I have just finished my UX design course and I am building up my portfolio. I have designed a web app that I need to redesign as a native app for iOS and Android (it won't be developed as it's not a real project).
My question is can I use the icons I have designed for the web app for the native iOS version, or do I absolutely have to use SF Symbols (I am working on a PC and downloading SF Symbols seems impossible).
How would you go about it in the real world where the app has to be developed for both platforms?
I will be grateful for your help. Thank you!
Apple does not require developers to use SF Symbols. Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines say that “SF Symbols provides a set of over 2,400 consistent, highly configurable symbols you can use in your app”. That means they can be used, but it is not a requirement. There are many examples of apps on the app store which do not use them.
In my particular experience, I’m developing an app where we use SF Symbols for some of the icons, and others we get them from other sources or we design them ourselves.
I do think Apple’s intention in providing SF Symbols is that as developers start using them, it will provide a somewhat more consistent visual experience for users across apps. But in no way it’s a requirement.
As a personal advice, use an SF Symbols icon only if it’s directly meaningful for the function you are providing. If none of the SF Symbols work for that particular function, it’s better to design your own icon or to look elsewhere than to “stretch” the meaning of an SF Symbol.
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I am an WPF developer with little knowledge for the way "mobile" apps work but in general I believe that they work in some sort of sandbox way (meaning they should not be able to access each others process, info etc., I might be totally incorrect on this one). So I am wondering if such "limitations" are applied to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps?
The reasoning for my question is that I would like to write and app that checks if another Universal App is in process and use some of its information. In WPF there are ways of doing just that but in UWP apps I am not sure if it is/should/will be possible.
Thanks.
There are a couple of solutions in Windows 10. Firstly, if you are building an enterprise app and can also side-load normal Desktop apps, you can use this technique to build your UI as a UWP but also be able to break out of the sandbox and do other things on the desktop.
Secondly, if the app you want to read from is cooperative (ie, is designed to provide information; you're not just grabbing it without permission) then you can use App to App services to send and receive information between two consenting applications.
Both links are to //build videos but you can download the slides too that should contain code samples.
Is there anything available for Haxe which would be suitable for real-life enterprise application development? (i.e. A professional high level UI component framework.)
Just a note - I know we all love our tools of choice, but please try to keep it objective.. don't just recommend Haxe for something without thinking about whether it's really an effective tool for business requirements.
On one hand, as Jason suggested in his comment, there is missing a haxe-based native UI framework.
On the other hand, we don't really need a haxe-based UI framework, but using the UI framework available to the target platform is enough. Unlike building a library, which is better to be target independent, building a "real-life enterprise application" only requires targeting a specific platform. Since UI is highly dependent on the target platform, it means that we should use a target-specific UI framework. For example, the best UI solutions to an web app are probably jQuery, ReactJS, AngularJS etc., which all can be used in Haxe (jQueryExtern, react.hx, angular.haxe). For Flash/Java/C#, we can simply use any "native" libs by -swf-lib path/to/lib.swc, -java-lib path/to/lib.jar, and -net-lib path/to/lib.dll. For C++, however, although there is continuous improvement (watch the wwx2014 talk), it is still somewhat hard to use native libs.
We are making games in haxe + OpenFL + StablexUI. Not sure if it suitable to post their urls, so that you could see the quality. But it helps if you need your custom ui not native (iOS, Android).
I currently have a very simple memory game for Windows Phone that I would like to port over to iOS, Android and possibly Win8 using Xamarin tools.
I would like to centralize my business logic in one assembly and simply create the UI for each platform.
For the most part, the code is simple C#, but I do make use of Bitmaps to show the cards in the game. However, from what I've read, there is no standard support across the different platforms for using Bitmaps.
What would be a recommended approach to this problem?
I'm thinking I have to use something like MonoGame, but feel that is overkill for what I want to do.
You say your code is in C#. As far as I know Xamarin is the only way to get C# code to run on Android and iOS. Xamarin has a free starter edition that you might be able to use but your app will be size limited. Once you hit the size limit you'll need to pay for a license.
After you've decided to pay for a license there are no other costs involved if you want to use MonoGame for the port. If your game is already using XNA or you have some XNA experience I recommend using MonoGame. MonoGame is a port of XNA and is designed for making games, so many game related tasks are easier.
The alternative is to build your game as an app using the standard app building API. This is possible but I can't see any advantages doing it this way unless you are trying to save money by using Xamarin's free edition. If you plan to make more games in the future, you'd be better off biting the bullet and learning MonoGame.
Using bitmaps with MonoGame shouldn't be a problem. Although, you may need to convert them to PNG's first.
Centralizing the business logic in one assembly is sort of possible using Portable Class Libraries but due to the limitations of PCL's it's often easier to use file sharing. Basically you have a soft link to the files in each project. Updating the files updates them in all projects at the same time, but adding new files requires you to add them to each project individually. It's a little bit of a maintenance pain, but not much.
For sure, as a starting point you should separate UI and logic.
To reach this I highly recommend you to make console version of game. Using console it is possible only send commands with parameters to application. No mouse or real-time keyboards usages. All UI-related tasks will be left. Only business logic and commands to use will remain.
