I want to develop an app for Windows surface tablet and iOS mobile and iPad.
As I am a new user to Xamarin, when I created my first project,it shows 3 projects:-
hello.driod, hello.ios and hello.winPhone.
I have 3 questions based on this:-
How will I be able to write the same code and share for windows 8.1 and iOS?
and whenever I drag and drop the elements to the UI page, will the same elements be copied to both windows and iOS simultaneously or I got to add them seperately?
Currently I dont have a MAC to connect to my PC. Can I write the code and and there while testing it, connect it to a MAC or should it be connected during the whole process?
Please Help!
Using the same code depends on how your structure your app.
You can go the native route where you can share the bulk of your logic by containing it in a shared / PCL project (more on that here), but have platform specific code for your UI.
For example, if you have a cross platform app targeting iOS and Android you would still create the UI in a storyboard for iOS and AXML files for Android. Any code you want to "connect" to your UI would be specific to that platform as you would use the platform APIs. Any code that is not platform specific (i.e., not calling iOS or Android APIs) can go in your shared / PCL project.
Or you can choose Xamarin.Forms which adds a layer of abstraction by allowing you to write the UI in XAML once and have it work on all platforms. The advantage is increased code sharing as now your UI is also shared. The downside is to utilise platform specific features you'll need to implement DependencyService or custom renderers. Read more about Xamarin.Forms here.
As above, it depends. If you are going the native route, then no. If you are going with Xamarin.Forms, then you are using the same XAML code for the UI across platforms, but there is no drag and drop designer.
To build an iOS app you need to be connected to a Mac. You will also need to be connected to a Mac to use the iOS Designer.
Related
I am developing react native app. I wanted to know about design screens that is automatically adjust to iOS and android devices. For example we are using auto layout for iOS apps which gives consistent view for all iPhones and iPads.
I am little bit confused about designing screens for android and iPhones. I know how to design UI for Native platform that is consistent for all devices.
Yes, you can create UI for both Android and IOS devices using the same js file.
Mainly u need to have a good idea about flexbox. It is the base of creating responsive UI for compatible all devices. Follow below tutorials and get a good idea about flexbox and design responsive UI
https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/flexbox
https://medium.com/the-react-native-log/a-mini-course-on-react-native-flexbox-2832a1ccc6
and You can find a good example of components https://github.com/jondot/awesome-react-native here.
I have Xamarin Live Player up and running.
When I use it with a newly created Xamarin Forms (Master Details) app, it works fine. I see the app on the device.
However, when I try to run my full-blown app, Visual Studio tells me "Deployment to device failed. Make sure that Xamarin Live Player is open and that the device is in the same network."
Since the new app runs fine, I guess something else is the problem.
I've already set the Android project properties to be same as the newly created app.
Just to make sure, I've made it so that my full-blown app requests all rights.
How could I debug more in detail what's going wrong?
Xamarin Live Player can't run all apps. As soon as you use reflection, embedded resources, a MVVM framework or a custom renderer in Xamarin.Forms it might simply just not run the App.
You can read about the limitations of Xamarin Live Player in the official documentation for it.
You will probably have a much better experience just running directly on the device without Live Player.
I have a Xamarin.Forms application that I would like to enable as a text and/or URL share target. I've done this in a Windows UWP app by handling OnShareTargetActivated, but I don't see an equivalent in Xamarin.Forms. I am willing to use compiler directives if needed; I would prefer that to doing iOS/Android/Windows specific things in the corresponding projects themselves. Right now all my code is in the Xamarin.Forms project and I'd like to keep it that way.
Unfortunately Android and Ios do not have a similar share event so there is no equivalent event in xamarin forms.
Say I build a super mobile friendly web application that I want in the Play Store for Android users to be able to download.
Could I use Xamarin to:
Wrap the entire mobile app as a single WebView
Register for mobile push notifications
Essentially shortlining an MVP of an android app by using an existing web app? If so, is there any well-known process or documentation that demonstrates this?
Probably the best approach for you would be using Xamarin Forms with one or more pages containing only web views.
I don't love Xamarin Forms because usually for me Xamarin Android+iOS gives a better result in similar time, but your app would be so simple that doesn't make sense to do it with Xamarin Android.
Make sure that your web app will show only what makes sense to be shown in your app, otherwise you risk to see double header/footer, useless buttons... but if the website is yours adding a few parameters to change a bit the UI won't be a problem I guess.
Have a look at this example:
https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-forms-samples/tree/master/WorkingWithWebview
Another approach is the use of Razor to build your pages in html directly inside your app, but if I understood well it's not what you need:
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/advanced/razor_html_templates/
Although it is technically possible to do this as the previous answer has suggested. I would recommended firstly reviewing, the relevant stores guidelines on submissions. Apple for example will not allow a submission to their store of any application that simply mirrors the functionality of a website. I suspect Google's would likely be the same.
However that said, to answer your question, Xamarin.Forms would be appropriate for a simple application like the one you are suggesting. Or if you prefer to build to a specific OS, then in iOS with Xamarin you would use the Safari View Controller that was added in it's xcode 8.1 release. Android uses something similar as does windows.
EDIT:
You can use the Web View control in Xamarins Andorid native PCL project to encapsulate your mobile friendly website within an application here is the documentation:
Xamarin Android Developer link to Android Web View
As for push notifications, yes this is perfectly possible using Xamarin.Android. and varies on implementation depending on what you want to use as the back end to handle them, I.E. Azure's notification hub etc.
We have a Xamarin based app targeting iOS, Android, and Windows (not WinPhone but Windows 8.1 as a desktop app for now).
The app utilizes a few PCL's for the vast majority of all views and view models and reusable functionality. The three platform specific projects have very little custom code and, when necessary, inject in custom platform specific services. One of the PCL's also has an App.Xaml that provides the basic styles for the overall app.
The iOS and Android apps load this App.Xaml fine and honor all styles. The Windows implementation of Xamarin.Forms does not appear to load or honor the styles in the same way and our core UI appears blank.
This isn't an issue of the styles just "don't look right" on Windows compared to the other platform but more an issue of everything is invisible. We can click buttons and move around if we know where they would be in the overall UI but we don't see them. Not even an outline.
Not sure what other implementation info I can provide but I'm wondering if anyone else has had issues with Xamarin.Forms on windows and styles?