I'm completely new to Windows Phone and the Windows galaxy in general as far as programming goes. For a project of a phone app that has to run on a windows phone, I started exploring the resources and I have some questions.
One of the problems I encountered is that things change very quickly. For example, answers to this question say that browsers in Windows Phone will most likely not support HTML5. However, there are many online tutorials (for instance here) introducing ASP.NET MVC 4 and how it is appropriate for mobile apps.
I would personally like to go the "HTML5+javascript" way instead of learning how to develop with Silverlight, which apparently has been discontinued by Microsoft. However, my first concern is evidently to be able to create an application that works!
So with that in mind, my questions are the following:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be better than XNA)
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is no access to a distant server?
Any specific pointers or answers on these specific issues will be more than welcome! :)
Currently, Windows Phone 7.1 does not support full HTML5+JS as a replacement for Silverlight. In Windows 8 (NOT the next version of windows phone, but the next version of Microsoft's desktop OS), HTML5+JS is presented as an alternative to using XAML and C# (it's a little confusing because on Windows 8, "metro" apps do not run Silverlight, but they still operate using XAML and C#). But that's neither here nor there... To summarily answer your question(s): In the phone's browser, there is very limited HTML5 capability.
From what you've described, you definitely want to use Silverlight for your Windows Phone app. The answer to that part of your question has never changed, Silverlight from the beginning of WP7 would be your best option. XNA is exclusively designed for gaming development.
To answer all of your questions, point by point:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of
Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
This has not been confirmed (as of this post), but speculation is that this will be the case in some future release of the OS (no word on when that may be). But no, this is not currently an option, and there is no promise from Microsoft that it ever will be.
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play
videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some
speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I
try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be
better than XNA)
Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. :) ASP.NET + MVC will not work. XNA is intended to be used for building games. Attempting to build more standard user interfaces using it would give you a migraine to say the least, and would not look anywhere near good.
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
and
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is > no access to a distant server?
As answered above, there is no way to do this on the phone.
As for pointers on all of this. I strongly encourage you to simply google (or bing if you're into that kind of thing) "getting started with windows phone" or "windows phone tutorials". Best source I could point you to is the Windows Phone Developer website. It's got some great tutorials that don't assume you know lots about windows phone. Best to get this material from Microsoft. It'll be more reliable, more well written, and ultimatly more useful. I've been writing Windows Phone apps since before the phone was released, and I still use it for learning the basics of something new. Great place.
Related
I would like to start programming for the Universal Windows Platform with an universal app running on Win10 desktops, tablets and phones.
I'm new to programming mobile Windows applications, so I have to learn some basics. I have some experience in Java/Android programming and basic skills in C#.
My problem now is that there aren't much tutorials for UWP app development which teach from the beginning how to program such an app. What I find are some tutorials for Windows phone 8 app development.
Are the differences too big or would you recommend to go through Windows phone 8 tutorials to get into the app for Windows topic?
UWP tutorials are sparse and hard to find, it's true. The difference isn't "Big" if you're doing a basic app, but once you start getting into any sort of mid-level apps then yes it diverges from the W8/WP8 paradigm.
One thing you can do is use the Windows App Studio, and create a generic app with an RSS feed, youtube videos or whatever, and download that solution and then look through the code that is automatically generated. I found a few good sources too:
Windows Dev center is also a huge help with example code (on GitHub) and the MSDN has examples as well, if you filter through it properly.
Channel 9 has an absolute beginners tutorial series from nothing to a superhero app.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-10-development-for-absolute-beginners
I also found a good youtube series that covers individual topics instead of a real tutorial series for learning to program apps:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaoF-xhnnrRUNVx-JAfEy_kUrGGaKS7HL
Recently I began working in WinRT for Windows Store Apps (and the upcoming Windows 10 Universal Apps) using C#. After working in .NET for awhile previously, I was excited to work with .NET on mobile devices, only to find that WinRT did not feel like home at all.
Constantly I find myself having to search for alternatives to certain classes that I'm familiar with in .NET since often they're not the same or even implemented in WinRT. I figure that the lack of implementation derives from the fact that WinRT at its core is unmanaged, even though the CLR binds to it from managed code.
My question is: What is stopping Microsoft from allowing developers to import and use all of the familiar .NET classes from managed code, even with WinRT running from behind? I know it's not a limitation of the device because my Surface Pro can run desktop .NET apps just fine and the Mono project has succeeded in porting almost the entire .NET API to devices of every kind.
