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Thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Agree Xamarin is what you want if you want to stay Visual Studio like.
There is a free legal version of it. You can use it also for small business
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Unfortunately, the free Starter version has several limitations: no integration with VStudio, limited (although recently increased) app size, and no access to Xamarin Forms.
/ravi
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Thanks for this well-written overview, Ravi-ji !
If one wanted to use the "Indie" subscription, that's US $25 per month per platform.
So, licensing for the two available targets, Android, and iOS, would cost $50 per month.
«I'm asked why doesn't C# implement feature X all the time. The answer's always the same: because no one ever designed, specified, implemented, tested, documented, shipped that feature. All six of those things are necessary to make a feature happen. They all cost huge amounts of time, effort and money.» Eric Lippert, Microsoft, 2009
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Aloha, Bill-ji! Yes, I was referring to Android only.
/ravi
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Thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I definitely like JetBrains IntelliJ for working on Android stuff. Xamarin and the C#/.NET stack would be my preferred choice, but my client uses Java for everything.
The Android developer IDE didn't work for me. Also, it took a while to figure out how to get the emulation stuff to work, and even then, I still haven't figured out how to make it faster. The emulators out there are dog f***ing slow, so I ended up setting up my phone, which was easy to do in IntelliJ.
However, setting up my phone to test software required figuring out which android version it's using and downloading the correct SDK.
It's a process.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: The Android developer IDE didn't work for me. The new one, or the old Eclipse-based one?
TTFN - Kent
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The new one. Can't remember the specific problems I had, but it was basically a "doesn't work" fail. But I tried it when it was still in beta or something like that. Maybe it's not anymore. I'll take a look at it again at some point in the next few weeks.
Marc
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Dang. I've been putting off caring about Android because of Eclipse. But if the new one doesn't work either, I guess I can keep ignoring it.
TTFN - Kent
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The Android stack in eclipse works really well.
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I'm using Genymotion as an emulator which works quite well and certainly much faster than the Google supplied emulator.
Genymotion is based on virtualbox.
As for using a real phone: I installed the correct USB drivers (normally supplied by your phone manufacturer, worked for me with HTC and Samsung) and Eclipse AND Android Studio automagically recognized it.
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Kevin Marois wrote: 1. What tools do I need?
Android Studio - IntelliJ
or
Eclipse (Android Dev Tools)
Kevin Marois wrote: 2. Entry level book recommendation.
The following books (not in any order of preference)
1. Head First Android Development. Author J. Simon, Publisher - O’Reilly
2. Android in Action. Author Ableson et. all, Publisher - Mannings
3. Android Application CookBook. Author Lee, Publisher Wrox
4. Getting Started with IntelliJ IDEA. Author Assumpção, Publisher Packt Publishing
and eventually, 5. Expert Android. Authors Komatineni & MacLean, Publisher Apress
modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.
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Thank you!
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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If you wish, I can send you YouTube links for Video Tutorials
modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.
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Please do
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Thank you Sir!
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Regarding the Android SDK, irrespective of the developer tool, be prepared to download not much short of 10 Gigs of data (system-images, docs, platform tools etc) if you want oldest to newest, that is after you have downloaded and installed the developer environment.
modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.
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Android Studio[^]
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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You can check out Xamarin visual studio tool. It will enable you to develop cross-platform applications: Android, Windows Phone and iOS.
http://xamarin.com/[^]
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I would also suggest Xamarin, especially if you want to stick with VS. However, it isn't all roses. Aside from the licensing & hardware costs (if you want to do iOS work but normally run Windows on a PC), I have found Xamarin Forms to be buggy and deficient in terms of features. There are lots of weird issues with the tools, particularly things like VS randomly losing it's connection to the mac build host (if you aren't running VS on the mac itself) and so on. Xamarin upgrades usually break everything, at least until you find the magical reboot order.
Right now I have an existing published app, but Apple have just changed the rules (at least a couple of months ago) so all apps must soon have 64 bit versions. Xamarin have only just released their non-alpha update for 'unified API' support, and because I work in VS and not Xamarin Studio on a mac the upgrade process for my project was very manual. I also encountered some weird issues during the upgrade that I couldn't find solutions for on the internet, but eventually managed to work through on my own. Unfortunately I'm using a couple of open source libraries to handle things Xamarin Forms doesn't do well cross-platform (access to contacts/camera and image manipulation), and those libraries haven't been converted, so I can't finish converting my app. I'm now trying to decide whether to update those libraries myself (ugh), or wait to see if the authors are successful in time for the two deadlines published by Apple. None of this is actually helping me with my app, and if I had written natively for Apple I would still have had some work to do, but could have started sooner and wouldn't have the x-platform issues to worry about.
I know you said Android (so Google, not Apple), but I just wanted to point out some of the pitfalls of Xamarin. Also don't be fooled by 'Xamarin imposes no performance hit' - there are lots of known issues with the Xamarin Forms ListView integration, and even a few with the label control (!). Even without Xamarin Forms, if you aren't careful on Android specifically, you can end up with memory/performance problems because two different GC's start fighting each other.
I am persevering with Xamarin, but a few devs I know from Twitter have given up and gone on to use the native tools for each platform because Xamarin was just too frustrating for them.
Which is not to say Xamarin doesn't have it's good parts, the fact it works at all is astounding. I'm just saying don't believe all the marketing hype.
As far as books go, I think Amazon has a newish one (or pre-release version) of a Xamarin Forms book by Charles Petzold (now working for Xamarin). If you want something entry level, particularly for XF, that's a good place to start... sorry, I don't have the title handy but if you search for Xamarin and Charles Petzold you'll probably find it.
What I would actually recommend if you go the Xamarin route, is to join the Xamarin University for a year. Yes, it costs more $$$, but you can do as many courses as you can squeeze in, and you get real instructors you can ask questions of. Many of the courses are pretty basic if you're familiar with C#, but the platform specific ones, or the ones that are about Xamarin Form etc. can be very useful. You can even book half hour one on one sessions with the instructors if you need help with an actual project.
Good luck.
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