I have a project to do (an app relied to a DB, used to display and modify data, basically CRUD). The application will run on windows, but I don't have any windows computer (and don't want to buy one) so I will develop on OS X.
So, my question is which language should I use ? I know a bit (but really a bit) in Ruby and Java. I'm a good C# developer, but without windows and VS, it won't be really useful.
My priorities are : a simple GUI toolkit, and a simple packaging/distribution system, because my client isn't good in IT. If I could have fun during development it would be a plus (and I say this because I think Ruby is funnier) but it's not a priority.
So, any programming language/UI toolkit simple to deploy and to use on OS X who could run on Windows ?
Thank you !
IT kind of depends on your app really. you could make it a web app if you want nice GUI and with easy html css and there is alot precoded for you. hosting on some web service with basic mysql or any other database shouldnt be an issue costs wise and your client can just open the browser and it runs, if he has internet connection available where he needs the app to work. anyway it runs everywhere and since yo know java... thats what i would.
depends on your app really.
Most people that need to do this just get a VM running Windows, and run Visual Studio from there.
Related
I know this is not related to PHP but related to many Front-end designers and developers.
In now days experienced mockup or UI/UX element designer use an app called sketchapp specially who use mac os. but when it comes to front-end developers who don't have mac os to code front-end. Here is the problem start many of developers try to search a solution but I don't think any one had it because the app developers not create any thing for windows to support these files.
My Question: what is the solution for this problem? should we try to find a friend/colleague who have mac os with the app or should we ask the client for other file format (but sometime clients don't have other file formats) or should we reject the project.
what should we do?
The immediate solution is to have your clients export their Sketch files to pdf. That is a built-in function in Sketch and only takes a second.
Longterm you may want to evaluate whether or not you maybe should get a cheap Mac to expand your portfolio.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but if you need to get design specs to work with you could use:
https://zeplin.io/
OR
https://www.invisionapp.com/
They offer tools for collaboration between designers and developers.
Hope this helps!
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.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
I'm in the design phase for a desktop-based application. Because of the nature of this particular application, I believe it would benefit greatly from a web-based approach (i.e., allowing a user to interface with the application through a browser running in kiosk mode) in order to leverage the simplicity of HTML/CSS/JS and the availability of many great JS interface plugins. Does taking this approach (rather than coding in a native or cross-platform graphics library) come with any gotchas?
Well, your access to the OS and other domains are going to be limited.
What about using something like Adobe AIR that lets you use HTML/CSS/JS and compile it into a proper desktop app?
Please look at http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/ - the library which was designed to create desktop GUI using html and css.
The main "gotcha" to doing a web GUI is that you are going to need to set up a web server of some kind. A gui app can be just a single executable. You allso (probably) will need some GCI coding to get information back from the user to your program. In general, it is liable to be a whole lot more work.
Balancing against that is the fact that any user networked to your webserver anywhere in the world using the OS and browser of their choice should be able to operate your program.
If you are starting to develop a new web application from scratch and the only two requirements you have is that it will be deployed to Windows 2008 Server and that standard ASP.NET incl. VS2008 doesn't cut it (doesn't matter why, let's say it's the license cost, you won't be hosting Windows 2008 Server yourself). Which web framework would you choose under this circumstances?
I read a benchmark article some time ago that suggested running an open source web stack on top of Windows was the best performer out of all the variations (i.e. WAMP). I don't know how much faith to put in those types of articles, and IIRC it beat out LAMP by some really small margin. You might find WAMP to be a good fit for your situation, but I think you should save yourself the Windows tax and use a LAMP (or use Postgres instead of MySQL... I like it better).
I'm stuck wondering why you'd host on a Windows server and not use ASP.Net. It is the best of the server-side frameworks for a windows environment, as it works most intuitively with IIS.
But there's another problem there: If memory serves, all the other frameworks require additional software to run on the server. PHP requires PHP runtime to be installed as a CGI Extension in IIS, Rails requires Ruby, CGI style options (C, Perl, Python) require not only the compiler/runtimes but also some poking under the hood in regards to how IIS handles those files, JSP requires... I'm not sure, I've never used JSP, and ColdFusion requires that framework and it really is a hefty licensing cost (as opposed to ASP.Net which is a free download for the server).
So, in the end, you're left with basically picking an option, installing the necessary software and going forward. Personally, if forced to make this choice, I would choose either PHP or Ruby on Rails, but there's no valid reason for that outside of a random, and subjective choice.
I agree with Stephen, seems a bit strange to blame licensing costs for not using ASP.NET especially when you're going to be using Windows to host? Admittedly VS 2008 Pro isn't cheap, but it hardly breaks the bank either. The new 2008 Express editions of VS are free and I have to say aren't half bad.
Weblocks
Weblocks is a continuations-based web framework written in Common Lisp.
I suspect loading Smalltalk Squeak is very easy on Windows so I would seriously consider using Seaside as an option.
Another option is to look at ActivePerl for Windows and then you can use any of the free Perl web frameworks like Catalyst or Jifty.