We are planning to go with Xamarin for our next big project.
Seems like Xamarin.Forms is mature enough to use with production projects.
But I still want to take input from you experts - should we go with Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin with MvvmCross architecture?
The project is big and critical for our customer.
We experimented with Xamarin.Forms about 18 months ago, so this experience may be dated, but we found Xamarin.Forms to be unsuitable for production projects. Granted, it is very quick to get basic data capture apps running on multiple platforms, but we found that inevitably the UI capabilities were so limited that we ended up having to write custom renderers all over the place, which complicated the code no end.
In my opinion, Xamarin.Forms tries to solve the multiple platforms problem in the wrong way - by trying to provide common wrappers around the UI elements in each platform. This means you'll always be able to do less with Xamarin.Forms than you would be able to do with Xamarin out of the box, and you will always be fighting with lowest-common-denominator implementations of the most common elements, while having to write your own code for more advanced UI.
By contrast, the MvvmCross approach aims to consolidate as much as possible of your business logic into a single library while leaving you free to do whatever you want in the UI of each platform. You can get as much as 80-90% of your code into a shared library while having complete freedom to implement the UI you want for each platform. It's a cleaner way to solve the multi-platform problem, IMO.
Xamarin.Forms is a bit of a different technology than MvvmCross. Everything depends on the size of project, how complicated the UI is. I recommend reading this article - it should give you some ideas.
Related
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this kind of questions because it is also a bit personal favor but what are your experiences with Xamarin UITest and/or Appium. Until now I only had experience with Appium but for our new project we maybe want to use Xamarin UITest.
Wrong answer, with Xamari UI Test framewor you can automate Progressive Mobile Apps, Hybrid apps a Native Apps, on Android and IOS
Some samples here:
[https://www.zuehlke.com/blog/en/mobile-ui-testing/][1]
We have a React Native app that we are currently testing with Xamarin UI Test, and I've spent quite a while comparing these test frameworks. It looks like our team is going to switch to Appium now. Here is what I like about Appium:
Much better documentation, more resources online
More features (which allows you to automate more stuff)
Runs slightly faster on Android (30% faster maybe), not seeing almost any difference with iOS
Bigger, more active community, less chance of framework becoming deprecated
Based on our experience it's more reliable. With Xamarin we kept getting "device port 27753 in use" or smth like that which we couldn't resolve.
More "device farm" options to run tests on. This is very important for us. With Xamarin the only options I've found are BitBar (flakey, adds about 5 minutes overhead to test runs) and Xamarin Test Cloud (expensive). With Appium there are more options (SauceLabs seems to be working great, we are only starting to use it though)
Allows you to choose from a lot of programming languages (our team is most comfortable with TypeScript)
Client-server architecture which allows test code to run on-premises (might not be a benefit to many teams, but it is to us), so the test code is able to access our internal APIs thanks to this
Firstly, SO is usually not the right place for such questions as such questions usually get closed as off-topic and primarily opinion based. Luckily, xamarin.uitest is a very unpopular tag, hence, your question survived :)
For what Xamarin.UITest does, its actually not bad. The biggest issue to consider is that Xamarin.UITest requires your app to be written using Xamarin.Forms and for me, personally, this is the biggest drawback.
Other issues, that I've encountered:
Scrolling is terribly slow
Limited API (Only basic UI properties can be evaluated, see here)
Minimal differences betqeen Android and iOS which can become really annoying, depending on your use case
Other than that, Xamarin.UITest is a pretty solid UI-testframework and if your app is written using Xamarin.Forms, I would recommend you to use Xamarin.UITest.
I've just discovered TideSDK and it seems to be a really great tool, but I have one requirement : I need to use some native code (for managing USB devices for example) and so I need communication between this native code and the web app, is such a thing possible with TideSDK?
Yes, working with native code in TideSDK is possible. Our SDK is modular and we have been reorganizing the code structurally to make it easier to do the sort of thing you want. At a modular level, you will be contending with support for multiple platforms typically.
A module should extend to all platforms that you are supporting. We expect to have documentation to help developers (familiar with native code) to better understand the SDK. This should include some module boilerplate to help you get started. At this point, we have yet to prepare this more detailed documentation. We have much to do and sometimes progress seems slow despite all the great efforts going into TideSDK.
