Bob Warren wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> The lack of response to your question shows, I think, that multi-
> platform apps in LiveCode, for both desktop and mobile, are really
> hard to achieve.
In all fairness, his post was unattended for just 22 hours.
I pondered replying myself yesterday when I first saw it, but it is
indeed a tricky goal, something very few people in all the world even
attempt, in any language.
While it's true that Ubuntu and more recently Microsoft have begun
exploring convergence strategies for a single adaptable, scalable set of
UI conventions across all device types, the reality is that to date
neither has been enormously successful (though the night is young, and
the research and APIs still in early days).
Apple still has the belief that every category of devices require their
own unique OS, with their own interaction models and supporting APIs.
Consider the tablet: its screen size is the same as a laptop, so while
a phone is a radically different beast we might expect a tablet and a
laptop to be able to share a single UI.
And in some cases they can, but not well on most systems other than
Gnome-based Linux distros because most have much smaller controls
completely unsuitable for use with both a pointer and a finger.
You've extended Alex' original question into the realm of the browser
here, in a way I believe can be very helpful:
> I would love to be able to do this in LC because I love the language,
> but the only practical way I have found so far is to write browser
> apps in JQuery.
This is a useful consideration, because there's much we developers of
native apps can learn from the web world driven today by responsive
design, making a single style sheet that adapts the UI for any size
screen and accounts for the very different interaction modes of pointer
and finger.
Some complain that learning web development is hard because it requires
attaining competency with three different subsystems: HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript.
But I believe this is a feature, not a bug.
When building native apps, decades of software engineering "best
practices" have long encouraged us to do the same: separate data,
layout, and code as much as practical, so changes to one have minimal
affect on the others.
If we apply what we've learned from web development to making
multi-device apps in LiveCode, our app's core business logic can be well
factored into libraries and behaviors, with data brought into the app
and saved outside of the app, and layout containing so little code those
stack files are almost as slender as a Cocoa NIB file.
I'm only just starting to build mobile apps in earnest, but I've been
making multi-platform desktop apps in LC since the '90s, before LiveCode
or even RunRev existed. Even when working in the more self-same world
of the desktop, accommodating user expectations on both Mac and Windows
has never been trivial. LiveCode makes it about as easy as it can be,
but the differences are not small and require some thinking to handle well.
Extending that to include iOS and Android as well is accomplishable, but
no more simple than accommodating OS X vs Windows. It requires spending
time reading the HIGs for each platform, being willing to move things
around as users are accustomed to on each, and making that as simple as
practical by centralizing code away from the UI.
Now that I'm building multi-device-type apps, for myself I find it
easier to make separate layouts for phone and desktop, allowing each to
take best advantage of what the device and its input models offer.
I tend to build things with reusable behavior-driven groups, which
allows me to have a toolbar common to iOS and Android but placed at the
top for Android and the bottom for iOS, as each HIG suggests.
The toolbar for desktop not only has more space but more importantly
supports in some cases different tasks, because the device type serves a
different set of use cases.
The card controls the layout of the groups within it, so a different
card for mobile, tablet, and desktop lets me optimize the layout for
what the user could expect to do for each, and since the underlying
business logic is the same for all very little of my central libraries
are affected by whichever UI happens to be in use at a given moment.
There are many ways to solve such problems, and the way I find useful
for me in making productivity apps will no doubt differ from others, and
certainly differ a lot from those making games where the UI and UX are
very, very different.
But in all cases I believe two things:
1. Making software is by its nature inherently complex, requiring
study and more than a little typing. LiveCode makes it far
less difficult than most tools, but I doubt making good software
can ever be truly "simple".
2. We can learn from the world of responsive web design to reinforce
best practices with native app development: factoring code, data,
and UI to minimize interactions between them and thereby maximizing
flexibility across device types.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Alex Tweedly wrote:
>
>
> I'm considering developing a multi-platform app; i.e. ont where the
> same app runs on both "desktop" and mobile.
>
> On the 'desktop' platforms it will use 'standard' menus, and that will
> be the main "command" access (along with an optional toolbar, most
> likely, but the toolbar will give access to a limited number of most
> often used commands/features, rather than to "everything).
>
> But, on mobile, there are no "standard menus", and although they are
> appearing on a few apps (as homegrown menus), they aren't the usual
> convention on mobile devices. So, I will have a combination of icons,
> buttons, etc. on the mobile platforms.
>
> I suspect that means I'm in the same boat as many other people have
> already been in, and I'd like to benefit from your experience.
>
> If you have developed an app running on both desktop and mobile:
>
> 1. did you follow this same split on how your main command structure
> was invoked ?
>
> 2. how did you manage this ?
> a. really one app with per-platform customization
> b. two (or more) apps with as large a percentage as possible put
> into library stacks (or similar) as possible, with separate menu-based
> vs button-based apps.
> c. something else that you could readily explain
>
> Many thanks
> Alex.
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