I am new to Mobile specific website development. I want to know does Visual Studio provides way to create a web site which can be targeted to mobile devices? Also can this website be run on phones running on OS other than Windows OS like iPhone, Android or slimier other OS?
My aim is to develop a website which can be targeted to phone running on any OS. Does Visual Studio and .NET can be used for this purpose?
If yes then can someone provide me some content to start with.
Thanks
Paresh
Any phone with a web browser can view a web site, regardless of what technology platform that site is written on. It's one of the best and defining characteristics of the web...
You can certainly code a website for mobile devices with Visual Studio and run it on the .NET platform on IIS (or Mono).
As far as targeting all devices, your man concern should be the UI of the website and how it will render in each phone's browser. I'd recommend an approach of making the site look good for the most popular platforms first (iPhone's Safari, Android's browser), and making it 'good enough' for the rest.
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I wished to develop a specialized software and NOT an app, which will be deployed at a few customer sites ultimately and not to be posted on Microsoft Store. Can I use Universal Windows Platform for it? I did some research and the official documentation of Microsoft says -
The Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is the app platform for Windows 10. You can develop apps for UWP with just one API set, one app package, and one store to reach all Windows 10 devices – PC, tablet, phone, Xbox, HoloLens, Surface Hub and more.
We want to develop a specialized software, with all its installers / DLLs / binaries etc etc which we will ship to a few customers and install at their PCs. So, my question is - Can we use Universal Windows Platform for developing such a software? Or if it be used only for app development, which ultimately needs to be loaded on the Microsoft Store for disbursement?
UWP apps do not have to be distributed via public Microsoft Store. You can distribute the apps via sideloading and alternatively via Microsoft Store for Business which is a company-specific view into Microsoft Store, where you can publish internal apps.
Furthermore, you can package existing Desktop apps as UWP apps including their installers with the Desktop Bridge, which is useful when your app includes functionality, which is unavailable in pure UWP apps.
The main advantage of using UWP especially in conjunction with Microsoft Store for Business is simpler deployment and easier install and update lifecycle, however it might not suit you in complex scenarios.
2 ways to go about this (of a couple more)
1. You can distribute the appx as you would an exe and have the client use side loading to install it on whatever machine is needed.
2. you can release it in the Microsoft Store for Business or Microsoft Store for Education
I recently bought an iMac in order to develop my App on Visual Studio for Mac in a better environment (lots of issues on Windows), but on the Visual Studio for mac, there is no UWP projects.
It is understood that I have to create a new .NET project, but what are exactly the steps to follow in order to achieve that correctly for the app to work on Windows with a peace of mind? Should I have gone with Visual Studio code, which support the .NET core framework completely?
I saw on other answers that I need the .NET SDK tool, and so forth, but further details are needed if you don't mind on the why (not the installation stuffs, only the tech savvy explanations for the app to build correctly at the end!
You will need to run a Windows installation (eg, via Parallels or Boot Camp) and then run the Windows version of Visual Studio to create UWP apps.
You can do a lot of the business-logic coding inside Visual Studio on MacOS, but you will need Visual Studio and the Windows SDK to use WinRT types (which are required to build a UWP app) and to correctly build / package the app for deployment.
.NET is a big ecosystem. As you cannot develop all kinds of .NET projects using Visual Studio on Windows (Xamarin.Mac for example), you cannot do the same using Visual Studio for Mac (like you found, WinForms/WPF/UWP and so on). Such limitation comes from vendor SDK availability or other underlying systems.
In your case, you can easily develop web apps, Mac apps, and iOS apps. If you do want to develop Windows specific apps, like the other answer shows, please use Windows.
You mentioned ".NET SDK", but I believe that should be ".NET Core SDK". .NET Core apps are cross platform. Thus, you can develop such apps in Visual Studio for Mac, and then deploy to Windows. However, so far only console apps and web apps can be developed. What might happen in the future is still to be determined.
Visual Studio Code, however, is just a code editor. It won't give you extra flexibility.
For those whom imperatively needs to develop their app on all platforms, here is what I did, and the pros and cons:
Buying an Imac, thinking that I could also develop UWP projects within it
After realizing that I couldn't, I bought a cheap Windows 7 pro License on ebay (around 5$), and installed it on VirtualBox.
From there, I upgraded to Windows 10 for free and installed everything. It worked like a charm.
