We're looking at creating an interactive prototype for an app with the following specs:
1) embedded videos
2) very good analytics
3) multiple screens
We're looking to optimize for time and I've been considering the following options with the following cons:
1) Framerjs - Con: no good or easy analytics
2) Invision - Con: no way to embed videos (there's the option of embedding a link to a hosted video, but that would take away from the user experience that's critical for our interactive model
2) Xcode Storyboard - Con: first, we haven't settled on building this as a native app, and concerned with complexity (time consumption) particulary with the test flight deployment process.
I'm interested to hear you alls thoughts on this.
I advise you to try the new Facebook Origami Studio (Quartz Composer). Video embedding works fine. Quickly put together a prototype, run it on your iPhone or iPad, iterate on it, and export code snippets your engineers can use.
https://facebook.github.io/origami/
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I'm planning to code a smart home application for touch sensitive windows 10 tab (already I have) which can hang in wall.
I need:
Weather API data viewer, Alarm manager, Scheduled music player for morning and evening, Google calendar synced event viewer, Arduino sensor reading (home temp and humidity) .
I tried and designed a interface using C# and WPF. But my goal couldn't reached due to sorted issues below. [See attached image.]
C# - Not enough support for UI. No transparent/ no curve buttons /etc.
WPF - Less supportive for some extension and discontinued product.
ASP.Net - Less knowledge and I believe mp3 player and other extra sensor readings will not success through this.
So I need to know is there any specific softwares for designing Windows os smart home applications. Please help on this.
Try Flutter or Electron.
Flutter was designed by google it is opensource and runs on all operating systems.
I think it uses dart as a main language.
Electron on the other hand uses mostly HTML, CSS and Javascript. But it should be easier to design the user interfaces. For example Discord and VS Code were built using Electron.
I am new to both Mobile App Development and Sketch and I am having a hard time understanding how Sketch can be used in developing a mobile application.
I am looking into React-Native to develop an application, but from my understanding, the only way you can style elements in React is through a css file and I don't see how I can use Sketch to design my app.
Am I totally missing something or is it possible to develop an application in React-Native and use Sketch to design the elements in the app?
Thanks!
There're several tools that focus on the conversion from the design file into the mobile app.
Supernova - sketch to react native & native app
BuilderX - sketch to react/react native
XD to flutter - you can import sketch into XD and convert into flutter App
pxCode - the solution we have developed, turn the sketch into react/react native
This area is relatively new because the design file is not well-structured in terms of the code. So that's why the mapping is so hard and the code quality is not easy to keep.
That's why after quite a few iterations and analsysi, we find the key structure should leave for the frontend engineers' experience and professional to solve instead of automating the task
Sketch is a design tool just like Photoshop or illustrator. But its is far better then both the tools for multiple reason
It creates design which only code possible. Where Photoshop is originally created for photo editing, many of the effects which you could create there can't be created by codes.
It is very simple have tools which are only required for UI design. No brush tool, Smudge tool etc.
Vector based tool you can export any asset as svg or copy the codes.
You can also copy the styling as CSS and use. No style document required.
You can prototype a interactive model ad test it before you code. This is the biggest advantage, you can actually test the application before you invest time on coding it.
Open file format. Many third party tool can read the sketch file and you can extend you design to the next level. For example you can upload the prototype in InVision and share the design as a cloud link
These are some of the reason why you should chose sketch. But otherwise it is just another design tool. It can't create the functional app for you.
I am trying to evaluate whether Xamarin would be a good option for my project. The project is a large, complex app for Android and iOS with a lot of client-server communication. The user interface is a major focus and has to be really fast and smooth. Also, we plan to make large use of UX graphic effects (comparable to the Spotify app).
For now we are planning to go for two separate native apps using Java/Objective-C. However, the possibility of cross-platform code sharing would be very convenient for us of course.
Most opinions I've heard so far say that Xamarin - although far better than HTML5 apps - cannot match the UX of a native app. Also, I tested the following applications made with Xamarin (on Android):
Rdio
MarketWatch
Busch Gardens Discovery Guide
Sqor
Storyo
From my impression, none of them could quite match the speed and smoothness of a good native app.
If our focus is on a top notch user experience, would Xamarin really be a viable option? Can it really match a native UX? I am particularly looking for opinions from developers who have experience with large and complex cross-platform Xamarin applications. A few critical voices would be very helpful.
Thank you a lot!
I'm on the Rdio mobile development team, so I can make some personal reflections from that standpoint.
Xamarin allows you to write native applications in C#. Any slowness, jankiness, ugliness or bad-appiness usually has nothing to do with the Xamarin layer itself.
You save some time being able to share core business logic between your different clients, but you're still writing the UI from scratch, specific to the platform. You're just writing it in C#.
