I wanted to ask you about the desktop part of the technology.
If the documentation is about how ordinary developers can inject native code into a desktop application (WPF, Mac, Linux) like buinding or as a custom plugin or something similar
Best regards, Vadim
You have all the same options for platform code on desktop that you do on mobile:
Adding it directly to the native runner app that's created by flutter create
Writing a plugin
FFI
I've installed the latest NativeScript extension for Visual Studio Code (https://www.nativescript.org/nativescript-for-visual-studio-code). Supposedly the extension does support intellisense: "With Intellisense, interactive debugging and integration with device emulators, the NativeScript extension for Visual Studio Code provides the most feature complete environment for NativeScript Development". However, in my Page.xml files there is no such thing as intellisense. Am I doing something wrong here?
One alternative if you are ok working with React in NativeScriptis to use react-nativescript. It gives you Intellisense you would expect like this:
Looking for a nice and efficient way to render GUI in a game engine I gave a look at the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). From what I've seen it is doing is job nicely but I'm wondering what are the requirement and dependencies for the CEF.
For each platform I've seen in the source code dependencies to a specific toolkit (gtk for Linux, Win32 API for Windows and so on) Would it run on platforms other than the desktop platforms ? Like Android, iOS, and consoles (Playstation, Xbox) ?
Chromium is switching to Aura UI. CEF on Windows is already using Aura, Linux will use Aura instead of GTK soon. You can read here on what is Aura. In short it's a non-native UI toolkit, the only native element is the toplevel window, everything inside is drawn by chrome.
CEF currently supports only Windows/Linux/OSX. CEF may support Android in the future but there is no schedule at this time. Try searching the CEF Forum for "android": http://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/search.php?keywords=android
For now, on Android you could use Chromview:
https://github.com/pwnall/chromeview
I made an addon to Dektop Firefox using addon-sdk. now i want to launch it into firefox mobile(fennec) in android. I am using android 4.0.3 emulator. I have installed mobile firefox browsers(almost all versions) in it. im trying to install my addon to mobile firefox using addon-sdk. in this step i am getting different types of errors.
1.some addons installed with disable mode, but not working enable/disable option.
2.for some addons, i am getting "addon installed,restart required" option, but after restart, addon not visible in addon manager
please, provide atlesat one working way, to develop and install firefox addons(any simple) in fennec(any version) in andoid (any emulator/any mobile).
Thanks,
You are asking the wrong question. Any version of Firefox Mobile supports extensions, no problems here. However, its user interface is very different from the desktop Firefox which means that extensions built for the desktop Firefox usually won't work without adjustments. So the correct question would be:
Which version of the Add-on SDK supports Firefox Mobile?
You need Add-on SDK 1.5 or higher. When running cfx you will have to use --force-mobile command line flag to make sure that your extension is marked as compatible with Firefox Mobile. There will still be limitations however, most SDK modules currently don't support Firefox Mobile. Add-on SDK 1.8 lists the following modules as supporting Firefox Mobile:
page-mod
page-worker
request
self
simple-storage
timers
Wladimir is correct, and I would only add that we are working on expanding module support on native Fennec. If you want to play with some additional Fennec features in an SDK-based add-on right now, you can get access to the NativeWindow and BrowserApp objects Fennec implements by using this code in a module:
let utils = require('api-utils/window-utils');
exports = {
BrowserApp: utils.activeBrowserWindow.BrowserApp,
NativeWindow: utils.activeBrowserWindow.NativeWindow
};
The documentation for these objects is on MDN:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Mobile/API/BrowserApp
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.NativeWindow
I know about Monotouch and I have virtual MacOS and Monodevelop/Monotouch installed.
However, is it better to build an iPhone application in Monotouch on Mac OS X or it's as easy as to build iPhone app in Visual Studio and port it to iPhone via Monotouch?
Is there anyone who tried porting c# project to iPhone? How different was it from building the app on mac os using monodevelop/monotouch?
ps. my favourite helper utilities does not exist on mac os and that's the reason for this Q
As mentioned, to compile your applications and upload them for appstore use, or debug using the simulator you'll need to use MonoDevelop on a Mac.
However it is possible to write a large portion of the code in Visual Studio 2008 or 2010.
