Since [ReactNative/NativeScript] uses JavaScriptCore/V8 JIT interpreters and not compiling it so, is it strong enough for building all types of apps e.g. (Mediaplayer, Photo Editing, etc…)?
And how do you compare it with Xamarin?
I heard Xamarin uses AOT; is it similar to (JavaScriptCore/V8) JIT interpreters?
And how often Xamarin uses AOT for all of the app or it compile the part of code to native and uses AOT for rest of it?
Many Thanks in Advance.
Xamarin does AOT for its C# code, which will be run by open source port of .NET -Mono in non windows platforms like Android and iOS. Here are some limitations on Xamarin AOT
In comparison, Nativescript with Angular 2+ can take advantage of the Angular AOT for performance boot. More details here.
Here is a detailed comparison from Progress, the company that backs NativeScript and also provides UI elements for xamarin.
With more traction towards JS open source community, JavaScript virtual machine growth vs Mono for .NET, current benchmarks, I would bet on NativeScript/React native more than Xamarin.
NativeScript / React Native is a good bet, including your media player kind of app.. here is a sample you can give it a try.
Hope it helps.
Related
i was just wondering what the benefits are in using PCL with Xamarin.Forms.
I mean you share the Code between each Platform anyway.
In Xamarins native approach it is quite clear.
So maybe anybody can tell me why to use PCL in Xamarin.Forms?
PCL allows the maximum in code sharing across platforms. PCL will by it's very nature limit you to using only those API's that can be shared from platform to platform.
While you can use Shared Projects, you will find yourself using compiler directives and making coding sacrifices that can lead to bad coding practices across anything but the smallest of projects.
Using the Xamarin Forms 2.3.3 or later you can of course embed Platform Specific Controls in your Xamarin Forms pages in your PCL and they will only render when run on the platform.
In addition of maximum code sharing, it allows you to follow best practices like SOLID.
Also, please remember that there are 3 choices (not only 2):
Portable Class Library
Shared Library
.NET Standard Library
.NET Standard Library is still an ongoing work in process, so it's not there yet. But, it will be the way to go!. So, PCLs today can give you an excelent migration path to the .NET Standard Library way tomorrow.
Hope this helps.
We have an android application and want to recreate it for cross platform.
What are the facts for or against Xamarin native and forms?
The advantage of native would be, we could reuse all the xml-layouts while we have to recreate the iOS view in either XAML or XIB?
Is there anything what is really a blocker?
I'll comment based on Giorgi's answer with some actual insight and refer to the copied bullet points:
This is a resume of the experience i've gathered in the past 6 months:
Xamarin.Forms is best for:
Apps that require little platform-specific functionality
Wrong. With DI you can use any device functionality you could possibly want. Check out XLabs on GitHub if you doubt this.
Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI
Kind of nonsense really. You can write your own renderers to represent controls of each platform in the way you want. I've also written more difficult renderers for custom controls such as a SideDrawer. In android i was done in 2 days, iOS about 2 weeks (android renderer was just a wrapper for the native control)
Developers comfortable with XAML
well yeah and anyone who enjoys convenient UI development. Mind you that there is a learning curve with xaml (which i already knew at the time i started from WPF development). But from what i have seen it's not that different from android.
Xamarin.iOS & Xamarin.Android are best for:
Apps with interactions that require native behavior
While hacking your solution up natively is certainly faster you can instead be done rather quick if purchase good controls / know a good native implementation and mirror it in C#, since the API in C# is very similar to the native one.
Apps that use many platform-specific APIs
Not sure why Xamarin is doing anti advertisement against forms. I had little trouble with it so far
Apps where custom UI is more important than
code sharing
Probably true, but it's also harder to keep UI functionality inline and you will need more manpower.
Things to consider about forms:
Forms seems to be stabilizing at the moment and i am sure Microsoft will do their best to turn it into a solid, reliable product (build issues have been a nightmare in the past sometimes, but it has gotten better over time)
The XAML for Xamarin is less developed compared to WPF XAML, though very similar. Recent nuget updates however provide mirrored functionality at an impressive rate. The vast majority of features you expect and love about XAML are present.
List performance is bad if you don't do your research (here). Performance increased loads in that area.
