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Ok, thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I strongly recommend Xamarin[^]. It's not free, but IMHO the benefits of being able to code in C# (and use VS if you can afford Xamarin Business Edition) are great. Xamarin Studio is a Visual Studio look-alike (but is not Visual Studio!) and may be sufficient for your needs. If so, you can buy the Indie ($300/yr) license and upgrade later, if necessary.
- Xamarin imposes no noticeable performance hit, and Xamarin Forms is a great abstraction over Android, iOS and WinPhone.
- Note that Xamarin is not a "once size fits all" solution. You need to know how Android and the Android APIs work (which is a good thing, since whatever works in Java will work exactly the same way in Xamarin). Xamarin provides C# bindings over Android (and iOS).
- Their new emulator (currently in Alpha) is miles ahead of anything else. If you don't want to use alpha technology, I recommend using the (free) Genymotion emu. The Google and Intel emus suck hugely.
Re: books, the O'Reilly pair (Learning Android and Programming Android) are what got me wildly excited about the OS. Petzold is working on a book for programming mobile apps using Xamarin. See this[^] link. IIRC, Xamarin has made a preview edition available for free.
Data point: another dev and I built a non-trivial iOS (he) and Android (me) client app for our company as a POC, using Xamarin. The app had a rich UI, worked identically on iOS and Android and easily communicated with an array of existing back-end services. We were able to get it done quickly (3-4 months) since we're originally C# devs. StackOverflow, CP and the Xamarin forums provided a wealth of info when we had questions. The POC was very well received and proved Xamarin was a viable technology for us if we want to quickly develop multi-platform mobile clients.
The only thing that's prevented me from going whole hog on Xamarin (for Android dev) is my lack of free time. Once I'm done upgrading a couple of my freeware C# apps (with a user base of 10K+), I intend to buy Xamarin for myself and will begin to develop mobile versions of these apps.
Edit
MS and Xamarin work very closely together. IMHO, it's just a matter of time before Xamarin's technology becomes part of Visual Studio.
Hope this helps.
/ravi
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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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