So GWT best practices encourages one to use some flavour of MVP, which should in theory allow one to write different native views while sharing the presenter business logic.
This seems to be at the heart of the GWT spin off Google project http://code.google.com/p/j2objc/ which converts the non-UI part of your code to Objective-C, allowing you to write the rest natively in Objective-C.
So my question is: If this really hard part of the puzzle is being solved, how hard would it be to include an HTML5 mobile library (like MGWT or Touch4j [Sencha]) into this MVP pipeline to have the best of all worlds?
Having dabbled with http://code.google.com/p/playn/ , this clearly seems to be the blue-print for having a cross-plaftform build system (native android & html5 & java &...), but that project is geared for single screen drawing and event loop for game dynamics and doesn't allow for keyboard input and other typical mobile goodies.
It seems a shame that if so much of the problem has been solved, that it's not possible to go the extra mile. The answer to this question would be the best plan for actioning a solution, including such nigglies as which MVP structure to choose that would ease accommodation of the various widget libraries (GWTP vs MVP 2.1), and if the best approach is to start with the PlayN code base, and start to hack it.. what are the gotchas? Or if another path is chosen, why that one? and why would it be the best??
Thanx a lot. :-)
It is not clear whether your question is - evaluation options for multi-platform app development or mvp.
You can evaluate additional technology which are used with Sencha and GWT
1) mgwt
2) titanium
3) phonegap
You can also reference - Creating a mobile app using Google App Engine and GWT?
Note: PlayN as you mention is more of gaming platform and not suitable for business app.
MVP is definitely doable... and at times you may feel like its a lot of work, but it pays off in the end. Check out the Touch4j Kitchen Sink, which is written using MVP. You can take that down to the device with Cordova if you wish. The code is on GitHub:
https://github.com/emitrom/touch4jks
The repo is actively being worked on (we are updating ourselves to Touch4j 4.0) so it won't run out the gate, but at least you can see and follow the model :-)
Titanium4j is to Appcelerator's Titanium as Touch4j is to Sencha Touch. You may want to check that out as well. Titanium4j and Touch4j rely on GWT.
Cheers.
Related
So, my aunt wants me to make an app to help people create lists and be more organized. It would also have pre-made lists and tips that occasionally appear. We both want it to be for iOS and Android. Does anyone have recommendations for what software I could use to create something like that? One other thing to note: I can't use XCode because I'm not a mac user. Thank you for your input.
This question depends a lot in preference and personal opinion...
Unity is my personal favorite tool to deploy in multiple platforms and even if its a game engine I have used it for simple user interface aplications with very little effort and bug count... the withdrawals are that you use a "lot" to make so little... the whole physics engine does nothing and the apk weigths at least 20Mb ... but its a very simple tool that could do the job in a couple of days having little experience and thats what i like about it.... theres also Xamarin C# , Android studio... React.. Depends a lot on your liking...and personal preference.
If I were you, I would go for React Native it is a mobile apps building framework using only Javascript!
Here is a showcase of real-world apps using RN: Who's using React Native?
I'm working on a new project for a Fintech company and I have been tasked with looking into whether we should go with React Native or native Swift/Objective-C/Java for our mobile app development technology and strategy going forward.
I have done loads of research into this and have read many of the case studies relating to React Native, but I still don't feel I have enough to make an informed decision at this point.
The broad app functionality will include things like:
Data related functions such as Account Balances and Statements (pretty simple)
Image capture of identity documents and selfies of the users
Capture of biometric data
Push notifications
Some of this is pretty standard and simple, but some of it will require the app to use low level device functions and/or use 3rd party Android and iOS SDKs.
So, in terms of working towards the decision of a mobile development strategy, can I ask you for your input, based on your recent experience, on reasons to consider React Native over native Swift/Objective-C/Java development in the light of the planned functionality listed above (including reasons why it may be far better to stick with the native languages/platforms).
From own experience I can tell that React Native is a good choice for most of the apps when you need to develop and iterate fast. It usually means it would be cheaper to develop for a customer.
Looking at the list of features I can not see anything that can not be done in RN. Sooner or later you'll have to dive into native code, usually to bridge native modules with JS. I've done this multiple times, it's not that hard and documentation on RN website helps a lot.