TideSDK is a large and complex SDK but don't let this frighten you off. It is extensible and we will be shining light on this soon with module development guides. It would be cool to talk more on IRC about this with you so feel free to drop by at any time. Perhaps the functionality you are speaking of is of general use ie. to extend the APIs for everyone.
There are possibilities to work together with the core developers of TideSDK on modules and to contribute to this great open source project. Other possibilities also include sponsoring module development if this something that you need more immediately for a project. Hope this helps.
For an internship, I'm gonna have to develop a desktop application. The focus is creating a rich UI ( cool effects, sound etc ). Which tech should I go with ?
- Flash ? ( in this case, shoud I go with a flex project ? AIR ? what is the gain between this and a simple raw flash project )
- C#/Silverlight ?
Any other possibility ?
If experienced developers could give their advice, that would be great thanks.
The best technology to use is probably the one you're most familiar with, unless you mean you're going to be learning on the fly. But for the various options I'll take a stab.
Flash itself (the runtime) is a browser plugin, so that's not what you want, but if you build your application in Flash or Flex (the authoring tools), then you can publish it as an AIR application. AIR is also a runtime - basically it's Flash, plus a bunch of extra APIs for running outside the browser. The advantages to making an AIR app are:
The same app runs on win/mac/linux
You can make it with the same skills/tools you use for Flash (dubious utility if you don't have those skills/tools, of course)
Close tool integration with other Adobe tools (photoshop, after effects, etc.)
The main disadvantage is incomplete access to native (i.e. OS) capabilities. The way a runtime allows you to run the same app on win/mac/linux is by restricting you from doing some of the things that you could do with a native application.
As for Flex, whether you use Flex or not is a separate question. Flex is a framework within Flash - an AIR app can be made using Flex or not using it. Basically, if you expect your app to have a lot of controls, slider bars, charts, accordion panels, etc., you might look into Flex. If you expect it to have a lot of animations and pictures and sounds, plain-old-Flash may be better.
Apart from Flash, the other main choice for a runtime is Silverlight. The advantages there are, to be honest, basically the same. You use .NET instead of ActionScript, and the tooling integration is with MS' Expression suite instead of Adobe's creative suite, but the development process and the results are quite similar. The choice between AIR and Silverlight is really a choice between Adobe tools and MS tools, and between two programming languages of entirely comparable power. Most everyone simply uses the one they're more familiar with.
Finally, the other set of options is not to use a runtime, and to simply compile an app from any language/development environment you like - C, C++, .NET, Python, anything. The advantage here is you get (in general) full access to OS capabilities. The disadvantages are, you (in general) need to do extra development to run on multiple platforms, and also I don't think you'll find a language/environment that lets you work with multimedia as easily as you can in AIR and Silverlight.
Depends what programming languages are you proficient in. If you are .NET/C#/VB.NET guy go with SilverLight or WPF. If you know ActionScript, go with Adobe line of products.
My preference goes to the (slightly) most opened universe. Assumed that you know how to write Object-oriented programs, Adobe is using Eclipse as a base for his tools, using plugins.
Actionscript is just like Javascript syntax. You just have to learn the flex 4 libraries.
Then, publish you app as an Air desktop application that can run everywhere. Really everywhere
The only thing to know about MS tools and languages and libraries is that they are very well designed and usable. and it runs on Win and mac also. and Only.
If the main request is to have a rich UI the simplest approach is to build a Flex application running under Adobe AIR platform. The answer to the questions Flash or Flex is very simple: if you are a designer go with Flash, if you are a developer stay away from Flash and use Flex. The Flex framework was created for developers, and is really hard to replicate all its features in Flash (think only what you have to do in Flash if you want to resize your app).
On the other hand if you are coming from a .NET background it will make more sense to stick with Silverlight/C#
I'm not sure if this helps but I'm developing in Flex and now I have started to learn Silverlight and I can say that developing in Flex Builder is much more faster then developing in Silverlight( Visual Studios ) . For me Flex Builder is much better because you use only one IDE to develop both back and front end. And that's when it comes to web development. If you want to do desktop applications then you do the same thing and a plus is that you get everything in only one file. You also have a small SQL database that comes with it.
But on the other hand when you develop in Silverlight you have to use several IDE's or tools outside Visual Studios to make awesome graphics. But if you want to have more time for design then I would suggest to use Flex Builder and not Silverlight.
This is not a pure technical question, but I believe answers will help the RIA community.