If i had to make the choice again i'd still go for forms. While there are sometimes things which seem flawed / bad you can usually figure out a clean fix somehow, while spending most of your time actually developing the app. (sometimes you will still find things which just make you frown why something isn't implemented, like the Margin property being implemented only just after microsoft purchased xamarin)
If you end up having a requirement of nested lists, make sure to have a look at embeded native controls in order to achieve the maximum performance - this was essential for a product i was working at. See this
According to Xamarin.Forms main page:
Xamarin.Forms is best for:
Apps that require little platform-specific functionality
Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI
Developers comfortable with XAML
Xamarin.iOS & Xamarin.Android are best for:
Apps with interactions that require native behavior
Apps that use many platform-specific APIs
Apps where custom UI is more important than code sharing
Giorgis answer is the right one, but since you added some more constraints here are my thoughts.
I would analyze the current app. How much code is business logic which can be shared? How customized is the UI, should it look more native or more the same and how will it change in the future? If you plan to change a lot in UI and platforms should look similar, it might be easier to switch to forms.
Also consider if are you planning to develop for Windows Phone? If yes, you might save a lot of time just for this third platform.
After all there is one thing which I would also keep in mind. Developing in Xamarin.Forms does not mean, you cannot develop native. It is just an additional framework. In worst case you can still do everything natively.
Personally I use Xamarin.iOS & Xamarin.Android with MvvmCross, that way I can keep full control of the native UI on each platform while maximizing code reuse.
From Xamarin website (who knows better than them?):
Xamarin.Forms is best for:
Data entry apps
Prototypes and proofs-of-concept
Apps that require little platform-specific functionality
Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI
[https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-forms/]
With Xamarin.Forms at runtime, each page and its controls are mapped to platform-specific native user interface elements.
With Native Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS apps leverage platform-specific hardware acceleration, and are compiled for native performance. This can’t be achieved with solutions that interpret code at runtime.
"Xamarin.iOS - The best way to build native iOS apps."
Ship native app bundles on the App Store. Our Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiler compiles Xamarin.iOS apps directly to native ARM assembly
code, meaning your app is a native platform binary.
Access any iOS API. We bring 100% of Apple’s iOS SDK to C#, enhancing Objective-C APIs with stronger types and .NET naming
conventions so you feel right at home.
Call existing Objective-C code from C#. Use your existing Objective-C code, frameworks, and custom controls in your Xamarin app
using our automatic binding generator.
Build WatchKit apps. Use Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio to build new Watch Apps, edit Watch user interfaces in the iOS Designer, and
debug Watch apps in the iOS Simulator.
Stay up-to-date with Apple. We released same-day support for iOS 5, iOS 6, iOS 7, and iOS 8 so your apps can take advantage of the
latest iOS features as soon as possible.
[https://www.xamarin.com/platform]
"Xamarin.Android - The best way to build native Android apps."
Ship native Android packages. Xamarin.Android uses just-in-time compilation for sophisticated runtime optimization of your app’s
performance, meaning your app is a native Android APK.
Access any Android API, including new form factors. We bring 100% of Google’s Android APIs to C#, enhancing Java APIs with async support
and .NET naming conventions so you feel right at home.
Call existing Java code from C#. Use your existing Java code, frameworks, and custom controls in your Xamarin app using our
automatic binding generator.
Build Android Wear apps. With access to 100% API support for Android Wear, create full-featured applications capable of running on
Android Wear devices. Stay up-to-date with Android. Xamarin stays
up-to-date with the most current APIs from Google, so you can always
use the latest features in your apps.
[https://www.xamarin.com/platform]
someone asked a similar question 2 years ago, but 2 years is a lot of time in the app world. So I wanted to ask again:
Can I write a plugin (that for example controles the camera) with xamarin using c# to avoid using java/objective c and use this plugin in my html app ?
No, this is not possible. Xamarin is not setup to create libraries that are then used by native applications. It's theoretically possible but not something they have prioritized.
In the case of Xamarin Android in particular, the entire concept relies on the Mono Framework being present in the app container to handle the .Net/Mono side of the architecture. So doing something like this would require somehow embedding the Mono runtime in your native Java Android application.
Xamarin
Write the model in C#
Write the views for each OS in their own native way
Xamarin promises that the new functionality in libraries is added the same day
Telerik Native script
Write in javascript and call native script's api that then calls the separate OS javascript apis?
