Real Player was designed using which technology / platform? - user-interface

Real Player UI is definetely the one that I admire.
Need to know its development platform. So that I can request my team to work on same platform to deliver such a nice UI.
Is it .NET, MFC, WCF, WPF etc... etc... ?
Also which is the apt platform to use to make the application work on Window desktop PC, Web-enabled devices, iPhone or whatever.
I know if I use anything that is wrapped around window api, it can work only on device that works on Windows OS. (So definitely no iPhone)
So is there anything that can help programmers to work on UI application that are device independent

Nice UIs are not that attached to a specific platform, but to having a good designer and user experience designer.
Good UIs can be created in any platform.
I am certain there are many bad UIs that have been built with the same platform that RealPlayer was built in.

Related

Developing animated GUI on Windows

Is there any realisation of animated GUI for any language except Silverlight?
Something like jQuery animations in web applications.
Something without requiring the user to install anything before using application.
Thanks ;)
You specifically exclude Silverlight, though it's not clear whether that is only because it targets the Web or for other reasons, too.
If you're happy to develop against the .NET Framework (which these days should be installed on most recent Windows systems), you could look at WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), which has many similarities to Silverlight (e.g. it's also based on XAML), but targets desktop applications.

iPad development without a mac

I am interested in developing an app for my new iPad purely for my own use. (well to start with at least)
Is there a way to develop an app without a mac?
Can I install the app only on my own iPad without having to sign up to the right to publish it when I might not even want to do that?
EDIT:
Could i use an old G3 powerbook for development? They can be picked up really cheap on ebay. Would something of that spec be up to running the xcode development environment?
I think the best option is to develop the application using HTML5 / Javascript and CSS, and use a service like appMobi or PhoneGap to compile it for IOS. They both have an online service that can make the build for you without needing you to own a Mac.
You have also the added advantage that you can compile your app not only for IOS, but for Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry and even the good old web.
You have some Javascript libraries like JQTouch that allows you to easily implement the IPhone look and feel in your web app. Normally you can't access the native API from Javascript, but these solutions (appMobi and PhoneGap) offers a Javascript API that you can use to access Camera, GPS, Gyro, etc...
I think normally serious apps are coded for many platforms, and if you don't have the structure to pay to 4 different skill sets, it makes sense to code in HTML5, and from there you have a more future and device proof solution. Even if you "can" pay different developers to code in diffrent mobile platforms I would prefer to do it in HTML5.
Oh, and also take a look at applicationcraft.com, pretty cool online IDE (wysiwyg) connected to PhoneGap, really easy to develop prototypes. The generated HTML/Javascript is not very usefull to continue editing it outside their IDE (a bit complicated), but, again, for something very simple or a prototype it's something you must check out.
Good Luck
Is there a way to develop an app without a mac?
Officially, no. Realistically, unless you like wasting countless hours, no.
Can I install the app only on my own iPad without having to sign up to the right to publish it when I might not even want to do that?
No, you must be a paid developer in order to push to anything but the simulator.
xcode for windows.
http://ipodtoucher55.blogspot.com/2010/12/installing-ios-sdk-and-xcode-on-windows.html
Yes, you can develop without apple computer (using hackintosh).
And yes, you can install the developed app on your iPad without having to pay for developer program. There are a tons of guides over the internet about running (thus installing) apps on ios devices without developer program.
check this:
How can I deploy an iPhone application from Xcode to a real iPhone device?
You can develop for iOS without a Mac by using Adobe Flex. The Flex SDK is free and Open Source, and includes a compiler + packager. If you want an IDE, you can get Adobe FlashBuilder (not free, but with a free 90-day trial), which makes your development time much more productive.
You would not develop in C, C++, or Objective C, but in a combination of ActionScript (a dialect of Javascript) and MXML (markup language, mainly for rich GUI layout).
On the minus side: you have less control over what you can do (you can still do a lot) and you cannot use the iOS SDK directly.
On the plus side: it is very easy to develop great looking apps, and with very little changes, you can recompile them for Android, Blackberry Playbook, Windows, and Mac OS X.
You do not technically need a Mac to develop an app, unless you are serious about it. There are couple of solutions available to you for developing mac-less.
First, there are some services that port your HTML5 web apps into an iOS app, so you only need to write your code HTML5.
Second, if you dont want to buy a Mac, you can instead buy Snow Leopard or Lion, and build your own "hackintosh" (a windows computer hacked to run off the mac operating system).
Finally, you cannot make your app available for purchase in the App Store unless you are a paid developer. However, you could publish online as an HTML5 web application, or you could publish your app in a third-party app developer market (however you could only intall that app if you jailbreak your iPad).
Not sure how new this is, but Dragon Fire SDK is 100% Windows based (you do submit your code to them for compilation), but at no time are you required to own a Mac.

