Somewhat related to this question I just asked, but I know it isn't good to have multiple questions in one, so making a separate question.
I know Licenses Comparison shows that it is available on all versions (even free) of Unity on all platforms in that list. However, I've found other mistakes/misleading info in that list, so I'd rather hear from someone with experience or someone from Unity.
Also, if I do end up using WWW, I'd need to use a long-polling design (where server waits several seconds, even minutes to reply). Any issues I'll run in to on different platforms?
Main platforms I know I need to target: Windows Store 8 (Surface RT), iOS, Android -- tablets and phones -- probably desktops later (Windows and Mac)
WWW reference
EDIT: I'll be using HTTP and HTTPS in case not obvious (not file: or ftp: protocols).
I have used the WWW-class on PC standalone and Android builds. It worked well with both text and textures. Only platform that requires additional tweaking, that I know of, is the web player where you have to add crossdomain-settings for fetching files.
Related
Chrome is on the verge of definitly break compatability with NPAPI, and IE breaking with ActiveX the future of Java Applets is dark. Currenty we actively use a secure applet for out client organizations that enables their users to upload a bunch of files from their file system to our servers with the click of a button. The applet has full access to any configured drive, including network drives.
With the imminent death of the applet this functionality is going to be lost if we don't find an alternative. I have already tried to explore different solutions, including the chrome FileSystem API but that is currently only available for Chrome (http://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem) and has limited access.
Does anybody know about an alternative to keep supporting the much appreciated functionality? Unfortunately we are obligated to support all browser down to IE8.
I've written a post about this here.
Once Google Chrome was the first to announce that they won’t be supporting NPAPI anymore, they were also the first to provide a new architecture in order to rewrite your code to work on their browser. You can take a look on Native Messaging, which “can exchange messages with native applications using an API that is similar to the other message passing APIs”. The problem is that this approach only works on Chrome, is not something that you can adapt to other browsers.
A more useful approach is FireBreath, a browser plugin in a post NPAPI world. Check the words below from one buddy of the project:
“FireBreath 2 will allow you to write a plugin that works in NPAPI, ActiveX, or through Native Messaging; it’s getting close to ready to go into beta. It doesn’t have any kind of real drawing support, but would work for what you describe. The install process is a bit of a pain, but it works. The FireWyrm protocol that the native messaging component uses could be used with any connection that allows passing text data; it should be possible to make it work with js-ctypes on firefox or plausibly WEB-RTC or even CORS AJAX in some way. For now the only thing we needed to solve was Chrome, but we did it in a way that should be pretty portable to other technologies.”
In light of the answer provided by Uly Marins I have researched the options suggested. Unfortunately these options weren't viable for our application, because the mayority of our users do not have sufficient rights to install third party plugins. Additionally the API is still in Beta which won't do any good in a stable production environment.
The main problem we wanted to solve was the abbility to delete files from the accessed folders. It seemed like one of the mayor goals of the removal of the NPAPI support was exactly to prevent this kind of possibility. Therefore we needed to reduce our goals to a simple solution that was still acceptable for our users, with the additional training on how to clear the selected folder manually (because most of our users are almost computer illiterate and needed to access network folders).
Long answer short. The requested solution is just not possible anymore and had to be replaced by a simpler solution and additional training.
Can a Flex application that was designed for use on a PC be run on an iPad, iPhone, or Android-based mobile device?
Seems like a simple enough question. Visiting http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html yields a picture of a dude running a (presumably) Flex application on an Android. So at first glance, the answer would appear to be "yes." End of story.
but yet…
There is so much (mis)information out there on various tech sites that suggest Flash-based technologies simply won't run on iOS or other mobile platforms. Why is this? Perhaps they mean to say that Flex won't run "out of the box" and requires a plugin? Or do they mean it won't run at all?
Every time I think I've reached a definitive conclusion, some post on SlashDot or CNET directly contradicts it. So what's the scoop? Can one take an existing Flex application and run it on iOS/Android? (I realize there are screen size issues to consider so the app might not run effectively. I just want to know if the runtimes are available on the mobile devices to allow the Flex app to launch at all.)
Sorry for the noob question. My background is WPF / HTML5. Adobe technologies are completely foreign to me.
I wrote a lot below if you'd like to read it enjoy, if not sorry for taking your valuable bytes :) I directly answered the questions up here first:
Why is this?
It's a confusing matter read below for the why details.
Perhaps they mean to say that Flex won't run "out of the box" and requires a plugin?
