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General information about application development options

Rollins Charles — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 07:41:00 +0000

General information about application development options

If you want to create a new application for Windows 11 or Windows 10, you must first select its type. With the Windows and .NET development tools in Visual Studio, you can create several different types of applications, each with its own Visual Studio project types and each with its own benefits. Each application type includes an application model that defines the application life cycle, a default user interface platform, and access to comprehensive APIs for using Windows components.

Creating a WinUI 3 application
The Windows User Interface Library (WinUI) 3 is the latest and recommended user interface platform for classic Windows applications, including managed applications that use C# and .NET, and native applications that use C++ with the Win32 API. By incorporating Fluent Design into all interfaces, controls and styles, WinUI provides a consistent, intuitive and accessible experience based on the latest user interface templates.

WinUI 3 is provided in the Windows Application SDK package . The Windows Application SDK includes a single set of APIs and tools that can be used consistently by any Win32 C++ or .NET C# application on the various target versions of the Windows operating system.

Cross-platform support options
WinUI also serves as the basis for cross-platform technologies that provide great Windows features using different programming languages. These platforms take advantage of WinUI capabilities in Windows and also allow execution in other operating systems.

.NET MAUI.
React Native for Windows.
The .NET Multi-Platform Application User Interface (MAUI) is a cross-platform, open-source architecture for building Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows applications that use each platform’s own user interface and services from a single .NET code base. Because .NET MAUI is focused on leveraging the native capabilities of the platforms, this solution uses WinUI 3 and the Windows application SDK to implement the latest features for Windows users. This gives applications everything they need with WinUI 3, as well as the ability to interact with other platforms.

Win32
Classic Win32 applications (sometimes simply called classic applications) are the original type of proprietary Windows applications which require direct access to Windows and hardware. Because of this, this type would be the best choice if the highest level of performance and direct access to the system hardware is required.

Using the Win32 API with C++ allows you to achieve the highest level of performance and efficiency through increased control over the target platform with unmanaged code, which is possible in a managed runtime environment such as WinRT and .NET. However, this level of control over application execution requires more diligence and attention for proper execution, and allows you to capitalize on development performance for environment performance.

Here are a few key features of the Win32 API and C++ offerings that allow you to create high-performance applications.

Hardware-level optimization, including careful control over resource allocation, object lifetime, data layout, alignment, byte packing, and more.
Access to performance-oriented instruction sets, such as SSE and AVX, with built-in functions.
Efficient and strictly typed generic programming with templates.
Efficient and robust containers and algorithms.
DirectX, in particular Direct3D and DirectCompute (note that UWP also offers cross-programming with DirectX).
Use C++/WinRT to create modern classic Win32 applications with efficient access to Windows runtime APIs (WinRT).

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What is cross-platform development?

Rollins Charles — Thu, 27 May 2021 07:29:00 +0000

What is cross-platform development?

What is cross-platform development anyway? If you need your application to run on multiple operating systems at once with a minimum amount of manpower, this is probably what you will resort to. You develop one program, write one code, and it runs on all supported platforms. Convenient! But it is worth distinguishing between cross-platform and native.

In short, cross-platform is the ability of software to work with multiple hardware platforms or operating systems. Native software, in turn, is written to work on a specific hardware or software platform. From this we can conclude: if your program will work with hardware, then most likely even in the cross-platform program you will have to write native functionality for a specific platform.

What is the advantage of cross-platform development? Firstly, you need less people (no need to have a DotNet developer, a Swift/objective C developer and all of them), secondly, you cover more devices -> more people will be able to use your program.

Also this principle has its disadvantages – poor usability, the optimization will also be worse than the same program written for a specific platform. But sometimes it happens that you really need your application to support multiple platforms, but you can’t develop for each one. In this case you can use already existing frameworks and technologies for cross-platform GUI development.

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Frameworks and libraries for cross-platform desktop software development

Rollins Charles — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 07:35:00 +0000

Frameworks and libraries for cross-platform desktop software development

In this article I will tell you about some of the most popular frameworks that will help you when developing software for Windows/MacOS/Linux computers. If you are an experienced programmer, you are unlikely to find anything new in this article for yourself. It is more for beginners who are looking for a simple solution to their problem – to quickly write a good (as much as possible) cross-platform program.

Electron JS
There are still many developers debating whether or not to use Electron in their projects. Electron JS is a JavaScript framework, which allows you to write a complete program using Web Technologies – HTML & CSS, JS. Electron JS is a Chromium engine, which will run all your code. Electron has one serious disadvantage – high memory consumption, both physical and RAM. Everybody knows for a long time how voracious Chrome is, and we want to add our own code to it. But look on the bright side: many popular applications today are written with Electron – Slack, Skype, Discord, VSCode, Atom, Postman, Insomnia, etc. And as computer power keeps growing, it is becoming rare to hear from users that “your Chrome ate all my memory”. A good memory usage won’t matter if the product is good in its sphere and the code is well coded and the processes are well distributed.