But while you save that time, you're spending it in other ways. All of those SDKs you want to use probably aren't compatible with Xamarin out of the box. You won't be pod install'ing that iOS framework, and you might be reinventing the wheel for handfuls of things. Xamarin takes advantage of the NuGet repo so you have a library of components that handle many of the things most people need (Analytics, Testing, Facebook SDK, JSON parsing, Database, etc etc) but it doesn't cover everything. And it certainly doesn't cover stuff that's out the day of an Apple or Google product announcement.
Any 3rd party code that you do want to import into your project will be done through writing custom bindings. While not usually difficult, it is time consuming. Xamarin has a team of people that specialize in assisting you in this. This fact speaks to the process being messy at times.
So while the slowness, jankiness, ugliness or bad-appiness probably isn't the fault of Xamarin, it might be the fault of you spending time in places you normally wouldn't, or not being able to take advantage of features you normally would. If that 3rd party partner SDK is giving you problems, your troubleshooting may take twice as long because there's a layer that you don't control.
UI is a wash. You're writing it from scratch anyway.
Business logic is shared. Depending on the app that might be a win if you architect your application to take advantage of it.
Compatibility / bleeding edge ability will be lacking. That might not matter to you at all, or you might be the person wanting to take advantage of that hot new API in the next OS release the day it's announced.
My personal thought, without knowing specifics, is if you want to build an application that you plan on being around years from now, and that will take advantage of the latest and greatest, I'd tell you to write natively for each platform. Unless you can really see huge gains in sharing that business logic the upfront gains are minimal. Or if you really like C#.
Xamarin uses native controls. So you design a fully native UI per platform. The users can't see that your App is made with Xamarin or Java/Objective-C.
There are sometimes performance issues in conjunction with the platform independent UI wrapper Xamarin.Forms. But you're not forced to use it. When you have still performance issues in your Xamarin.Android or Xamarin.iOS app then you produce them in your code.
There are benchmark results for Android apps comparing Xamarin.Android and Java apps: Does anyone have benchmarks (code & results) comparing performance of Android apps written in Xamarin C# and Java?
As you can see Xamarin's internal performance became better and better over the time.
Conclusion: Yes, you can write smooth native Apps using Xamarin.
I'm about to start a fairly large project. I have about 10 different PC/MAC Flash(AS 2.0)/MDM Zinc software packages I have inherited from a previous programmer. They are a series of math educational applications that are all contained on numerous CDs which is pretty frustrating for our customers. I've been tasked with converting these applications into a digital medium with emphasis on iOS/Droid compatibility.
They don't want to ditch the flash because of the way it's written and compiled with MDM Zinc it would almost require a complete rewrite. Currently the customer installs the application using Disc 1 of their set and the application will pull the lesson material (SWF files) from the discs in the set. I want to move these lessons onto a web server and build a single client app. Something that just works as a generic container for these lessons.
Currently I'm using Visual Studio 2012 and Xamarin to build these containers. Unfortunately my strongest languages is vb.net and not C# though so It's taking a little getting used to. Does anyone have any tips or light they may be able to shed on the best way to go about getting a foot hold in this project?
I've pretty much decided I'm going to have to build this "container" from the ground up. Here is an example of the software I'm working with http://184.168.83.81/Math7Demo/movie100.htm
Thanks in advance
As a fellow developer who works with e-Learning for almost a decade, I'd say your best bet is to build the containers with PhoneGap, convert the SWFs with Google Swiffy and load them as HTML inside your app.
Forgive me if there is vagueness in this question. In a nutshell, I've built websites for several years, working with PHP, Javascript, JSON, AJAX, HTML, CSS3 and ASP-(many years ago when I didn't know better).
Lately I'm coming across projects where the clients prefer the app on their desktop (offline) rather than on the web.
Is it going to be a long road ahead to learn this? I can't get my head wrapped around going from web to desktop. Could someone give me a 50,000 ft overview of what I need to research? No details needed.. just an overall approach.
Are there packages out there I should read into which give tools for running a system "offline" so to speak? I'm not sure of there terminology or even where to start.
One of the main reasons is that features like Imagemagick seems too slow to process images online. The client would like tool where they don't have to rely on the speed of internet. Go Daddy is useless when it comes to upgrading their tools and I hope to do a standalone system for image processing.
Also, I'd like to get into making desktop widgets like time tracking tools, or anything that can be self-contained and running from a downloaded program that I would create.
Is this a really bad idea?
Try Auto it, it has a tiny foot print and it is great for writing small tools. It does have an GUI editor.
example of auto it widget
auto it widget
Other than that you could use industrial strength Microsoft Developer studios for either VB or C# . You can even do apps in VBA excel.