Or do they mean it won't run at all?
Using the flash builder tools (the bin folder in the SDK) you can compile for native desktop application, desktop web browsers, native iOS application, native Android application. Android with FlashPlayer plugin installed will show Flash content within the web browser, iOS will only run the ones compiled with AIR, not in the the web browser but as a native app.
Every time I think I've reached a definitive conclusion, some post on SlashDot or CNET directly contradicts it. So what's the scoop? Can one take an existing Flex application and run it on iOS/Android?
Yes, if using AIR and run as a native app on all three platforms (the desktop Flex API is for the most part a superset of the web Flex API), your other points about performance and form factor are valid and should be considered though. The nice thing is you can write your model/controller code in a common library in AS3 then write separate presentation layer interfaces that all share the library.
Here's the very long version:
Using the flash compiler results in "bytecode" in the form of a file with a swf extension using the swf format, you can read a ton more about that here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html
To interpret the file you need some sort of run-time similar to some degree to running WPF/XAML/C# within a .NET framework context (either desktop or using silverlight on the web). In the case of adobe technologies (rough equivalence):
AS3 = C#
MXML = XAML
Flex = WPF+WCF (client side RPC not server side)
Flash Player = Silverlight
AIR (Adobe integrated runtime) = .NET
Framework Redistributable .dll(s)/.so(s) for desktop OSes
(Read this list very loosely please, I know XAML is preserved in the MSIL or whatever which is different because MXML is compiled to AS3 and only if a debug flag is set on the compiler does it include the debugging symbols, there's certainly tons of differences but I think this is an easy and correct enough model to use)
On iOS the browser does not allow for plugins in the traditional sense of netscape browser plugins or ActiveX plugins. For this reason you'll not be able to execute a plugin ie flashplayer or silverlight in the browser. Since Adobe did release a flashplayer for Android devices that does run in the browser it will work on those devices in the browser, however they have essentially thrown in the towel for supporting this long term, as they have to support the majority mobile device platform, iOS, in order to remain relevant (this was I think more a collective throwing in of the towel by Google, device manufacturers, carriers, Microsoft, all just following suit and trying to make the best business decision, WebKit and V8 or SpiderMonkey can probably do 99% of what Flash can do and better in some cases and WebKit will hopefully not splinter and will remain open source... frameworks and the browsers just need to get fleshed out and stabilized).
If the user installs AIR (or the runtime is packaged with the app) then a Flex/Flash (that is stuff coded in AS3 and/or MXML and compiled to a swf) can be transcoded/packaged to be interpreted by the run-time for that device correctly (be it iOS or Android or whatever RIM did, I don't think they have AIR for Windows Phone 7 and Win8 on ARM won't support browser plugins either). Part of the confusion is possibly from the fact that Apple denied the distribution of Apps that were "cross-compiled" which kept AIR out of the list of options for iOS for a good year, just after Adobe started announcing it was usable for that purpose (kicking Adobe while their down). Another part of the confusion probably comes from real vids of people who have 1 hacked their device or 2 were able to get open source alternatives to the flash player run-time to work on their iOS device (gnash was one I'm aware of from some occasional Linux tinkering, also possibly FAKE vids).
You can run Flex applications on mobile devices, but you cannot simply run any Flex project.
In Flash Builder ( Flex Ide) or in Flash Professional you can create mobile projects. These projects generate native applications for iOS and Android.
Last time I tried, the result and the available components where less than what I expected. So, if you can, I'll much recommend you go for something like Appcelerator.com or similar, which turns HTML5/Js code into native apps. I tried them, worked a lot better than Flex.
Short answer: No
Long answer: You can use Adobe's tools to compile your Flash/Flex app for use as a native iOS app. So you won't be able to embed the app in a web page like you normally could with Flex, but you can build it as a native app. Note you have to have Flash Builder 4.5 to do this.
It won't run on iPhone as a .swf file, but it will run on Android based devices that have adobe flash installed. It will also run on the BB playbook, which also has flash.
Flex is a framework.( Anyway it is very beutiful one which even sometime looks like complete different language ).
As soon as you are building AIR application it can run on various platforms like : Windows, iOS, Android, upcomming TV's, PlayBook, even .. into the future ( maybe/hopefuly ) on Windows Phone, plus Linux ( which AIR future is not very clear anyway ( but hopefuly Adobe will reconsider ) ).
So - application created with Flash Builder 4.5+ would probably run everywhere as soon as it is AIR application.