I've written 6 Monotouch apps that are selling badly in the appstore, using primarily Visual Studio. The reason I use Windows and VS2010 is I'm a lot slower with the Mac keyboard, have my Visual Studio setup for speed, and a PC that is about twice the processing power.
Here's a few gotchas and tips:
Copy the monotouch DLLs from your Mac to Windows (search for "monotouch.dll" on the Mac), stick all the DLLs in a static place and reference them in your project. It should then compile in VS.
Make sure you keep 2 project files - a MonoDevelop and a Visual Studio one. I tried converting manually and also wrote a converter to go between the two but it breaks so often it's easier to just keep two files.
You can also convert the Mono XML documentation (it's in a different format to the Microsoft .NET XML documentation format) for Visual Studio intellisense. The link below has a download for the XML documentation I generated for Monotouch 2.1.
Avoid using a shared drive for development. This make compilation on the Mac very slow - stick to copying the files using a USB stick or ideally use an online source control site like bitbucket.org
I found it was quite fast with a single keyboard, monitor and mouse and a KVM switch going between PC and Mac.
For the layout (either XIB or C#) you'll have use your Mac, or write the bare bones in VS first.
I've written a fair amount on the process here.
You simply can't develop a MonoTouch application just using Visual Studio. You have to use the OSX tools to build the code and create the package for the phone. There's no way to work around that, and the easiest way to do it is using MonoDevelop.
What me and other developers have done in the past is to develop some of the C# libraries for the apps using Visual Studio, because even though MonoDevelop is pretty good, its still far from being as good as VS. Refactoring code, for example, is much easier with tools like Resharper, etc.
When developing the App in Visual Studio, there's a lot of things you'll have to deal with; for example:
You simply cannot run a build from Visual Studio: VS doesn't know how to build the kind of project necessary for the iPhone, and it doesn't have all the libraries that exist in the iOS SDK.
there's no visual editor to create the XIB files you you probably want to create for your app.
You'll have to do a lot of extra work here and there to get the VS to even open the solution (like copy lib files from OSX to Windows, create separate projects, etc) (although I think Novell Mono tools for VS may help a little on this one.
So here's what I've been doing for the last 6 months:
Break down the application into different projects for business logic and UI logic
You should be able to build, compile and even test the business logic from VS. Just remember not to use any UI libraries, or external libraries not available in MonoTouch
Use MonoDevelop to build the UI code part of the app. Being able to quickly run the app to test helps a lot.
Every once in a while, if you feel you need to to a big cleanup, open the code in Visual Studio, and do the refactorings; although you won't be able to build anything, the code checker in VS will help to make sure the code is still valid.
Hope it helps!
This has actually changed with new MonoTouch release rebranded as Xamarin.iOS that offers tight Visual Studio integration. You still need a Mac for building and testing but you can work from VS without much hurdle.
They even hooked up the debugger:
In this screenshot, VS and OS X run on the same computer, but they don't have to, given that there is a local network connection between them.
Read more here:
Xamarin iOS for Visual Studio allows iOS applications to be written and tested on Windows computers, with a networked Mac providing the build and deployment service.
Developing for iOS inside Visual Studio provides a number of benefits:
Creation of a single cross platform solution for iOS, Android and Windows applications.
Using Visual Studio tools (such as Resharper and Team Foundation Server) for all your cross-platform projects, including iOS source code.
Using the familiar (for existing Visual Studio developers) code editor, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Xamarin.iOS for Visual Studio supports configurations where Visual Studio is running inside a Windows virtual machine on a Mac (eg. using Parallels or VMWare).
Note that Visual Studio integration is available in Business edition which is $999 per license.
(The license is perpetual per person but you only get free upgrades for a year.)
The MonoTouch home site states:
Please note that MonoTouch requires a
Mac, Apple's iPhone SDK and you must
be part of Apple's iPhone Developer
Program to test and deploy your
software on a device and to
redistribute your code.
I think some of the problems you are going to have using Visual Studio are
you won't be designing with the native UI controls
the emulator used for testing will be different
you may end up using API calls that aren't available in the MonoTouch libraries
I would stick with using MonoDevelop on the Mac.
Since you need the Apple's iPhone SDK (which is only available for OS X) installed to develop with MonoTouch you will be limited to developing on a Mac.
MonoDevelop is quite a good IDE, and its integration with Interface Builder and the iPhone/iPad simulator makes developing for iPhone with MonoTouch a pretty nice experience.