that gives first-class UI on both platforms while encouraging as much reuse as possible. I personally also hope to see strong build tools to help develop and ship on multiple platforms.
React Native for Android has just been released, Android folder will be creating along side with iOS folder upon creating a new project.
Just another tip as NavigatorIOS was mentioned. Facebook are not really maintaining the code for NavigatorIOS. Instead they are focusing on Navigator.
Yes. We're running it in production with about 5m registered users.
Some things are a little behind iOS but catching up quickly. It's a good wagon to be on.
React Native is designed so that you can deploy to both iOS and Android. There is a caveat, of course.
React Native has supported iOS for much longer, coming to Android only recently. So, there are some differences in terms of what is supported on each platform.
For example, if you place borders on Text, they will show up on iOS, but not on Android. In order to overcome this, you need to place a View around the Text, and apply a border to that. Luckily, React Native makes it easy to integrate separate stylesheets for each platform (or even platform-specific styling on a single stylesheet).
Support for Android is continuously evolving, so it will only be a matter of time before React Native for Android is on par with iOS. Nevertheless, this shouldn't deter you. In my experience, it's a great way to quickly develop for both platforms, and it does save some headaches.
you don't need to maintenance separate code base for android & ios. Actually you can use same code base for build android & ios. I recommend to read the react-native documentation(according to react-native version you are using) before using any inbuilt component in your code.
Eg:- TextInput component onKeyPress function supports for ios only.
if ur are using external lib check these lib support for both ios and android.
Anyway you have to configure external lib separately(install) both android and ios.
hope this will helpful.

Is there a technology which makes it possible to develop a game for Android, iOS and Web simultaneously?

As the topic states - is there any technology that would let me write code for a simple commercial 2D game which could be then compiled to work well on Android, iOS and Web browsers or at least two of them (e.g. Android and iOS)? There is so much buzz about cross-platform nowadays that I was wondering if I'm missing something.
My goal (set by my producer) is to make this game for all of these three platforms, and so far I planned to use:
- Web browsers: Adobe Flex,
- Android phones: Java (since my favourite C++ is recommended only for short snippets),
- iPad/iPhone/iPod: Objective-C (are there any alternatives?).
It pretty much means re-writing the same source code three times. Is there any way to speed it up by using a technology that would work on at least both of them?
However, I don't want to use Adobe Flex for all three (though it's possible), because it requires Adobe AIR (works only with Android 2.2 and higher) and not a lot of phones have it (it's totally different with browsers where 98% of people have Flash).
I don't mind adding some platform-specific code for each version, of course.
Also, if you have any suggestions about choosing a fancier technology for any of the platforms (maybe some nice frameworks?), I'd really appreciate that, too.
Take a look at Corona and Moai both are Lua-based frameworks for game development targeting multiple platforms.
I would like to say that Multimedia Fusion was capable of doing this, but it isn't quite ready yet. There are currently a number of runtime exporters for the product which allow you to export your game to multiple target platforms which include flash, java and iOS at the moment. XNA and Android exporters are currently in the works. I should probably mention that I am only affiliated with these guys as a happy consumer of their products. It is probably worth checking it out even if they can't do everything you want yet. If it's not suitable for your needs it is still a very good choice if you wish to rapidly prototype your application.
See:
http://www.clickteam.com
On a side note, personally I would recommend against going down the js+html5 route, particularly if you are targeting mobiles. I should probably stress that it's simply an opinion I have and that there are plenty of people here who will disagree with me. In all javascript games I have played, I have felt the garbage collector. The issue is that without control over garbage collection it is free to run when it feels like, causing infrequent but very obvious pauses in the middle of your game. You can work around this but I don't see why it should be that difficult. I can definitely align with the ideals of being able to write the thing once and run it on all platforms, but I can't see it working just yet.
To offer some advice assuming you find no suitable tools for the job, your aim is to maximise reusability. This means all of your games resources and levels should be well defined as independent resources. For non-critical logic you can make use of embeddable scripting languages such as Lua, which will maximise your code reuse. C (or C++) code will also be reusable on a lot of platforms, and might be a good choice if you are familiar and confident with the language.
I'm personally using Phonegap and Zepto.js. But you may have more luck with jQuery mobile. Phonegap is nice because its website will compile the apps for you.
1) If you write your game in C++ you can use it for iPhone & Android (NDK) as well. Preferably, you write your game engine in C++, than you can use a OS specific layer for UI stuff..
2) Implement your game in HTML & Javascript. iPhone/Android users will have to use a webbrowser to play your game. For iPhone, you can even create a launcher, that looks like an app, but actually is a webview with HTML & Javascript
Unity3D should be able to do this for you, if you purchase some extra sprite addins to handle 2D (like Ex2D or SM2 or Toolkit 2D). Also right now until Apr 8, the iOS and Android license is free.
Game Maker Studio. It has a package that let's you deploy on all of the platforms you outlined.
http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio

Should I use PhoneGap instead of ramping up on the Android SDK?