Then, you should try MonoGame. It's reliable enough for 2D games. Even more, If IL-code is not too much, it's free for iOS and Android!
Other way is... Unity 3D. Using that engine is depends of code you wrote. In some cases it's possible to use that game engine with shared business logic. Thanks to new Unity 3D policy, indie game developers could make and deploy their games for free.
In short, plan is:
Implement core functionality (with console I/O);
Then, choose engine and implement UI for target platforms.
What would be the best practice to share busines logic c# code between MonoTouch and Mono For Android projects?
Edited:
Initially, my question was about the physical file sharing:
What do you propose to use: network file sharing or some code
version control (git, svn)? In my case I am using two workstations -
Mac (MonoDevelop with MonoTouch) and PC (Visual Studio with
MonoDroid).
What about Solution/Project folder structure? In
"Blog Post: Xamarin Mobile World Congress 2012 Unofficial
Conference App Released!" example structure is quite confusing:
several solutions in one folder and then different platform projects in one
subfolder with different folder and project names. It can not be accomplished nativly
with IDE. Are they editing content of solution files and folder names manualy
outside of IDE environment?
And for projects of common code what kind of profile (template) to
use? Monotouch has several: Empty Project, MonoTouch Library
Project and MonoTouch Binding Projects? In Android i supose -
Android class library?
This is a very general question, but here are a few resources that may help you get started:
Video: Cross-platform Mobile Development
Blog Post: Shared Libraries For Windows Phone 7, MonoDroid and Beyond
Book: Mobile Development with C#
Blog Post: Xamarin Mobile World Congress 2012 Unofficial Conference App Released!
Edit (to answer your new questions)
The idea behind linking files across projects is that there is only one actual copy of the file, rather than having to manage multiple copies and keep them in sync yourself. The file will actually exist in just one project and be linked into the others, but when the projects are compiled it treats the file as if it were actually there.
I can't speak to exactly how they created their folder structure, but I know there have been many cases where I would manually edit project or solution files to get the folder structure I want, because there was no way to get what I wanted through the IDE alone. This really boils down to personal preference on how you want your folders to be structured.
In the end, what you need is a class library project for every platform you want to target. When going with the linked file approach, it's totally up to you where you put the physical files. One approach I use often is to actually create a standard .NET 4.0 class library, put the files in there, and then link them into my Mono for Android and MonoTouch class libraries. If all you care about is targeting iOS and Android, that may be more trouble than it's worth, and you can just let the files live in one project and link them into the other.
Disclaimer: I've got a particular Mvvm methodology that I use for sharing code across multi-platform projects...
Despite this, I genuinely don't believe in "one size fits all" frameworks - I think you need to be careful to pick an approach that best suits your project, your developers and your organisation.
With that said, some of the tools you can use within the Mono development approach are:
using Portable Class Libraries to share exactly the same code between platforms
using platform specific Class Libraries to share code between platforms, linking these using the Project Linker tool from Microsoft
using #define code within your class libraries to provide platform specific implementations of the projects (I personally try to avoid this approach, but it does often provide the quickest route to market)
using DI/IoC techniques to provide components for those occasions when platform specific implementations really are required.
using a assembly linking to provide IoC - e.g. this is what the Xamarin MobileAPI does
using server-based logic for genuine shared functionality - e.g. using REST or SOAP-XML services to implement logic
sharing tests (e.g. NUnit) between platforms to assure the quality of your logic
using shared code techniques - MVC (MonoCross) or MVVM (MonoMobile.Views or MvvmCross) for UI "controller" logic; MonoTouch.Dialog and MonoDroid.Dialog for "View-level" abstractions; CrossGraphics for UI "drawing"; SQLite.Net for database; etc.
I'm finding the MonoTouch, MonoDroid and the Microsoft tools provide real and signigicant benefits in developing cross platform code - but you do have to work and think to achieve this.
Hello dearest community
I just given a task to develop a mobile application for chinese mobile phone, Nexian NX-G920. At first, I think it can just run the J2ME application. But it didn't, it only support MRP application. Having read about it here : MRP, I think my best case is, if any, convert my *.JAR application into *.MRP. Is there any tool that can do it?
My Plan B is, to develop using specific MRP SDK. But that is just to costly, in term of effort to be use.
As far as I know there are only Java to C translators or Java bytecode to assembly translators like those listed in this question.
These include JCGO, Toba, gcj and llvm. However a Java to C translator or similar is only part of the solution because it would only help you if you were translating classes that didn't interact with Java libraries that are not part of the MRP platform. This is because MRP platform won't have the libraries you link to and will have different GUI and hardware API calls than J2ME.
The only SDK for MRP is the OpenSDK which you have already mentioned.
I think I've found one solution, but I have to use my C languages, not the plain J2ME as first I thought it will. Here is the SDK, Open SDK by Sky Mobi.
Haven't try it though, but I think this is one solution that fit the problem.
Sky-Mobi SDK is saved this archive on Wayback Machine
The Sky-Mobi is saved this page of site in the Internet Archive