I have developed application for android based mobile using Java. I have tried developing apps for Windows based mobile phones using C# and heard about iOS that one would need to know Objective C.
Wondering if there is any way to have one language to develop an application that can run on all these platforms. I understand every operating system executes programs having different binaries that it execute. But just wondering if there is any common platform like JRE that is run on these mobile operating systems.
Thanks for the reply
Short of working with HTML mobile webapps, I reckon your closest bet to a common language between the 3 platforms would be C# using Mono.
Check out Mono for Android and MonoTouch for iOS both supported by the same company.
Whilst you could probably use the same language for your apps and even share internal APIs across the different platforms, you would still start to encounter differences in how the UI is handled on each of the platforms.
There is a project: http://www.appcelerator.com/platform which can be used for writing apps for Android and iOS... But from my experience I can tell that this is good only for simple prototype apps. The more fancy app, the bigger issues you would have with it.
Related
I have an iPhone application (with an android counterpart), developed in Xcode and written in Objective-C. It is a classical native iOS app, already working and uploaded in the App Store. Similarly, the android version is built with Java and linked with the android SDKs. It's uploaded to the market place.
I was asked to port the app to Windows Phone. Is this possible without modifying the code?
I am not familiar with Windows Phone dev, however it looks like that is a completely
separate ecosystem for developing apps (different programming language, different IDE, different app store etc).
Can I go from Android to Windows Phone or from iOS to Windows Phone?
PhoneGap - or similar platforms - are not options since the code is already written in Objective-C and Java.
Like iOS and Android, Windows Phone is a completely different operating system and currently requires a completely different development platform.
It is not possible to take the existing code and make it function on a Windows Phone.
iOS commonly uses Objective-C for application development . Even if there was a way to compile Objective-C onto a Windows Phone, it would be inherently tied to platform features, and UI controls. While you could write some code in C++ and share it, with an iOS application, you'll still need some in Objective-C.
Android applications use Java normally. Java is not available for the Windows Phone platform. So, the language is out. Further, like iOS, the platform features are not necessarily shared and the UI control and behaviors are different. Android applications can use C++ (if you happened to code using it), but it has limitations, and by using it, again, you'd be tying the code to the Android platform potentially. Some code may be portable.
Windows Phone applications are usually written in C#/C++ and XAML or DirectX. While there is some similarity in languages (Java and C#), you'll encounter far more platform differences that could need significant effort to convert. From the way network requests are made to handling threads will be different (and many many more). Objective-C is also very different from C++.
Unless you had used something like Xamarin and written the underlying business logic using a common platform (C#/.NET), you'll need to consider a port to Windows Phone a fresh start.
It's not possible to just reuse all of the code that's been written. With a careful effort, you could share some common code (if it were written in C++), but as the shared code will not directly work with UI (and other platform features), you'd still need to do the UI on each platform, work around limitations, and potentially customize the user experience for each platform.
Microsoft has provided some guidance on porting, and provided some links with an API equivalency table here.
Yes, you can use Microsoft's Windows bridge for iOS to convert your iOS application code to Windows mobile platform code.
You need to use WinObjC SDK provided by Microsoft for this purpose.
Follow this link for more details.
No, you can't, WP apps are build with c# or .net and in visual studio IDE. There is no automated way to port a previously coded ios or android native app built with objetive-c or java to WP.
In my opinion there is no way to directly port a iphone app to windows phone app. You need to develop windows phone app with its needed environment like Visual Studio , windows phone sdk and with windows os.
You can also use cross platform like phonegap if it may fit to your requirement.
It looks like you have an existing Obj-C codebase for iOS, and a Java codebase for Android. No matter how you cut it, you're looking at [re]writing code to get something on WP8.
I don't know how "UI heavy" your app is; in general the UI code is the most platform specific (unless you're willing to put up with "cross platform" stuff that might not have good UX).
You might consider keeping the non-UI code mostly plain C++ and using Obj-C, etc. only for the parts where you have to talk to the framework. It will be easier to support multiple platforms with C++.
I took this approach with an app I'm working on; it's targeted for iOS but it's about 80% C++ (including Open GL). If I decide to port to Android I just need to deal with the 20%, mostly UI-ish code.
I want to know if there is a Unified UI framework that I can use when creating a mobile application that can be used between iOS, Android and Windows Phone OS? I have never touched HTML 5 but I heard one can create complex UI so that it will look more or less same across these platforms. My idea will be to create one application, have a generic framework that can be ported easily.
EDIT:
Just found this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_phone_web_based_application_framework
There are lots of platforms, Corona, Titanium, PhoneGap and of course HTML5 to name a few. This does put limitations on performance and on the features that you can take advantage of. I'm not sure if any except HTML 5 supports Windows phone, but they all support Android and iOS.
I'm a web developer in ASP.NET, C# and looking to start some mobile development. I'm aware Apple uses Objective C and Android uses Java, is there a way to create an app for both platforms or do I need to buy a Mac and some books on objective c and Java?
Thanks
You can use http://phonegap.com/ or http://www.appcelerator.com/platform to write cross-platform apps.
Rumour has it that Delphi XE3 (Due to come out soon) can be compiled onto Apple, Android, Windows 8 etc.etc. so if you can hold out a little longer that should be good!
For now, you are better using a mac (with XCode) to program for IOS or OSX as Apple is very particular and you need certificates for devices, projects, development and distribution etc.etc.etc.
Android i believe you have a bit more play with, but at the moment it is 2 seperate languages. Check out the DEV centres:
https://developer.apple.com
developer.android.com/
There are ways to create apps for both platforms, especially if you know web technologies : PhoneGap and others.
