I am going to develop an application which will be cross platform and it will be released for IOS and Android.
My App will be using network connectivity and communicate with the server and it has to be fast, reliable and responsive.
So my Question is: If i choose Adobe Flex to build that app for IOS and Android, So will there be any performance issues?
If no then why people use xcode or android sdk?
What are the disadvantages of using Adobe Flex over xCode and Andoid SDK?
Generally speaking, if you use a cross-platform "write it once and build for many platforms" tool you likely will give up the ability to take advantage of some (or all?) device- or platform-specific features. You are, in effect, choosing a lowest common denominator sort of solution. That is to say, you have available to you only the platform features available on ALL the platforms you are targeting.
Building a native app -- that is, using Xcode to build an iOS app and using the Android SDK to build an Android app -- gives you complete access to all of a given platform's specific features and capabilities, thereby ensuring the best user experience on each platform.
This is now my opinion: Native apps are better, simply because they present the user with a native experience -- an experience that will feel familiar to them as a user of the platform. When you choose to use a cross-platform tool you are actively choosing to give your user a less-than-ideal experience on their device, but YOU saved some time (maybe) getting your app to market. Who's the winner?
In my job, my boss and I had a specific conversation about this. We have native iOS and Android apps, on purpose, because we didn't want to give up platform-specific features. We wanted each app to give the best experience it could on its platform. We specifically agreed that a cross-platform solution was not the way we wanted to go.
Depending on what you are building, Air is a great platform for developing cross-platform mobile applications. Despite recent news that the Flash player is no longer being developed for mobile browsers, the native story remains strong. Plus, having seen native IOS, native Android and Flex development, the Flex platform is much better when it comes to the ease of development. With high-level features like data binding, visual state management, a solid component/skinning model, transitioning model, etc, it is a generation or two ahead of iOS and Android (IMO).
If you are using Flex for mobile (iOS/Android/Playbook), you get a common look/feel across all mobile devices. #MarkGranoff suggested that the user experience is downgraded when using an approach, but I'd challenge that.
Although I agree that an out-of-the-box styling of the UI components in Air feels a tad off, I don't recommend that anyone build apps that way anyways. Instead, create an app that looks like your app. There have been many applications that don't conform to the native look/feel of iOS or Android but are still quality from an aesthetic and UX perspective.
There is something to be said for an app that looks/behaves the same across all platforms. I can tell you this much... the user doesn't really care. If it looks good, feels good and does what they want, they are happy.
The Flex Mobile SDK uses a lot of the same UI paradigms (especially in the soon-to-be-released version of the SDK) and it is getting better. I wouldn't discredit it. You can save a lot of money and time using something like Flex Mobile.
You can use Flex to compile to AIR for iOS or android.
The performance of AIR vs Objective C or Java is significantly slower.
The advantage of using AIR is to have one cod base delivered to two platforms.
But if you have the know-how, Objective C and Java are better suited to development on their respective platforms. However many successful apps have been launched on iOS and Android using AIR. If you want to know if it would work for you I would seek out those apps in iTunes and Android Market and see how they perform for you.
If you app is not a game it will likely work fine. And if you app is a simple game it could also work fine.
Also remember there are other multi=platform development tools to choose from, like phone gap, or appcellerator:
http://www.appcelerator.com/
http://phonegap.com/
or even Unity 3D:
http://unity3d.com/
UPDATE:
Since this original answer in Novemer 2011, Adobe has made significant improvements to AIR for iOS and Android. Petformance problems are negligible unless you are doign somethign very instinsive such as large image processing.
Likewise, Unity3D has improved a lot too. It's an excellent choice for games that are 2D or 3D.
if you are using Air to develop cross platform apps, you should notice the following facts:
1) you don't have access to native features (but you can use Air Native Extensions to by pass this problem)
2) performance is slower than native apps (but you can use Starling framework to use GPU power in devices which will increases the performance a lot!)
the bottom line is that building mobile apps using AS3 and Flex/Air SDK is the best solution you can think of and the performance if using starling is much higher than native apps!
I don't think you can use Adobe Flex on iOS. Another cross platform solution to investigate would be HTML5. If you can afford it, the best solution might be to implement it twice, once with xcode for iOS and once with Android for Android.
Related
Microsoft has introduced his new Visual Studio, with compatibility to develop multi-platform applications for Android, iOS and windows.
This is a very good news, for developers, that a large and reliable company produced such a thing. It can make life easier, a lot.
