My app, basically, needs to do the following:
getting GPS coordinates
calling web services (for accessing, sending info etc)
work in background with no UI for most of the time
The target device is a mobile tablet running with Windows 8.1.
I found out that for this OS I can develop both a desktop app or a Windows Store App.
Please, what do you suggest to use for my needs?
Also, because I dont know Windows Desktop App at all, Please can I get everything done using a desktop app?
Thanks
the main difference between those two is, whether or not you get a window in your old-school desktop (desktop app) or one of those fancy full-screen-app thingies that were introduced in Windows 8... Afaik you can't sell the Desktop apps on the Windows Store, but functionality-wise your average desktop app has no real downside as you can use .NET with all fancy features for both...
Here you can find a detailed comparison between both. But from your description you should be fine with the desktop app (:
Cheers D
I would go with the desktop app simply for the background tasks you mentioned. This is tricky to do in Windows Store apps as Windows tombstones (freezes) the apps if you navigate away for any length of time. As far as I know, only certain apps, such as music apps, can run in the background.
Desktop apps have no such limitation.
Related
We've just successfully created an accessibility app for android (think screen reader) that works across all applications without needing to first launch a specific app, via the accessibility service.
Is it possible to create an equivalent headless service for Windows Phone? UIAutomation is available for WinRT but I don't think it's available for Windows Phone 8.1 or 10 in the same way. How could I achieve something like this?
It's currently not possible to build a system-wide accessibility app on Windows Phone 8.x (or 10 for that matter). Please consider adding a suggestion on UserVoice.
I am trying to find Simulators for multiple mobile Operating Systems, but i am always getting Emulators instead.
What i need basically is maybe a Web Version of different mobile OS, not to run or test applications, just to navigate through their menu and settings (go at settings, change settings, setup email etc.)
The purpose for this is to guide through users on how to change their settings on their phones, without the need of the actual device or having multiple emulators.
UPDATE
After a lot of search around i managed to find an Android web simulator that suits my needs at Manymo.
It has versions : 4.2 , 4.1 , 4.0.3 , 2.3 , 2.2 , 2.1
Still in search for something similar for iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry.
You could easily set up such emulators with a bit of CSS and jQuery (for the animations when changing screens).
From time to time I run into such "simulators" on cell-provider companies' websites. But they are very limited to a teaching a few functions, and are accompanied by text on the side.
You might want to hire a web developer, give him 3-4 days and then you have a nice simulator for the 3 popular OSes.
Just beware that having an Android simulator may not be enough; The OS changes with the devices, as manufacturers do whatever they want with the OS and compile for their specific device.
Have you considered creating a free account on http://deviceanywhere.com?
There are some 'fun' apps built for Windows Phone to emulate other phones
iFun - iPhone simulator
Fundroid - Android simulator
B7B - BlackBerry simulator
I haven't tried them out myself so I can't say how well they simulate phone settings, but is this kind of what you're looking for?
Something like http://www.mobilephoneemulator.com/ then perhaps. Or do you want it for apps rather than web pages? Then I don't think it's possible.
There are packages like jQuery Mobile that is designed to generate web apps that look like native mobile apps.
So, our Windows Phone developer left recently, and I primarily do Android development.
We had a question from a client about the possibility of installing our Windows Phone 8 app on a Surface Tablet. Namely, is it possible to do? As it stands, our WP8 app was not written with tablets in mind, so my question is:
Is there anything I need to do to the WP8 app to get it to install on a tablet, (should it work as-is (like Android apps do), is there some sort of flag I have to enable and then rebuild, etc.?)
As #AMR mentions, the biggest challenge will be the UI; however, depending on the device functionality being used, the "backend" may or may not be a challenge as well.
There is great guidance on the Windows Phone Dev Center about practices and techniques for building for both platforms, so depending on when the phone app was built and your former developer's awareness of the overlapping platforms, you could be in great shape or just so-so shape.
Additionally, the following resources may be of help in mapping from what you have already coded in Windows Phone 8 to what you'd do in Windows 8:
XAML controls comparison between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8
(much will be relevant to Windows Phone 7 too)
Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 platform comparison (shows common
APIs, storage, networking, etc.)
Lastly, the Windows Phone Runtime API documentation gives a listing
of APIs only on Phone 8 vs. APIs adopted from Windows 8.
Okay well first off yes, there will be a few things that change but nothing to serious.
HOPFULLY you have a good MVVM model. If this is the case then you should be able to just copy and paste 99.999% of your backend code right into your tablet app. There are a few things that are different but its just namespace stuff. Nothing too serious.
The Major change is going to be your UI layout and UI controls. Depending on what libs you are using you will probably have a lot of conflicts.
Your best bet is to just copy and paste your backend code in and then creating a new UI. I have tried to merge phone UIs in the paste into the tablet and its rediculous at times. I found it takes less time to just recreate it.
If you need any help you can hit me up at www.AnthonyRussell.info Maybe I can help with your transfer. Just make sure to leave your contact info.
I have a server at work that I want to host an iphone application on.
I want it so that the user goes to the web browser on their ihpone and clicks a download link on a html page and iphone application is installed on their phone.
Is there any way that this is possible using xocde? Perhaps some way I can build a .plist file that does this?
Thanks
Unfortunately, you cannot install a native iPhone application without going through the App Store (unless you wish to publish your app solely to jailbroken devices). If you really don't want to use the app store, you can build a web app that runs on the server, but you cannot install and run arbitrary binaries on a users device that have not been approved by Apple.
EDIT: As people have pointed out, there are options for testing purposes that will allow you to install your app on other devices via the internet (TestFlightApp, iOS Enterprise program), but for a wide-scale deployment technique this will not work.
Jumhyn is right in his answer but there is a little more to it.
If you want your App to be available to iPhone users (non-jailbroken) you have to have an Apple developer account ($99/yr)
If you want to develop only for jailbroken devices you can, but i'm not sure about the license agreements you accept when using Xcode and Cocoa(touch) framework. It might be a violation of your agreement.
The last solution is the Apple Enterprise developer program ($299/yr). Here you can control who has access to your app and I think it is possible to distribute around the App Store. There is definitely some limitation.
One thing is sure. You cannot do installation from websites as you want without going around Apple's App Store. I strongly recommend sticking to the rules and agreements you accepted when activating OS X, Xcode, iPhone and the Cocoa Framework.
If you are trying to permanently deploy to a website, this will not work for legitimate App Store applications. You can however, once published to the app store, place a link to to it that will take them to the AppStore for downloading it.
If you need this for testing/beta purposes I reccommend www.testflightapp.com
I am about to start the development of an Windows 8 app. The app is supposes to run in phone, tablet and desktop. I went through lot of docs in msdn sites and this is what I understood from them.
There is no way to create one project which supports both phone and (tablet,desktop).
User can create a Portable class library project and put all the reusable code into it and add it as reference to the actual projects.
create one project for windows phone and one project for window store app(create using dev account)
Please correct me if I am wrong and also let me know if there is any other way of doing it. Also I understand like the window store app will work for both tablet and desktop whereas windows phone app works only in phones and not in tablet.Is it right?
Windows tablet comes in two flavours, Windows Pro and Windows RT.
Will the desktop store app work on both the tablets ?
is there different development environment for different category of tablets?