But like specified in the doc, you will most probably need an actual mac if you want to build to iOS
Although there are workarounds
You could use PhoneGap or Appcelerator. Haven't tried them myself, though. But with those tools you could build for both Android and iOS.
Since you are a .Net, C# developer, i recommend you to use Mono for Android, it comes with cost but will save you time and easy to deploy
http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid
The best way to be truly cross-platform is to develop for the web. I would include this in your consideration of development strategies, in addition to PhoneGap and Titanium, as Peter mentioned. You do not have as much access to core OS features, but that is improving all the time (see http://mobilehtml5.org/). Whether or not this is feasible depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Hello everyone and thanks for viewing this question :)
I am an indie to-be-developer and want to make apps for android, windows 8 desktop and metro.
After having read through a lot of forums and blogs, I believe that perhaps to make the best looking(native-feel) apps I have to learn
Java for Android
HTML,CSS and JS for Metro
Something else for Windows desktop
What I need your help in is, whether there is any one particular language which I should start with which will make my journey better ?
By app I mean something to do with sharing and transferring of files.
P.S. Read that Python might be perfect !
Do you agree ? Please suggest something.
As Tanis alluded to, you'll need to determine where your goals are in terms of "rich functionality versus maximum reach" - and from your "best looking (native-feel)" comment, I'd say you're leaning toward "rich"
Pure HTML5/CSS/JavaScript will give you the greatest reach because of browser ubiquity, BUT you can still use HTML5/CSS/JS for native development for modern Windows 8 applications and via PhoneGap for Android and other mobile devices. Having one code base AND supporting native features across those platforms would be difficult, if not impossible, but with the right design and architecture you should be able to get a great amount of reuse of your HTML/CSS/JS assets.
Another option, since you've mentioned Windows Desktop as well, is to use WPF and XAML with C#. You can build native Windows desktop applications with it, and those same technologies (XAML/C#) are one of the three primary development options (along with HTML5/JS and C++/XAML) for modern Windows 8 (nee Metro) applications. For the Android piece of it, Xamarin's Mono for Android lets you reuse many of your C#/.NET assets for deploying native applications to Android (and they have MonoTouch as well to add iOS to your arsenal!)
As for Python, productive and powerful language, and great for backend services - like the plumbing for sharing and transferring files - but it wouldn't be my tool of choice for building mobile apps.
If you want the highest level of cross-platform compatibility, a web-app (typically HTML, CSS, and JS) would be best. Making a web app will help ensure that your app works on nearly every device with a web browser, and you only need to maintain one code base.
The trade-off is that you often lose some features, such as the use of some of a phone's sensors.
If you want to make native apps for each, then I would suggest Java (particularly for Android) or C/C++ (particularly for desktop environments).
Python is an excellent starting language as well (and codeacademy has some great tutorials), but isn't as directly applicable to app development as Java or C/C++.
We will develop a, social network integrated mobile application which will need to access native device capabilities but 90% of the logic will be implemented in the HTML5/Javascript code posted by Ruby back end to the device. Thus, we would like to update or change the logic/GUI of the app without user involvement. We have strict deadline and have to support iOS, Android and Blackberry.
In this case, what approach would you recommend us? We considered the approaches below but could not decide since we do not have any experience with mobile development even if we are experienced in Ruby, C/C++, Java, Javascript, Flex.
Our considerations:
Develop native apps for each platform and embed the native browsers
to implement our logic, which can take too much time.
Use one of the frameworks for cross-platform development such as
PhoneGap or rhomobile. In this case, we are afraid of facing some performance issues. We would love to hear the experience of developers with those frameworks.
Use Adobe Air for accessing the device and its WebKit component for the rest.
First, I hope you understand that there is no simple answer. At this junction, having been looking at cross-platform solutions for mobile development for two years, I feel that in order to get fully native UI look, and to access all the device and UI features, one is forced to produce native application on each platform.
But, since you asked about cross-platform tools, here's a list of the main contenders:
Sencha http://www.sencha.com/products/touch “Sencha Touch is the world's first app framework built specifically to leverage HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript”
Dojo http://dojotoolkit.org “Dojo saves you time, delivers powerful performance, and scales with your development process”
Phonegap http://www.phonegap.com “PhoneGap is an open source implementation of open standards”
jQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com “Touch-Optimized Web Framework for Smartphones & Tablets A unified user interface system across all popular mobile device platforms”
Rhomobile http://rhomobile.com “Free and open source mobile application framework”
Titanium from Appcelerator http://www.appcelerator.com
There are plenty of comparisons online, including on SO, and this fellow actually tried to use several platforms, code included.
Anecdotally, I have seen Phonegap produce a rather iPhone-centric look, that may not mesh well with Android, plus showing performance problems when loading screens (there may be workarounds via pre-loading). Also, access to more complex devices was limited, or at least lagging. Rhomobile is a good fit for data-driven apps (simple display of large databases), but architecturally could show performance issues, so check for yourself. Personally I did not get into Sencha, Dojo seemed a little small, and Titanium showed dated architecture. So next time I'm attempting a cross-platform app, I'll give jQuery Mobile a serious try.
Let us know what you pick and how it works out.
Iam using this rhomobile rhodes for my cross-platform development App which will run in Android, Blackberry and iPhone.
We have developed application and sucessfully runned in all devices without any issues. we used ruby for backend webservice call, And remaining app is constructed with HTML5 and java Script. I didn't face any issues regarding rhomobile.
intially we faced memory issues, But later on we resolved this issue by implementing local storage for our App. For android it wont supports local storage so we used Rhom Storage only for Android Device.
Sounds like a project doomed to fail.
If I were you, I'd build a mobile-friendly site for all 3 platforms if deadline is tight. What native features do you even need, first off? If it's something like a camera, you're better off just build a native app for all 3.