Using nativescript-ng2-magic - nativescript

I have a question. I wanted to start implementing a web (desktop) app and, with almost the same code base) with nativescript the native app for iOs/Android.
My question is, I have already implemented the native app, can I use the nativesript-modules (like color, ui/page, etc.) also for the web app?
Thank you in advance

You can't use those.
I think nativescript-ng2-magic and advanced-angular-seed (same author) are made to be used the other way around.
You have to refactor your services to be platform agnostic (as they should be) and the custom Component decorator takes care of switching templates. If you have lot of accessing nativescript-modules in your component's code, the switch is not going to be easy.

Related

Is it possible to build mobile and web apps from the same code base?

Is it possible to have a single code base for a mobile(ios/android) and web application? I'm thinking about using react native or angular/nativescript. If you have attempted this what are the things to keep in mind before doing this. Also anything particular to for SEO?
Most importantly are there any real world apps with reasonable complexity that already have done this?
NativeScript actually supports this a couple different ways.
NativeScript officially supports Angular; so you can create everything as an Angular application. Almost the entire app can be shared between Web and NativeScript; the only things that can't is the actual screen layout. In Angular for the Web; you use HTML tags so it might be somepage.html <div>{{somevalue}}</div> and for the NativeScript side you would have somepage.xml and it would have <Label text="{{somevalue}}"></Label>. This allows you to layout the app using the native components for Mobile, and web components for browsers, but use the same backend logic.
There are several seeds and platforms that are designed around fully creating a web app and a NativeScript mobile app that can share virtually everything.
NativeScript also supports VueJS; in this case you can again create virtually everything that shares much of its code base, the only thing is again you need separate layout files because again the web uses html, and NativeScript uses native components. So you have to have separate display files.
Disclaimer: I also work for nStudio; I tend to do non-angular type plugins mainly; but I do know that xPlat is really state of the art and has been used in several successful applications that our development studio has produced.

How to print the current UI of Xamarin form crossplatform application

I want to print the current UI of a Xamarin.Forms cross-platform application. Are there any plugins or libraries available which support both android ios and uwp projects to do this? I'd really appreciate being pointed in the right direction to get started on implementing this kind of feature in my application.
I would approach this in two steps. Firstly you need to convert the current visuals into a printable file type. So assuming we are working with primarily mobile devices then we should make use of the 'screenshot' mechanisms.
There is a very good answer to another stack overflow account HERE that guides you through setting up screenshots in xamarin forms using dependancy injection. The chaps answer is straight forward and easy to follow.
Once you have that screenshot as a png or jpeg etc. It's time to print it. There are a lot of threads on xamarins developer forums dedicated to the issues around printing from xamarin, a collection of these can be found HERE.
So to start with it's worth mentioning that every platform xamarin forms (XF)supports has it's own mechanism for printing. XF does not provide any abstractions for printing in a cross-platform manner. You will need to write printing logic for each layer and expose it to XF using DependencyServices.
Android Printing - this is a link to printing in android.
iOS Printing - this is a link to printing in iOS (Heres a sample app to help you as well.)
As I previously mentioned, because xamarin hasn't created a simple cross-platform mechanism for this in Forms, it's not quite as simple as you'd think and does require some work to implement. But none of the work is overly complicated, it uses standard dependancy patterns, it's really just the bulk of code required that can seem a bit daunting.