Although I am comfortable with Java, I have much more experience with web development. I am looking to get into programming simple Android games.
Should I just program everything using Javascript/HTML and forget ramping up on Java/Android SDK? I guess my question really is, what are the limitations of PhoneGap? What are some things to consider, etc.?
Some advantages I can think of:
More selection in terms of game engines for HTML5/JS
Faster ramp up time
Automatically deploy to all major platforms
The biggest pro for phonegap is that it takes advantage of your web development experience. I think what most people seem to miss (or ignore) is that there is no advantage in avoiding phonegap for an android only application! You can still write as much native code as you want to, mixing and matching phonegap as you please.
I am writing an Android app that uses text to speech. Because Phonegap doesn't support this in their API, you might think that Phonegap is a bad choice, but actually it was quite easy to call the Java code I need from javascript:
Java code:
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
//boilerplate and TTS set up
...
this.appView.addJavascriptInterface(this.speak, "speak");
...
}
public void speak(String text) {
this.tts.speak(text, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null);
}
Javascript code:
speak.say("hello world");
Pros for Phonegap:
deploys to all major mobile devices
sounds like it best fits your skillset
covers most available platform APIs with a uniform code base, no need to learn each one
PhoneGap Build (https://build.phonegap.com/) and Cordova (https://github.com/brianleroux/Cordova) are making it even easier to deploy to multiple platforms
Pros for Android:
Better performance
No limitations on which APIs you can use (i.e., video)
Defined toolset and workflow
native UI components
Fragments API and native layouts make handling different screen sizes easier
It really comes down to whether or not you want to be an Android-only developer or not. That first pro for phonegap is HUGE is you plan to develop for multiple platforms.
I personally have major concerns over PhoneGap apps performance compared to that of a native Android app. The admittedly small amount of testing that I have done makes the PhoneGap version feel very unresponsive compared to native. I don't see how this doesn't translate to a poor user experience. Even PhoneGaps packaged sample application runs poorly.
I was very excited at the possibilities that PhoneGap appeared to open up, but I don't feel like it's there yet. I don't feel comfortable committing to a large project on PhoneGap.
No WAY! Adobe has their cloud build which has a 9.5 MB file size limit. And, they are discontinuing support for other types of build.
I have just spent the past week or so developing a simple Android app using PhoneGap. My great hope was to be able to recommend this product for use in our department as a "write-once, deploy everywhere solution."
In practice, it was more complicated than I would have hoped. I did manage to get an Android version of the app done, but I found a lot of quirks in using basic stuff like getting it to include css and the jquery mobile framework. I kept thinking that this was just my learning curve but a lot of the tutorials I found online were outdated and didn't work in the version I downloaded. The biggest surprise was that you can't link to external documents without using a plugin such as childBrowser, which is a huge drawback.
I tried today to port my app over to iOS and could not get past step one with importing css. I couldn't find any support documentation on this basic step. It's frustrating because this is a simple app that I could craft as native in Xcode in a day or so. It looks like it will take me a lot longer using PhoneGap.
PhoneGap looks really promising, but at the moment I don't want to use it. It's just a question of time. Why would I want to take twice as long on something? It might be a better choice in future versions

How to write android code in titanium

I had been working on android since a little long. Now I am wondering about titanium. Is it possible to write android (java) code in titanium app since the app is build in titanium? If yes then how? Actually I am having problem dealing with push notification for android in titanium. So I got a solution to build complete app in titanium and then if possible use android code in app to deal with push notification. How? Please do response as quickly as possible. Thanks in advance.
To answer your question directly, you will need to develop a native Android extension to call Java code via JavaScript in a Titanium application.
Rai
You should be checking out the docs Here tells you all you need to know
Hope it helps
Frank
yes it is possible but remember that the titanium tools lag behind the official android ones. Documentation is poor and often wrong, code is laggy and the resulting .apk are much bigger.
Why are you thinking of using Titanium? For cross-compatibility?
If you are thinking about that you have multiple possible ways:
1) Build a minimum common denominator, like titanium, but better: Write a core application for both android and iPhone so that it will be fast and light on memory, with a modified broswer to show your content. This way the interfaces will be much easier and you'll have to write the content just once.
Still you will be able to access low level hardware, like GPS, compass, gyroscope.... easily without consuming too much battery (unlike with titanium) as needed.
2) Find an existing minimum common denominator: Javascript work both on iPhone and Android.
3) There are many other options (Adobe air, python, custom scripting, mobile web site, ...) but I think that the cons outweigh greatly the pros.

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