Dear Rick,
as you know I develop business applications with Visual FoxPro and Web Connection.
They run on Windows servers.
Please, what is the best way to use them on mobile devices (smartphones, iphones, tablets):
- use CSS and browsers
- develop apps for Android
If you prefer the second option, please what is the language I have to know?
Many thanks for support
Native apps on iPhone and Android will be the best solution for you if you can afford the development teams and the time it takes to get to market. This is what all of the large companies do and it is not cheap nor a one man job. In addition you need a lot of phones for testing since not all of the phones nor the OS versions react the same across variations.
The other option that I have found to be great is HTML5, Flexbox, CSS and AngularJS. If you want to run it as a native app there is a solution for that too, it compiles your code into a native app. This option is called Cordova.
The advantage with this is you write your code once to run in the mobile format and then it runs everywhere like the desktop. I have also been using Bootstrp but I'm slowly moving more and more into Flexbox. Browser compatibility is handled by AngularJS and Bootstrap. Not sure how Flexbox will do on old browsers but none of my users have smartphones or desktop systems that are that out of date.
I'm very happy with this solution for my target audience. But for you, it is hard to say what is the best without knowing more about your target audience. For example is it going to be a game that the general public will want to download from the app store or a business app for a vertical market.
My backend is VFP and West-Wind RESTprocess server. If I had the time to learn something new on the server side, I think Python would be the way to go but I know VFP and WC so well it is really hard to invest the time.
That is my two cents worth...
Dear Harvey,
Many thanks for your detailed answer. You did open to me much more ways than I think. I believe a good CSS architecture should be the best suitable solution. My customer use 80% PC and 20% mobile devices.
Thank you very much again
have also been using Bootstrap but I'm slowly moving more and more into Flexbox
Flexbox is a CSS standard supported by 97.3% of browsers that Bootstrap 4 uses
Just to mix things up - Flexbox is going to be driven out by CSS Grid which is a lot more powerful than flexbox. One of the main features of it is that it provides for templated regions that can be re-arranged via CSS. IOW, you can have named areas in a document that can be moved around via media queries which changes everything. Beyond grid and alignment behavior of CSS Grid is very similar to Flexbox.
Biggest downside: No support for any version of IE - but it works in all evergreen browsers including Edge and even Safari.
+++ Rick ---
Many thanks to all again, I have a lot to study now!
Sincerely
Rick... Wow - just one more thing to learn. I guess this concept ensures job security if you stay on top of the newest and greatest. Next, I expect Machine Learning will be suggested if not by you than by Zak.
Did Zak finish that program for you yet to scan the license plates 😃
+++ Rick ---