Auto-update with Windows Phone 7 and PhoneGap

I'm thinking of developing a Windows Phone 7 application using PhoneGap and have a few questions around functionality available. I haven't developed a WP7 application before nor used PhoneGap so forgive me if some of the answers to these questions are obvious.
Does PhoneGap support the capability to update HTML/JS/CSS/Images hosted by the WP7 app? I imagine it's possible to easily download new content, but whether one can update or extend the existing files PhoneGap is using for the application is not clear. Given that the application functionality will be primarily driven by HTML/JS, I assume it's possible to download updated HTML/JS asynchronously and update the content on the device. In effect, this would be tantamount to updating the application without downloading a new version of the application through the MarketPlace. Assuming this is possible, what are the chances that an application which does this will pass the application verification process?
Are there any specific restrictions/guidelines that one should pay more attention to when developing an application using PhoneGap? I doubt there are but it would be helpful if anyone has any specific advice in this area.
Any help would be appreciated.
1) The short answer is yes.
The long answer is that you will need to do some native (in this case C#) dev to make that happen. I don't know the specifics of PhoneGap, but I know you can call C# methods from the JS. So you would call a method to download the data and store it in the IsolatedStorage, and then maybe have a callback to the JS to let it know it's done. Otherwise, there may be a way to download the image in JS and pass it to the code behind, but unless the PhoneGap guys have specifically catered for this scenario then I highly highly doubt it.
1.2) Yes, this will pass cert just fine. It is not up to MS to determine how/why/when/where you get your content. They don't make any money out of you updating an app, so they won't care whether you work out your own content delivery system.
2) Maybe not exactly the answer you are looking for - but if you make an app in PhoneGap, or any other non-native way, the app-gods will strike you down. To put it simpler, PhoneGap and everything like it is crap. Not the actual framework (I'm sure they put a lot of work into it), but the results. Seriously, the moment you run a non-native app you can tell how terrible it is. I don't know how to stress this enough. It's really worth developing it natively to every platform.

Is Adobe Air/Flash the easiest framework for advanced GUI development?

Excuse a non-developer being forced to develop applications instead of administrating networks like I'm used to. This is a horrible post in many ways.
I'm developing an application which has reached the point of needing a GUI. However, I haven't done any GUI development ever before, so I feel the need to ask for help on this.
The application is your standard data collecting/management app, with all common widgets and stuff that every application is using. The problem is that I need the application to be able to display websites using an external browser of some sort, to pass a captcha on the site the application works against. The website guys haven't given me permission to circumvent the captcha in any way.
I know of GTK, QT, Tcl/Tk etc. None of these frameworks have struck me as easy to use. To be honest, I'd like to design the interface using drag-and-drop like I used to do in VB6 when I was a kid, although I get chills thinking about writing this thing in Basic.
I was thinking about Adobe Air, and to design the application in Flash/ActionScript. From what I've learned about Air, I should be able to do everything I want to do. And I do believe it has built in sqlite, right? Would it be considered more "simple" to develop the actual GUI using Flash than using one of the traditional frameworks? What pitfalls am I facing?
A few guidelines:
It only needs to run on Windows
I need to be able to work against a database. Currently using SQLite3.
Some sort of browser integration is crucial. A browser window of some sort needs to open up inside my interface, be directed by the application, and the application needs to be able to read some data from the site that is being used.
Any help with this would be great. This is a clear case where I have to rely on the experience of others to complete the project at all. I'm happy to provide more information if you need that to make a suggestion.
You can always try Titanium Framework, it was aquired by Appcelerator nor so much ago. http://www.appcelerator.com/
It actually puts a webkit browser in a window, so if you can design HTML and CSS you can use this framework.

Capuccino alternative with a comparable looking UI?

I'm looking for a set of Javascript based UI components for a web app I'm building and have found that many of the best looking web apps were built with the Capuccino framework; see http://www.getflow.com/, http://www.picsengine.com/home/ and http://timetableapp.com/ for examples.
However, I'm not a Cocoa developer and have no interest in learning Objective-J. Ideally, I'd find a set of components that provide the visual end result of Capuccino apps without the underlying weight of the framework.
I have seen the Aristo jQuery UI them (http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/482577430/introducing-aristo-a-jquery-ui-theme), but jQuery UI just doesn't seem to have the depth of components available in Capuccino.
I realize this may be a long shot, but I figured it can't hurt to ask. :)
Thanks.
As another option, there is jQuery UI: nice if you are already familiar with jQuery, with the plus side of not being too heavyweight, but may not have all the components you need pre-defined. A nice thing is that it encourages to write the HTML in a way that degrades gracefully when your application in older browsers.
Maybe sproutcore is an alternative for you, although it requires you to hand-code everything in javascript from scratch. It offers most basic components and is easily adjustable to your personal design goals. Sproutcore is used in Apples Mobile Me and in some other big projects.
Another possibility might by vaadin which offers a rich set of prebuild controls and is based on Googles GWT javascript compiler. But it only makes sense if you are developing in a java environment.

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