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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
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  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. FLEX vs Xamarin

FLEX vs Xamarin

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785
FLEX
FLEX
Stacks18
Followers13
Votes1

FLEX vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

  1. Development Language: One key difference between FLEX and Xamarin is the development language used. FLEX utilizes MXML, ActionScript, and Adobe Flash for its development, while Xamarin employs C# and .NET framework for mobile app development.
  2. Platform Compatibility: Another major distinction is the platform compatibility. FLEX primarily targets web browsers for deploying applications, whereas Xamarin allows developers to create apps for various platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows.
  3. User Interface Design: In terms of user interface design, FLEX relies heavily on Adobe Flex Builder for layout design and styling, while Xamarin offers a more seamless integration with native user interface controls, providing a more native look and feel for each platform.
  4. Development Environment: FLEX requires Flash Player for running applications, whereas Xamarin provides a comprehensive development environment with an integrated development environment (IDE) that supports debugging, testing, and deployment.
  5. Community Support: Xamarin boasts a larger community base and support compared to FLEX, providing extensive documentation, forums, and resources for developers to seek help and enhance their skills.
  6. Cost: FLEX comes with a licensing fee for using Adobe Flash Builder, while Xamarin offers a free version with paid options for additional features and support.

In Summary, FLEX and Xamarin differ in the development language, platform compatibility, user interface design, development environment, community support, and cost.

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Advice on Xamarin, FLEX

Ru_Co
Ru_Co

Sep 9, 2020

Review

Hi Manish,

Well between those 2 options (Kotlin and Flutter), Flutter would be the only one that would allow you to make your app for both Apple and Android. Kotlin is for Android only. But there are other crossplatform development frameworks besides Flutter. Which one is the best for you would depend on the app you want to create and your current expertises and preferences. I've marked a few alternatives in my answer.

126 views126
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Xamarin
Xamarin
FLEX
FLEX

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

FLEX (Flipboard Explorer) is a set of in-app debugging and exploration tools for iOS development. When presented, FLEX shows a toolbar that lives in a window above your application. From this toolbar, you can view and modify nearly every piece of state in your running application.

Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.
Inspect and modify views in the hierarchy.;See the properties and ivars on any object.;Dynamically modify many properties and ivars.;Dynamically call instance and class methods.;Access any live object via a scan of the heap.;View the file system within your app's sandbox.;Explore all classes in your app and linked systems frameworks (public and private).;Quickly access useful objects such as [UIApplication sharedApplication], the app delegate, the root view controller on the key window, and more.;Dynamically view and modify NSUserDefaults values.
Statistics
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
18
Followers
1.5K
Followers
13
Votes
785
Votes
1
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
Cons
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
Pros
  • 1
    True Native iOS Builds

What are some alternatives to Xamarin, FLEX?

Ionic

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

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