But, as you know, there are always disadvantages when you get advantages. So I want to know:
1) What is the difference between developing native apps for each platform, and using this kind of tools? What is the disadvantage compared to using for example Objective-C or Java for iOS and Android separately?
2) Is there any dependencies in order to running developed apps on different OSs? Something like .NET framework?
3) Is there any performance cost? Or works just like native ones?
4) What kind of apps are supposed to be developed with such tools?
In my point of view , this not good idea to develop android or ios application in XAMARIN. First of all performance issue occurs. You can not achieve performance like native application.
There are some dependencies like Xamarin compiles C# to native code, but still relies on the Mono runtime to do a lot of its work.
Native, no cheating – this is native. But there is an overhead, it isn’t like ObjectiveC native. The apps are going to be larger – this minor stuff matters when you are trying to get the max oomph out of your very resource restrictive mobile device.
You still need a mac for ios:-)
A huge emphasis on better app patterns like MVC or MVVM, because user interface is still native. You can write about 70% reusable code using Xamarin, but the last 30% or more depending upon your app design and nature, has to be native.
Generally speaking, in my experience, I’ve had better luck finding support and code samples for native, than for Xamarin.
And like I said, you still need to know ObjectiveC and Java – even if you are using Xamarin.
And Visual Studio + Xamarin = $$$$$. Plus a Xamarin developed product, while superior than HTML5 and Packaged HTML5, is going to cost you more. You have to evaluate if your needs justify the cost.
However, in practical application, I don't think it is very useful. Consider this... If you are coding in C# then this code has to be translated into objective-C or Java, and that translation depends on the Xamarin SDK. If Apple releases 4,000 new APIs in the next release of iOS tomorrow, how long will it be before the Xamarin API allows you to call those native APIs? And multiplied by two if adding Java. If you can't wait, then you code what you can in C#, and then write native code for the rest, but now you are supporting three code bases, and the advantage of Xamarin flys out the window.
I provide some links of debate on this topic
http://willowtreeapps.com/blog/xamarin-or-native-development-tools-for-ios-android-projects/
Android Xamarin limitation
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/limitations/
https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/121874-5848849341191569409
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-people-build-native-mobile-applications-for-Android-iOS-using-Java-Objective-C-when-they-could-use-Xamarin-C-for-all-platforms-if-license-cost-isnt-an-issue
Why I Don’t Recommend Xamarin for Mobile Development
Can anybody give me some pointers when to us a native Android app and when to go for a Hybrid model using HTML5 ....can anyone tell the pros and cons of each model.
Choosing the native app means you target the specific device platform, but with a hybrid app you can target your user audience.
Pros of native app:
-outstandig UI effects (you should go this way in case of developing games)
Cons of native app:
-targeting more platforms means rewriting the app and maintaining more codebase
Pros of hybrid app:
-time-to-market factor
-low learning-curve (having experience in webdevelopment makes it even easier)
-normally it's easy to integrate with the customer's existing data-sources and workflows
Cons of hybrid app:
-having many years of experience in enterprise application development causes the feeling that the right dev-tools are still missing
More and more companies realize that HTML5 hybrid application model is essential to implement Line-of-Business application on mobile platform and you can find more-and-mode opensource libraries to build a really responsive app to your customers.
I can see only two risks of hybrid applications, which can be easily avoided:
-Developers often test hybrid applications in HTML5-capable desktop browsers. This can cause serious performance issues in the deployed application. So the dev-team should do day-to-day tests on real mobile devices.
-You can easily be stuck to a particular framework (Ex. Sencha Touch). Try to prefer using libraries to building application on a specific framework, so you can stay agile and adopt to changing business requirements quickly.
There are two schools of thought here..
1. cross platform is good
2. cross platform is the least of all things.
When you go for cross platform, you miss out on the specifics of the platform. Years ago I coded for blackberry, but opted to go with J2ME without the blackberry extensions.
This meant my code ran on most java phones. But at the same time, I couldn't make use of the file system on the blackberry, because there were no files in the J2ME world.
I could hand code buttons and draw on screen the way I wanted, but I couldn't make use of some of the RIM_JAVA screen classes.
So I got an app that looked and ran the same on smart phones, but didn't take advantage of the RIM hardware. It was a trade off that I was happy to make, because of my target users. If I'd needed some of the RIM specifics, though, I'd have had to have pulled them in, at the expense of a portable application.
It's a coin toss.. If you go with generic, then you get all the common and therefore reach a larger market. But at the same time you don't really get the most out of the hardware.