We are a software development company working on development of a stock trading product. We chose to use Adobe Flex (in mid of 2008) due to its browser penetration and its maturity relative to Silverlight. We already developed the system, and we are quite happy with it.
Now we are planning to launch the second version of our product, and it will feature a much more advanced user interface -- basically a framework of dockable windows and panes as in Visual Studio 2005 and onward, etc. We searched on the internet and found that the market of 3rd party components for Adobe Flex is still very small, but for Microsoft's Silverlight there are many advanced 3rd party components available e.g. data grids, docking frameworks, etc.
When can we expect the same type of components in Adobe Flex? What do experts think if we develop to the new version of Silverlight (Expertise in Adobe Flex vs. Silverlight is not an issue at the moment, assuming we have to develop everything from scratch).
The launch of next version is expected to be in mid 2010. Any feedback regarding this is highly appreciated.
I can tell you from direct experience that Flex is a more productive platform. I work for a large RIA consultancy that builds a large number of apps with both Flex and Silverlight and we see that equivalent functionality in SL takes about 10-20% longer to develop than in Flex. Data binding support in Flex is significantly easier to use than in SL. I can also tell you that a suitably-experienced Flex developer could easily build a MDI toolkit in Flex with a couple of weeks of development time. So I would advise you to consider hiring experienced Flex developers rather than shelling out money for SL components.
SL does have a big advantage in that C# can be used on both the client and server and business logic can be reused in both tiers. This is significant and should not be discounted. ActionScript doesn't have a server-side counterpart and lacks this ability, although Flex does play nicely with a number of different backend technologies, especially Java using BlazeDS. Silverlight services integration has a variety of options on the .NET side (see Bart's comment below) while Flex can use very performant AMF in both RPC and data push (messaging). BlazeDS is free and open source.
I also think basing your decision for a development platform solely off the availability of 3rd party components is not a great idea. Putting that aside, MS platforms have always had a huge number of component development shops and a wide variety of components to choose from. It's likely even with a smaller market share that SL will have a bigger selection of 3rd party components than Flex moving forward.
Finally, I don't think MS is going to be giving up on Silverlight anytime soon. They are aggressively developing new features for SL4 and the Blend tool offers some innovations for designer/developer interactions that even Adobe is struggling to match with their new Catalyst tool.
If you have to make the decision today, I'd say go with Flex, especially for a public-facing application where you don't want to lose users because they can't or won't install the SL plugin. In 12-18 months I'm confident that SL will give Flex a much bigger run for its money but I don't think it's there, yet.
Although I cannot give you the desired answer, I hope I can give you a couple of good questions and ideas that maybe help you in the process:
City Coder: Flex 3 versus Silverlight 3 in Enterprise development
Microsoft Silverlight vs. Adobe AIR/Flex Debate
I personally think, that Adobe Flash is going to lose a noticeable user base in the near future duo to new features in the upcoming html 5.0 standard. Furthermore I prefer the tools (Visual Studio), addons and languages (C#) over the Adobe equivalents and I would consider these superior. However I have to emphasis that this is only from my perspective.. :)
A few people in this thread assume that you can't develop Flex or Flash-based projects with Visual Studio. From 30th August, 2010 that is no longer true. You may want to look at Amethyst which is a VS visual (drag+drop) Flash Platform IDE with a multi-process debugger, IntelliSense and refactoring: http://www.sapphiresteel.com
best wishes
Huw
actually i am also thorn between the 2. in fact, i still considered Flash, but sort of struck that off because thats more for animations rather than RIAs. with Flex, theres AIR to enable deployment in both desktop and web, tho i havent tried it and dunno how easy isit to use. and i also am not sure if Silverlight can be used as a desktop app anyone?
comparing Flex and Silverlight, i dont think we shld just base our judgment on what is more widely used now. Silverlight maybe something good!
just starting exploring the 2 and find Silverlight's XAML markup more intuitive than Flex mxml. further more Silverlight will integrate with C# which is getting better with LINQ and all. so data binding, an important part of any RIA is better. for Flex, one can probably link up with something like PHP with AMF but seems abit harder from what i saw. that said i am not really familiar with both.
UPDATE: and Flex is open source now while Silverlight closed right? so Flex can be said to be cheaper to use.
One thing to consider is Microsoft's dedication to Silverlight. Silverlight is not taking off. How long are they going to stick with it? If the next version of Silverlight doesn't get significant market penetration, is Microsoft going to continue supporting it?