Cons: Buying a brand new IMac while a Macbook pro would have been better. An old one even since YOU CAN'T upgrade the ram.
Working on 8go of ram computer when you must give 4go of RAM to your VM isn't quite great. 4go gets you a laggy environment! Really frustrating.
So, prefer something older, but up-gradable (a cheap Macbook pro with 16go of RAM would do).
Not to mention that you will have to install Ubuntu as another VM in order to setup a .Net core Server for the majority of you.
What environment to favor while developing, most importantly when you are a C# and Xamarin noob like me?
The best being to develop from Mac as you will have FAR LESS ERRORS AND BUGS than in VS for Windows.
Correcting mistakes is really daunting and the best is really to develop from Mac to mitigate the damages, but it won't be hurdles free as well!
It took me more time debugging than coding within VS Windows.
After developing chunk of your app within Visual Studio MAC, the best is to get the code on the windows machine and arrange it to work in UWP.
UWP apps compile fastly and like a charm, so better is to get rid of errors within macOS, IOS, Android, and then go and adapt to UWP. This is easier IF YOU THINK ABOUT CHOOSING THE CORRECT LIBRARIES (working on all platforms, hence check my last advice).
From VS Mac, compile using macOS as a host! It's the easiest way to develop fastly, and correct your bugs.
Here is an article on how to get started from Mac:
https://blog.xamarin.com/preview-bringing-macos-to-xamarin-forms/
Cons: Always having to commit the code for it's use within UWP. But that's also a good way to save your project as well, so that if you screw up (like it happened to me numerous time) you roll back.
Hope that helps others whom didn't know what to do and where to start.
ALSO:
Don't follow tutorials dating from before 2017. Use the .Netstandard/.NET Core framework to develop your App so that libraries are more portable (following the blog article above should do).
Otherwise, headaches ahead!
I'm trying to check the performance (CPU, Memory, Battery, etc) of popular apps (like Facebook, Youtube, etc) on a Windows Phone Device. However, unlike iOS and Android, I do not see an option to check the performance of installed apps in Visual Studio. Is there a way to perform this analysis using any tools or is it only possible to check the performance of apps with source code?
I think you are looking for windows phone application analysis. From Visual Studio you can accessed for BUILD menu or ALT+F11
I'm new to Windows 10 and I absolutely love the Modern/Metro design. I'd love to create programs for Microsoft appstore that look like the Windows Mail or Office 365 Powerpoint but I don't know if I'm on the right track:
I downloaded and installed Microsoft Visual Studio Code, but it seems more for web development. Should I use Cordova and web technologies to create such apps? It is using WinJS(?) but I'm wondering if XAML is a better option?
I've also installed Visual Studio 2015 and put my Windows 10 in developer mode, but there is a bunch of options under C# projects: universal apps, windows forms apps, etc. Which one should I choose to do a native Windows app that looks like Microsoft Mail?
In general there is a whole bunch of options available and that is confusing. I know Java so picking up C# isn't hard for me. Also I've worked with Javascript/HTML/CSS for 4 years now and that is also comfortable for me.
I prefer performance and ease of maintenance.
The apps you mention are just regular Windows Universal apps so you can certainly do what you are asking.
1) No, VS Code is not for creating Windows Universal Apps, use Visual Studio 2015 instead (community edition is fine)
2) Your best starting point in terms of templates is Visual Studio 2015 > File > New Project >Installed > Templates > Visual C# > Windows > Universal > Blank App (Universal Windows)
It sounds like you could do with doing a few tutorials before diving into a real app. https://dev.windows.com/ is the main landing page for Windows app development. There are some great tutorials under the 'getting started' section, take the time to learn the basics now and you'll find writing your app much easier (and you'll probably produce a better app too).
https://dev.windows.com/en-us/design is also worth a look for design-specific resources.
Does anyone have a good solution for testing mobile websites in Visual Studio 2010?
In VS 2008 I used to be able to start up a mobile emulator. That functionality seems to be gone in 2010.
The reason they took it out I'm guessing is that there are NUMEROUS browser implementations for the mobile space. Your best hope is to find a set of emulators for the largest platforms available(IPhone, BlackBerry, Droid...) where you can verify the experience for those users. A single emulator will only do a poor job in gauging the experience for additional users on other platforms.
i agree with Achilles, too many platforms too many devices. if this is a business project you can try http://www.deviceanywhere.com/ (not free). I personally ask friends to visit demo site and test