Thanks for your input!
This is a big topic but there are three basic reasons why you don't get the full .NET API from a Windows Store app.
The APIs don't fit on smaller devices like phones. Since the purpose of the Universal Windows Platform is to have apps that can run everywhere, it can't include APIs that are too resource-intensive (disk, memory, CPU, etc.) to run on smaller devices. (Note that even if the managed API appears to be small, it might have a dependency on a large underlying Win32 API).
The APIs aren't compatible with the Store app model. Many APIs that require permissions not granted to Store apps fall into this category, as do APIs that would enable apps to do "unwanted" things to your machine (the degree of "unwantedness" is subjective).
The APIs are deprecated or there are newer alternatives. This was the case with a lot of APIs in Windows 8, where things like file-system access and network sockets were blocked from Store apps because there were newer WinRT equivalents.
Note that Microsoft is always open to re-evaluating whether a specific API should be included or not. For example, Windows 10 brings back many APIs that were banned from Windows 8.1 (such as System.IO and System.Net.Sockets) and has expanded the capabilities granted to apps. You can file feedback via the Windows Feedback app or on UserVoice if you want additional APIs brought back (adding detailed justification never hurts).
I am embarking on my first windows phone app. I noticed there are two templates one is in Javascript (Blank App (Universal Apps)) and the other in C# (XAML) again Blank App (Universal Apps). Which one should I use, I know it depends a lot on the project context, but basically its just a simple phone app, that reads and displays data, mostly crud operations. Any help is appreciated.
I think there are a lot of resources in the internet regarding this question.
For example:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/8350-xaml-and-c-or-html-and-winjs-for-windows-store-universal-and-cross-platform-apps.html
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-likes-winjs-for-making-windows-8-apps-but-most-developers-prefer-xaml
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156361/advantages-and-disadvantages-to-using-xaml-c-or-html5-javascipt-for-metro-apps
If you have a C#/.NET background, choose XAML - if you have a web background, choose WinJS...
I think that XAML is more popular than WinJS (especially for Windows Phone).
Here's my take to add to the list--http://www.kraigbrockschmidt.com/2013/01/17/html-javascript-xaml-directx-language-windows-store-app/ . In my partner-facing role at Microsoft I got this question quite a bit, and it really boils down to personal preference and experience unless you run into a place where the languages don't quite have parity at present. Parity was more of an issue in Windows 8, many areas were resolved for Windows 8.1. (Parity is more a matter between Windows/Windows Phone now rather than between the languages.)
Personally, being the author of Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Second Edition (free ebook, Microsoft Press, 2014), I like the JS approach very much because you can leverage standards. On the downside, JS code is the least secure of all the options (see this blog post of mine), which might be a make-or-break consideration.
While looking over the Adobe Flash Player/AIR Roadmap (found here) I saw this:
"Flash Player release and debug players are available and supported for Windows 8 Desktop and Modern UI experiences on both x86/64 and ARM platforms."
Which got me thinking about a potential method that apps for Windows 8 might be able to be released using Flash Player.
Currently, using AIR, you can build apps for Android and iOS, as well as for Windows Desktop. But Windows 8 Modern UI and Windows Phone 8 are both unsupported platforms.
So the idea was this. If IE 10 for Modern UI supports Flash Player, and if HTML5 Modern UI Windows apps use IE under the hood in order to run, then supposedly you could wrap a Flash Player app inside of an HTML5 app, and then, voilà, you'd have a Windows Modern UI app running off of ActionScript. (Though it still wouldn't work for Windows Phone 8.)
Well, I have tested this, and (sadly) it doesn't work. I would almost bet that this isn't because the functionality isn't there, but rather it is because of some switch on the backend that prevents this functionality from being used.
So, finally, here is my question, mainly to sate my curiosity on the subject. Does anyone know whether or not such a backend switch exists, and if so, is there a way to switch it?
I have tried the same thing as you and no, I don't think such a switch exists.
I can only assume Microsoft has purposely blocked off ActiveX controls on purpose, since Silverlight also does not work in HTML5 apps.
It is sort of possible that with Windows 8.1 Update 1, they may change this, but I believe it opens up a lot of problems for them from a security / app store catalogue perspective, so would be unlikely.
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.