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.
I'm instructed to develop a project in such a way that it is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry OS platform all at once. A herculean task!! indeed...
I am searching for all the possible development platforms for this assignment. I came across Flex 4.5.1 and the initial thoughts are really positive. Somewhere in SO I read that flex applications suffer from code bloating problem. I dont want such solution; infact memory is an important concern for me.
I want to know which one of the following is the optimum approach:
Developing using OS specific SDK i.e. xCode for iPhone, Andriod SDK for Android.
Developing using Flex builder and ignore code bloating.
Using Flash Builder and developing application in ActionScript.
I would also love to know if there is any other platform / language / API available for me...
Thanks for your time,
Flash Player's ubiquitous delivery makes developing and packaging mobile applications easy; however, HTML5 / JavaScript platforms such as PhoneGap would also enable rapid cross platform delivery.
Flex is heavier than Pure ActionScript. Depending on what you're developing, Flash Professional or a pure ActionScript project in Flash Builder may meet needs in a very lean and performant manner.
few days back I also asked a similar question here on SO and unfortunately so far I have not got the answer I wanted. (question is still open and you can share your findings with me there..)
Regarding your questions about Flex 4.5.1, I would like to say it is very neat and nearly perfect programming platform and learning it is quite simple. The Support & training available from Adobe is just awesome. You can easily get confidence in just few weeks. See an Excellent Downloadable tutorial, I would suggest you follow it for initial weeks.
In Flex, We Program in .mxml files and ActionScripts(.as) ... *.mxml files are converted to ActionScript during compilation. To increase the efficiency you can directly program in ActionScripts once you understand how they actually work. (Which I am trying to learn now.)
I am not sure about C/ C++ but Flex definitely supports some other languages i.e. Java, PHP etc. For Java developers like me another surprisingly good thing is that Flex can be integrated with Spring also.
Share your findings about Flex..
There are a quite a few cross platform mobile development tools
phoneGap
Appcelerator
Rho mobile
Mosync
Sencha
Corona
WidgetPad
Each one has their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, the applications built using phoneGap uses a html view to show the UI while Appcelerator uses native UI components which offers better UI responsiveness. Some are free and some are not. So you need to decide on your requirements and choose a framework.
If you like HTML5/JavaScript and want to extend it with C++ then you should try MoSync, it gives you the flexibility to blend them all if you so like. You can find out more at mosync.com.
So I know that adobe (or someone else) now provides a way to port your flex app to iphone. This seems to be a good solution when you want to create a multi-platform app that you can port to 3 top mobile OS. I am just wondering however. What are the downside? I am sure that doing it in flex is not as performant as doing it in obj-c or java. But how bad can it get? Are there other downside of doing it in Flex? (vs obj-c for iphone/java for android and bb)
What are the downside?
Here are a few considerations:
Performance is one consideration. It seems unlikely that Flash / AIR will ever run as as performant as an optimized Native application. That last part is not unique to mobile, though. The lower level you go, the better performance you can get. C will run better than ActionScript. Assembly code will run better than C. Machine code will run better than Assembly.
No Access to native APIs is another one. In-app billing and contacts are two common requests I see. AIR 3 has introduced Native Extensions as a way to combat this. However, to create a native extension you're going to have to write native code and compile it in a special way to expose it to the AIR runtime. It is possible, over time, that a bunch of people creative Native Extensions that you'll be able to use so you don't have to do the dirty work yourself.
The dependency on an external runtime is another limiting factor for some. What if the user has an old version of AIR and has issues installing your app? In AIR 3, Adobe introduced something called Captive Runtime to combat this. It bundles the runtime as part of the app. It adds about 8MB to the size of the app, but removes the external dependency. Captive Runtime is the only way to deploy to iOS.
Those are the primary limitations I see. I think building with Flex/Flash brings a lot of benefits, but biggest being the ability to deploy easily to multiple platforms. If you're already knowledgeable about Flash/AS3; building Mobile Apps with that seems like a logical choice.
You will surely have to fine tune your flex application to each platform if you want good performance.
You have to weight what is more important to you; going with flex will enable me to do one application and be able to use it on 3 platforms, meaning fast prototyping on all platforms but it might cause some headaches or do you want to write your application for each platform, making it more performant, robust and will be able to use platform specific features to your advantage?
You can start by doing a working prototype in flex, test it on the different platforms and eventually, if/as need be, build a platform specific along the way.