Be aware that you'll most certainly run into stupid bugs and you'll have to find workaround. At least this happened to me multiple times when I was building RN app half a year ago, maybe now it's more stable.
Also I believe it really depends on what are the devices of potential app users. I've never developed for Android, but heard from fellow developers, that on mid-level Android devices RN runs much slower, this should be tested from the very beginning.
React Native has a really nice and tempting idea behind sounds like "unified and almost fully shareable codebase for different platforms including Web". But from my experience (not so extensive but still) the reality is a little bit different – at some point you will face some issues with native code for sure, and it would be really good if you have experienced Swift/Objective-C/Java developers in your team to deal with it. Don't trust the promises "all you need is just a React Front-End Developer". The React Native platform itself seemed to me more like a magical blackbox which I ran with a single command having no any idea what's inside and how it actually works. You have to know at least something about Xcode and Android Emulator even if Facebook is trying to hide this aspect it from you as much as they can.
TL;DR In my opinion if you really want to try React Native for something more complex than TodoMVC then you need to have at least 3 developers: Web (JavaScript/React), iOS (Swift/Objective-C) and Android (Java). Or just one Superhero.
This one is a quick question regarding the possibility of having the same LnF (same look) on Android and iOS, is there an API that can provide something like this? SImilar to MAUI in MoSync or IwUI in marmaladeSDK?
Basically what I would like to do is to create my UI once for both iOS and Android using monodeveloper.
Note: Before anyone downvotes anymore, please take into account that this is a real requirement for a real project. The question is not without reason, since after looking at the documentation, I can see that Xamarin does not provide such solution, but other multi-platform SDKs do provide such solution, and since the mono ecosystem is vast, perhaps there is a third party library that can provide such functionality.
Unfortunately most of your code portability will be on the backend (non UI) when leveraging Monotouch. There are far too many inconsistencies with how an Android UI vs iOS UI are implemented respectively to their OS's.
Have you checked out http://ifactr.com/overview ? It is a paid product so I haven't tried it, but it might be at least work looking into. Other than this, no there is no cross-platform UI if you go the Mono route.
Taken directly from their page:
"But we learned that even with as much code sharing that MonoCross provides, for applications with significant UI layers, the burden of creating platform-specific UIs can be overbearing. So we created the iFactr UI abstraction layer, which allows developers to code to an abstract UI interface, and then reference our iFactr concrete implementations of that interface for all the mobile platforms, both as native UI implementations and HTML5 UI implementations.
While not a silver bullet for all mobile development, it is designed and optimized for rapidly creating data-driven UIs that enterprise users tend to demand. And because it’s integrated with MonoCross, you can mix-and-match your iFactr UI screens that are shared across platforms with screens that you can code to target specific platforms using the entire set of native APIs available on each mobile OS."
The problem is Android and iOS have different UI / UX metaphors.
Take this for example: http://kintek.com.au/blog/portkit-ux-metaphor-equivalents-for-ios-6-and-android-4/
The differences are fairly significant. If you use a development wrapper then you'll have to 100% rely on their tools. We've had experience with Titanium in the past and it wasn't good at all.
i am right now exploring the capabilities of Monotouch (by Xamarin) with other solution such as
Monocross?
So can any one explain when to use Monotouch and when to Monocross.
What is the advantage & disadvantage of these framework w.r.t native app development?
Just to try to add visually to Stephane's answer, here's a diagram slightly adapted from one of my presentations:
Note that you don't have to use a shared library like MonoCross, MvvmCross, etc. You can always write your own architecture. This is like in web apps - you don't have to use WebForms, ASP.Net Mvx, FubuMvc, etc - you can just use Request and Response and talk more directly with the web server.
So, you can just write your own code to adapt your app to each platform like:
Which approach you should take - depends on the requirements of you and your app... and on personal opinion too.
Monocross is a cross platform MVC framework. As a framework, it's open source. But you need either monotouch or mono for android in order to deploy on the devices.
Those 2 stuffs doesn't compare. They sum up.
With tools like Monocross or MvvmCross, you really get a crossplatform code sharing framework, and that's your advantage over coding in native languages.