The compilation methoods is really simple, and you almost simultaneously compiling for everything you wanna to.
And one of the most important things here - your applications will run, work, look and feel the same way you were designed on one device. Flex is the thing which is responsible for everything to looks beutiful on each platform it is running.
For instance i am compiling currently for Android, and without even test i can clearly say that it will looks and feel the same way under iOS and Windows, and it will.
I have no up to date mobile phone personally, and we don't have any in our team to allow us to test mobile versions of our ASP.Net websites.
We have now been asked to provide a mobile version of our website (which is a fairly busy site) but I have no means to check the mobile pages.
Any suggestions? Are there emulators or would it better to have the real thing?
It's always better to have the real thing, but if that's not an option, I have used a plugin for FireFox called "User Agent Switcher"
Another route you could go is to get the Android SDK and load up an emulator. It runs a full version of android, so you could open the browser from there (You could also change screen size/device type) - a little more heavy than the first solution, but potentially another route worth exploring.
You can use simulators/emulators - Android, iPhone etc.
Well Apple provide an iOS emulator, which you can download in the developers section of Apple's own website.
Outside of that, the only other testing environment I'm aware of is Ripple, which is a plugin for Chrome, designed to emulate a range of mobile devices. You can find that at: http://ripple.tinyhippos.com/.
As others have answered there is a lot of different tools to do the testing and that is all fine to a certain extent, for daily testing by developers and testers.
But with 15 years of testing behind me I would never let the site go untested with a few different real devices if the site is an important service - usually this can be done with "staff" phones at no cost if the cost is the problem. I would more or less say; can your company live with publishing a site out there and there might be a risk it won't work on some mobile platforms?
DeviceAnywhere is the tool that we have used a lot. It provides you access to numerous mobile devices using which you can test both apps and websites. They have placed several physical devices which you can see and operate remotely.
It is always better to test on real devices instead of emulators. During development phase, emulators are helpful but for final delivery it is best to test on real phones. Mobile web browsers may or may not support HTML,CSS,JS completely and their individual implementation could be different.
Does anyone know of a commercial or free .NET CF library/component/api that I can use within my Windows Mobile 6 and .NET CF 3.5 application?
I need to: enumerate the list of available WiFi networks in range, connect and disconnect specific SSIDs/networks in the list, and manage switching between SSIDs programatically (e.g. I'm currently connected to "public1" and want to switch to "public2" to do some stuff, and then switch back to "public1").
I have tried the OpenNETCF library for this and it somewhat works, but it's crashing quite often with Native Exceptions, which I can't handle with a catch() in my C# code so they bubble up to the end user and they get a nasty windows crash screen with the "send" and "don't send" buttons.
OpenNETCF forums seem to be dead, with lots of posts but no replies to most of them, and the last release from those guys was way back in March 2009.
Last I remember the OpenNETCF code was decent and worked without any issues on a number of devices I tried it on. I certainly don't remember getting native exceptions from it.
Is it possible that you're working on a customised platform? It is possible that the real issue might be due to modifications made to your particular device / operating system.
IIRC we eventually switched to Summit cards for hardware or cost reasons which uses a different API but obviously an API that would only work with Summit cards.
I'm afraid I don't know of any other alternatives atm. Sorry. :(
According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa916070.aspx (DnsQuery_W), DNS query libraries are available on Windows Mobile / CE developers for versions 5.0 onwards. Yet, "#include " gives nasty "file not found" errors. What gives?
Strangely enough "dnsapi.lib" is available. Does Microsoft actually expect developers to scavenge the file from somewhere?..
The posted thread here claims that this API is not actually available in Windows Mobile 5 (and perhaps later?), despite claiming otherwise. I looked through the Mobile 5 and 6 SDKs, and didn't see this API either, so perhaps the thread's suggestion might work for you:
If it's a simple host name->IP address
(IPv4 or v6), you can use getnameinfo
in Winsock. The DNSQuery_W is only
needed if you're doing like a
non-A/AAAA query. If you're doing
that, we really don't have any helpers
to do that for you from the OS side -
sorry. You may look around to see if
there's helper library floating around
out there that you may be able to
recompile for CE (assuming you're
comfortable with whatever licensing
agreements they may put on you.)
getnameinfo should be documented here (for Windows Mobile), in case that helps.
If you are really after 'windns.h', I found it in the WM5/WM6/WM6.1 Platform Builders in
\public\common\sdk\inc
The hard part is getting access to the WM Platform Builder if your an ISV. That I can't help you with.