Write the view in html5 and css which is re-usable for all OSs as they now all support html5 and css front ends?
Telerik simply states... and I paraphrase 'it does not have this problem'
If the above is so, how is Telerik any better than Xamarin as it states on its website:
"When using NativeScript the new additions to the native platform are
available immediately. This is not the case in neither Xamarin or
Appcelerator, where there are technical limitations and wrappers needs
to be created when new native platform features are added."
I am confused at how Telerik is being penned as being better than Xamarin when Xamarin comes with strong type language without using TypeScript's slightly loose thing going on. And also that Xamarin does in fact sit in exactly the same boat as Xamarin apart form the view part... which is actually supposed to be a benefit?
Question:
- What's the difference between them apart from the two I have denoted?
- Why would Telerik claim such a thing?
[Disclaimer: I work for Telerik.]
Telerik NativeScript and Xamarin are solving similar problems in different ways. Both frameworks are focused on enabling developers to create cross-platform mobile applications with native UI and shared, common code across all platforms.
For NativeScript, we're focused heavily on the web developer skill set. We want anyone that is comfortable today writing HTML/CSS/JavaScript to feel instantly at home creating native apps using NativeScript.
The only thing that is a little different is that views are defined in an XML-based markup. This markup is parsed by NativeScript and rendered as native UI on all target platforms. (NativeScript modules encapsulate the platform-specific renderings.)
The capability you highlight is also something unique to NativeScript's approach for exposing underlying native platform APIs. NativeScript effectively uses (build-time) reflection to make ANY native API available to the JavaScript proxy. That includes 3rd party native libraries. You do not depend on Telerik (or the open source community) to update NativeScript to take advantage of these new APIs. You simply execute a command and auto-discover the new APIs.
Of course, we don't expect a lot of people to write against the raw native APIs using JavaScript, so that's where modules again help encapsulate the different native APIs and expose a single, clean, cross-platform JavaScript API. Anyone can create NativeScript modules.
There's a great post that explains how all of this works in much more detail on the Telerik Developer Network (TDN):
http://developer.telerik.com/featured/nativescript-works/
NativeScript's public beta will be available this week, and v1 will ship in May.
UPDATE [Feb 2016]
Since this was originally posted, NativeScript has shipped and is now in v1.6. It is also now integrating heavily with Angular 2. You can track the project progress on GitHub: https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript
UPDATE [June 2016]
There are now performance metrics comparing NativeScript and Xamarin. Please find them here:
https://github.com/NativeScript/sample-iOS-Profiling/tree/performance-tests
Telerik is a UI component and it has some beautiful control for designing in xamarin forms,MVC. Net and etc, but xamarin forms is a technology that helps deveopers to make mobile application using c#
I'm a developer, with years of experience in C# as well as Java.
I have developed a few ADT projects for my Nexus One Android 2.23 phone.
I am considering further mobile development and I heard of Mono for Android/iOS and Xamarin. At first I thought Mono would recode to Java, but now I understand that it compiles to native C code and runs over mono libs.
So I was wondering how much bloat does this add to apps, as I believe size of download is directly linked to number of downloads (I myself sometimes don't download something due to it being > 1MB)
If there is someone here who uses Mono I would love to hear from your experiences.
I understand there is a Visual Studio 2010 Plugin for Mono. Do you recommend it?
So I was wondering how much bloat does this add to apps, as I believe size of download is directly linked to number of downloads (I myself sometimes don't download something due to it being >1MB .... )
Monodroid apps are usually somewhat around 5 Megabytes (if Linked) because the runtime is embedded in the app.
If there is someone here who uses Mono I would love to hear from your experiences.
All in all i'm pretty happy with Monodroid. Java tutorials on Android are easy to translate or if too big you can create Bindings. I've only done one project on Mono so my experiences are limited but thus far i've expected nothing that would make me regret my choice. On the other hand, if you're familiar with Java (and like coding in Java) their is no reason to switch over except for Cross Plattform apps (see Monocross).
The VisualStudio plugin is necessary to develop in VisualStudio. The new version comes with a Layout Designer like the Android Eclipse plugin. I'd recommend you download the trail version from Xamarin and try it (the trail has no expiration date, it lets you only deploy to an emulator)