Pros of
Using developments from the Web
It is easy to find (or “educate”) a specialist
High quality (and russified) documentation
Community and GitHub support

Cons
High memory consumption (physical and RAM)
Easy to write bad code
Bad nativity

NW.JS.
Just like Electron, NW.JS allows you to create cross-platform applications using Web technologies. Today, NW.JS is sponsored by Intel, and developed by the community. NW.JS doesn’t boast the same rich list of projects as Electron, but it’s still a very good framework for creating cross-platform applications. Just like Electron, NW.JS drags the Chromium engine and all the problems that come with it. NW.JS is very similar in its principle to Electron, but there are still differences. I can recommend this article for your reference.

Pros of
Using work from the Web
It is easy to find (or “bring up”) a specialist
High-quality (and russified) documentation
Community and GitHub support

Cons
High memory consumption (physical and RAM)
Easy to write bad code
Bad nativity

Qt/QML
Qt is a very powerful toolkit for creating cross-platform applications in C++ and Python (as well as Ruby, PHP, C#, etc., but these are supported by the community). Qt is already a fairly old framework, but it continues to be actively developed and programs such as: 2GIS for Android, Kaspersky Internet Security, Virtual Box, Skype, VLC Media Player, Opera and others. Known to many Linux-users desktop environment KDE is also written using Qt. Qt has a development environment, Qt Creator, which includes Qt Designer that allows you to create a graphical user interface. Visual UI creation makes it very easy to create an interface by dragging various widgets (drop-down lists, buttons, toggles) onto a form. Qt has extensive documentation, active community support, and many other advantages.

Pros of
Visual editor interface
Huge number of modules in the framework
Support for large number of programming languages (only Python and C++ officially, others are community-supported) -> good native code
Low entry threshold

Disadvantages
Heavy application weight
High cost of commercial license

GTK

GTK, along with Qt, is one of the most popular libraries for cross-platform development of interface elements for X Window Systems. It was developed by the Gnome Foundation and GNU. Many desktop environments and window managers (Gnome, xfce MATE, Cinnamon, AfterStep, Marco, and many others), and programs, such as: Chromium, FireFox, MonoDevelop, Gimp, and others. The GTK is written in C, but there are wrappers for many programming languages (C, C++, Python, Java, and others). Gtk has a builder for visual interface design, Glade.

Pros of
Support for a large number of languages
Large and active community
Many popular projects and examples
Visual editor

Cons
No critical disadvantages (if you have a “problem” with Gtk, feel free to write about it in the comments)

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PC software development in QT and C++

Rollins Charles — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 07:13:00 +0000

PC software development in QT and C++

Sometimes, you need to develop a program for the desktop that will solve some problem. To do this, you need to understand programming, to be a well-trained specialist. It is especially difficult to develop a program if you choose the wrong tools for development.

Beginners developers should understand that the language and other tools for development are chosen depending on the task at hand, not from the judgment of what tools are most popular or what is better, this or that language. For instance, people often argue that C++ or C#, QT or Visual Studio, etc. are better. But experienced developers don’t do so, because all the languages and tools are created to solve their tasks, so you need to choose what is convenient to you.

It should be said that the majority starts to develop in Visual Studio, but it can be a wrong choice, because there are many unnecessary things that can distract from the development. Besides, it is better to develop for all the platforms at once, so it is best to use cross-platform tools. Among them, QT stands out – it includes everything that is necessary for software development, including the library itself, IDE, documentation, different compilers, support for different platforms, including mobile.

If you can’t develop in one environment, then perhaps you should try QT. Many people praise this toolkit for a good reason, as it is simple and logically implemented, and you can write powerful programs in C++. QT takes almost all the work of creating the interface itself, that is, there is no need to write standard things, buttons, input fields, etc., simply have widgets. The developer need only deal with his direct task, to implement the desired logic of the program in C++.

Every problem can be solved by searching for a solution on the Internet, and most tasks are often discussed on forums. It is almost always possible to find a solution to your problem, also thanks to the voluminous documentation, which shows almost all aspects of proper development in QT.

Developing with QT is free by choosing an open license, you will only need to download QT and start developing. After development is complete, use the special console utility included with QT to assemble the application in the package folder of the program. It will copy all the necessary files so that your program will work off-line on a PC which does not have QT and its libraries. Then, you can compress the resulting folder into a self-extracting archive SFX, assign it an application icon – so you get one file that when clicked will unpack to the desired temporary folder, and the program will be executed, after closing the program – all temporary files will be instantly deleted. That is, you can do without installers and get in this way a single executable exe file.

As you can see, developing programs for PC using QT tools is not a difficult task, while at the same time you can quickly develop any desktop program with any functionality, because C++ developments are very fast. The C++ language is not so difficult, if you have any skills in developing in another language, you can gradually learn to write in C++.

Thus, QT is probably the best choice for fast and cross-platform development of virtually any software for beginners and experienced programmers alike.

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