Even if they do stick with it, and even if it does take off, are they going to do like they did with Internet Explorer: develop it into the most awesome browser available at the time with IE6, and then coast for 5+ years and become a major thorn in developers' hides?
Silverlight doesn't have a lot to do with Windows. People using Silverlight does not make Microsoft much money. There's not an especially compelling business case for MS to push Silverlight.
Silverlight doesn't offer anything to the users that Flash doesn't. It's the users that are going to drive Silverlight adoption, and until there's a compelling case for me to install it on my computer (which it's not, incidentally), it's staying off.
Flex is a natural companion to Flash, which is one of Adobe's flagship products. Adobe's not going to drop Flex. Even if they did, it's entirely open-source, and Flex development could quite definitely proceed even if Adobe fell into the ocean tomorrow. (Flash runtime is not open source, unfortunately, but it's a quite good multiplatform implementation of a mostly open SWF standard, with open source implementations progressing)
I work in a .NET/Flash shop. We use Flex to talk to a .NET back-end. It can be a pain in the ass to get them to interoperate (although not impossible). I like .NET. It would be great to be able to develop our front-end in C#. I would love it. But we're not willing to bet the farm on Silverlight, given MS's technology parade.
One of the most important thing in our decision on our future RIA technology is RTL support (specifically Arabic). I am very disappointed to hear that Arabic(RTL) is still not supported in Silverlight 3.0, on the other hand it is now supported on Adobe Flex 4. and I don't want to apply all non-standard tricks again that we used in our existing version of application (which is based on Flex 3). so Now One problem is solved in Flex but still remains in Silverlight... and still no docking framework in Flex, so it is going to be stalemate I guess.. :).
I will keep you updated regarding any new findings of our research...
One word (or two) --> "Open-source"
The world is going open source. Think android vs apple
How will you run applications for clients on Linux platform with any amount of confidence.
Right now I am not a netflix customer because no "Moonlight" support.
I have three computers at home all running Linux (Cannot shellout money to buy Windoze license) !
Think target market (and where it will be in the next few yrs)
Flex is more compatible with browsers, as it runs on top of Flash. Silverlight, however, needs to be downloaded, which might be a problem for users behind a proxy or network (in a workplace, for example, you can't install things). Flex also has a better framework than Silverlight, so you can customize a component in a few clicks and keystrokes.
I agree with you that VS and C# are more mature than their Flex counterparts (FB3 and ActionScript, respectively), but you'll get used to it quickly.
Then again, I am a Flex developer, and not a Silverlight developer, so my opinion can be somewhat biased. However, I did choose Flex over Silverlight because I thought that it was more compatible (nearly everyone has Flash Player) and has better support than Silverlight, and I don't regret my decision thus far.
If it is a stock trading product, does it stream the stock price in real-time? If it does, the cost of streaming the data will make some difference.
Both of them support some kind of data push (RTMP vs. Socket) and smart polling (RTMPT/RTMPS vs. HttpDuplexPollingChannel).
Infrastructural cost: Flex uses LCDS/BlazeDS while Silverlight uses IIS.
Development cost: RTMP/RTMPT/RTMPS is already defined (and cannot be changed) while you need to define your own protocol for socket (you need to handle security and compression yourself)
From programming perspective, Silverlight should be better since XAML is drawing the interface and C# updates the state of XAML components. There are plenty of C# developers and Expression Studio to create the XAML components.
MXML is relative simple and you need Flash to draw the fancy UI. You can wait for Flex 4 (in beta) with FXG support, however. Then, it might get better support for third-party components.
If you have expertise on both products is hard to say, from my side having an IDE like Visual Studio is a plus (I'm a .net developer), and using the same language on server (services) and client side it's something that makes me feel quite comfortable.
I would say... go for a Proof of Concept, take a week, make two teams (same level approx.), and check in a week (without any formal testing, or formal designing) to progress in Flex and SL (for the third parties they can take advante of all the trial versions). After that week check how far the have gone and their findings.
A waste of time one week? Try to focus as a live wireframe for your final app.
Good luck
Braulio
I don't think I could speculate on when or if Flex will have a similar number of 3rd party components. Many of the Silverlight components developed by companies like Telerik and DevExpress are ports or updates of existing .NET components. You might want to do a survey of companies that develop components for other Adobe products and ask on their forums if they plan to release a Flex product. Aside from that all I have to go on is what's available today and it sounds like you've already done the research on existing technologies. Good luck!