Cross-platform HTML application options

I'd like to develop a stand-alone desktop application targeting Windows (XP through 7) and Mac (Tiger through Snow Leopard), and if possible iPhone and Android. In order to make it all work with as much common code as possible (and because it's the only thing I'm good at), I'd like to handle the main logic with HTML and JS. Using Adobe AIR is a possibility. And I think I can do this with various application wrappers, using .NET for Windows XP, Objective C for iPhone, Java for Android and native "widget" platform support for Mac and Windows Vista & 7 (though I'd like to keep the widget in the foreground, so the Mac dashboard isn't ideal). Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start? The two sticking points are:
I'll certainly need some form of persistent storage (cookies perhaps) to keep state between sessions
I'll also probably need access to remote data files, so if I use AJAX and the hosting HTML file resides on the device, it will need to be able to do cross-domain requests. I've done this on the iPhone without any problems, but I'd be surprised if this were possible on other platforms.
For me, Android and iPhone will be the easiest to handle, and it looks like I can use Adobe AIR to handle the rest. But I wanted to know if there are any other alternatives. Does anyone have any suggesions?
You might be interested in Appcelerator's Titanium. It's an alternative to Adobe AIR that lets you build native mobile and desktop apps using HTML and JS (with the WebKit rendering engine, so you can take full advantage of HTML5 and CSS3). It also satisfies your two sticking points:
SQLite is available for persistence storage.
There are no restrictions on cross-domain requests.
I used Titanium Desktop for a recent project and it was a relatively smooth development process. It's also open source so you have access to the full application at all times.
Check it out and let me know if it works for you.
You can create a desktop application with HTML, CSS & Javascript using either of the following two frameworks
TideSDK
AppJS
For mobile you can use the similar HTML and Javascript using PhoneGap

How to embed a web browser control in a cross-platform application?

I need to write quickly this application: a simple window that wraps
a web browser control, that runs html pages.
The Browser UI (e.g. Navigation buttons) should be suppressed.
As a .net developer, I would embed the WebBrowser OCX in a Windows Form.
But this has to run on Mac as well!
I found the following cross-platform candidates.
Which one would you choose (in terms of simplicity, stableness, community support, etc.):
wxWidgets: http://www.kirix.com/labs/wxwebconnect.html
QT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee8eRwjbcFk&feature=related
MONO: http://www.mono-project.com/WebBrowser
Why not to use embedded Webkit?
QtWebkit:
The Qt port of WebKit currently compiles and runs on Linux (including Maemo), Windows, Mac OS X and Symbian.
Click here for build instructions.
A very simple test browser is built along with the port.
Since you have (assumption made from your post) .Net experience I'd go with Mono.
Have you considered Adobe AIR?
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
Mono is probably the best choice if you're primarily a .NET developer and don't care very much about making a well-integrated Mac app (one that behaves like a Mac app in all the many ways Mac users expect). Given your problem space, that sounds like where you are. That said, pay special attention to this limitation from the WebBrowser page if it applies to your problem:
The Mono Webbrowser currently lacks
support for window.external, the
bridge that allows Javascript code
embedded in the browser to communicate
with the managed world using the
ObjectForScripting.
QT is very well established, and a great platform if you want to develop this in C++. Remember that there are licensing fees if this is a commercial app.
I've played a bit with wxWidgets. It's big advantage here is that it's probably going to be the smallest distribution, since you only have to include what you need. If all you need is the web browser, I'd look at this, but in my experience it's hard to make wxWidgets programs look good or act correctly on Mac (or on Windows for that matter).
Another option may be to write it as a Java app using the Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit. This includes a browser control that embeds IE, Safari or Firefox, depending on the current platform, and generally behaves well on OS X.

Smartphone for use with the NXT

Greetings.
I will be getting a new smartphone for work. It needs to work with Telus, so the iPhone, and Android-based phones are out. The available phones appear to be include a number of BlackBerries, HTC phones, Motorola phones, as well as LG, Samsung, and ZTE phones.
I have a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot, and would like a phone for which I could potentially write a program that would communicate with it over bluetooth. (LEGO does provide a cellphone app but it only works with some Nokia, Sony Ericson, and BenQ-Siemens phones).
From my research thus far, it sounds like many phones support J2ME and that I could install NetBeans to develop for it. (I haven't programmed in Java in years.) Unfortunately, it sounds like even if the phone does have bluetooth capabilities, they aren't necessarily accessible from J2ME.
Lastly, I'd rather like to develop from my Mac. (I could boot into another OS or fire up a VM, but I'd prefer not to.) NetBean's IDE download page says, "Java ME is only available for Windows and Linux." There appear to be workarounds -- is it a pleasant environment to work in?
So, my question is, does anyone know if any of these phones are, um, pleasant to develop a simple bluetooth application for, preferably from the Mac?
- Edit -
It turns out that my contract has not expired, and I've replaced my partially functional phone with a Treo 700 we had around. I appreciate all the answers. I started setting up a J2ME environment (until I learned that I may as well set up a Palm environment, and have started on that.) When I do get a new phone, though, I was sure be looking at the S60 phones -- heck, it might even trump an iPhone or Android phone, at least for ease of creating hobby applications.
You may be interested in this application NXT Director. The author says it has been tested with the following models of Palm based devices, Treo 650, LifeDrive, Zire72, SONY TH55/E and Tungsten series. It may also work with your 700.
Nokia ported python to the S60 smartphone platform. That means you can just write python scripts with your favorite text editor and then run them on any of these phones. The python port includes APIs for the camera, bluetooth, SMS, dialing, sounds, text to speech synthesis, location services...
I found it very easy to install the python interpreter and console on my phone and immediately start running scripts, no other tools required. If you have a strong thumb and like a challenge then you can even write the scripts directly on your phone :-)
If you want to run an S60 phone emulation on your PC then you will need windows and even then it is complicated to set up. For small hobby projects you can live without the emulator though.
You can try following combination for J2ME development on Mac OS X
Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.org/
EclipseME - http://eclipseme.org/
MPowerPlayer - http://mpowerplayer.com/sdk

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