I've been looking over Sproutcore, Ember and Blossom and other competitive framework efforts (e.g. Sencha) to select for a HTML5 client side application project. The state, information, and documentation from these projects is a bit fragmented and in need of clarity, so I am presenting this to the community.
My project is to be a native-like HTML5 application with desktop level complexity in need of a complete application framework, that will work well on desktops and run with good speed on mobile devices with touch awareness. The widgets should be native-like (not web-like), but customizable so to be unique to the application.
Questions/framework Requirement:
Native vs. Web style Applications. Framework should make it easy to
build native-like user experiences with the ability to make a custom
native feel (not just wholly imitating mac/win/iOS). Some of the text
surrounding Ember indicates it is really meant for web-style apps - which given no
UI layer maybe goes without saying. Frameworks like Sencha, can it easily accommodate custom widgets?
Mobile Appropreatness. Framework should be appropreate for mobile devices and have facilities for touch input and
gestures.Several notes I've seen in my research indicate that Sproutcore and
Blossom aren't very appropreate for mobile, and that Ember is better
geared towards mobile (size?). It isn't clear whether the
touch/mobile libraries are very developed in Sproutcore/Blossom and if they will be supported it the
current state going forward. (and blossom compile to native is not acceptable). On the otherhand, Frameworks like Sencha, do they have the facility to work well on desktop as well as mobile?
Framework Completeness. The framework should be a fairly complete application framework, with desktop-like OO expectations and management for automatically and efficiently syncing, managing, and serializing the data model with the server. Not sure if there is much difference between Ember and Sproutcore, how do other efforts like Sencha stack up?
Your question covers a lot of ground. I will pick some quotes and answer them directly.
My project is to be a native-like HTML5 application with desktop level
complexity in need of a complete application framework
Ember.js specifically bills itself as a "web-style" framework, not a an RIA framework. That said, you can build anything you want, but you would be trailblazing.
Sproutcore bills itself as an RIA framework. You have complete control over the DOM, so if you can do it in the browser, you can do it in Sproutcore.
Ext-Js is also a good application framework for desktops (Sencha Touch is for Mobile). If you like the way its examples look, then its a good choice. You can of course customize the dom and write your own widgets.
Blossom is basically Sproutcore with a canvas based view layer. It just went into beta, so you would definitely be trailblazing if you went with it.
So, you can basically use any of the frameworks you mentioned for the RIA part of your enterprise. I would eliminate Ember.js simply because the framework itself purposes itself for web-style (e.g. twitter) as opposed to RIA (e.g. iCloud) apps, which is not what you want.
The widgets should be native-like (not web-like), but customizable so
to be unique to the application.
All three of your remaining options can do this. If you like Senchas widgets, its a good choice. I don't know if they are native enough for you. That said, with any of the remaining frameworks you can customize the DOM to your heart's content.
Mobile Appropreatness. Framework should be appropreate for mobile devices
This is a tough one. Sencha Touch (which is separate but similar to Ext-Js) is very popular and gets the job done. It is performant too; a non-trivial app ran fine on my original Droid (which surprised me).
Sproutcore is very heavy weight. It has mobile support (i.e. for touch events) but you need to very careful about the dom you create, so as not to overwhelm the browser. I wouldn't choose Sproutcore for mobile, although you could if you are very careful.
and blossom compile to native is not acceptable
That does not seem reasonable to me. To be clear, NONE of these frameworks run natively on mobile devices; they ALL run in the browser. Blossom comes closes as the canvas API is mapped directly to the native API, giving you a truly native app. The only way you could get closer would be to use objective-c/java for iOs and Android.
So basically, at this point your left with Sencha(Ext-Js) and Blossom. Blossom is still in Beta, you would be trailblazing if you tried it. Sencha is established, has great support (Blossom support is good on irc), and a large developer base.
So Sencha is the choice, unless you really want to be cutting edge, and take a little risk.
Troy. Indeed, ember can run with another view layer framework such as jQuery Mobile which can provide a "app-like" look and feel.There is a github project: https://github.com/LuisSala/emberjs-jqm. In my view, if you need very cool animation you can use blossom.If you want to build a app, SC or ember should be OK. I'll choose ember because it 's loosely coupled.