I have worked a bit with Flex but being more .Net oriented I can't say Flex can get any close to Silverlight in terms of developing business apps. Specially with RIA Services V2 and all the suit of .Net framework and visual studio everything is so integrated and professional.
The only reason I would consider not using Silverlight is if the product has public audience and you are going to loose customers due to low penetration of silverlight.
Ther is flex dock : http://code.google.com/p/flexdock/
And there is dock able flex : http://code.google.com/p/dockableflex/
One of the stated goals of the PureMVC framework is to avoid platform dependencies in order to be portable. Considering that because of language and API differences application code will always be heavily dependent on the platform, and that avoiding platform dependencies makes the framework reinvent the wheel and/or only provide a least-common-denominator feature set, in what way does the portability of the framework benefit me as an application developer?
I've worked with PureMVC. They're trying to implement their stuff in quite a lot of languages. You may be right about the least common denominator, but overall, it's not a bad framework, and I've seen a really nice AS3 app in PureMVC.
I don't think they're talking about portability in terms of porting actual code. The idea there is more that you're using a generalized MVC architecture, which you could apply to other projects and other languages.
They're trying to say that if you become familiar with the PureMVC pattern, you could potentially come into a new PureMVC codebase, even if it's another language, and you would already know the lay of the land.
You might also say that developers who develop good PureMVC skills are likely to develop good habits which will translate as they go from language to language. But then again, maybe not.. for the reasons you mentioned.
We've been using PureMVC on two projects now and in my opinion the attempted language-independence is quite a burden.
The promise of jumping straight in a project because the framework is already know does not seem relevant to me if the languages are not already pretty similar (C# to java would make sense, as3 to php not) -- I agree that it is useful to have known ways of solving things, but for that the 'plain' patterns are good enough.
However, I also don't really agree with the usage of the various patterns the project uses, so our choice to not use it on the next project might be related to both issues, and not just the attempt at language/platform independence.
PureMVC's portability will help you when you migrate to or reimplement in another language.
I can't count the number of platforms and languages I've written code for that are now extinct and for which, even if I still had the source code it would be mostly worthless and have to be rewritten from the ground up today, since the code was usually 100% platform specific.
But all application code need not be heavily dependent upon the platform. View components and services (the boundaries of your application) will necessarily be, but your application logic which is sandwiched between the boundaries need not be.
The scope of PureMVC is really quite narrow; merely to help you split your code into the three tiers proscribed by the MVC meta-pattern. There is no reason why this code has to be tied deeply to your platform in order to be optimal.
When it comes time to migrate, you'll appreciate that the framework actors and their roles, responsibilities and collaborations remain the same. This leaves you to deal with syntactic differences of the language, recreating the view components and services. At least you won't have to completely re-architect.
And for the case of reimplementing in a different language, imagine you're trying to capture a significant part of the mobile market with your app. The market is so fractured, you'll have to implement the same program on 2 or more of Windows Mobile, iPhone, Flash, and Java. Sure you'll probably have separate teams in charge of the apps, but why have a totally different architecture? With PureMVC, you could have a single architecture for all versions of your application.
-=Cliff>
PureMVC is the only real option for Flash Platform developers who choose not to use the Flex Framework. For certain projects the size cost of Flex is too expensive (it happens!).
I like to prototype in Flex and then rip it out and replace my views with custom components when the application is near completion. PureMVC makes this really easy to do with it's Mediator pattern. I'm not sure there is any other framework that would allow me this workflow.
Personally, I think PureMVC went too far with it's portability goals: I enjoy that fact that it works with Flash AND Flex (for the reasons mentioned above), but feel that it should have stopped there, and made use of the native Flash Player event architecture.
Are there examples of people using PureMVC to build and port applications across multiple platforms?
My company is building a Flex application that we may need to port to other platforms:
Silverlight (likely)
Mobile (maybe)
Desktop (maybe -- not just AIR!)
TV sets (maybe eventually)
I am considering PureMVC as a framework if it can ease porting and maintenance. I am curious to know if other people have ported a PureMVC app to a different platform and what their experience was with porting and then having development proceed in parallel for the app on multiple platforms.
Cheers,
Karthik
PureMVC does not rely on a platform for its internal workings (Flash Events etc).
So, while it does not make porting any easier per-say, it can assist simply by showing us its friendly and familiar face wherever we may choose to go ;-)