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Issue 22.2 ('Vision Pro')
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FEATURE

Hybrid Android Apps

Use Xojo's New Framework to Develop Hybrid Android Apps

Issue: 22.2 (March/April 2024)
Author: Tim Dietrich
Author Bio: Tim Dietrich specializes in developing custom software for businesses that are running on the NetSuite ERP platform. His work often involves using Xojo to develop desktop, mobile, and Web apps for his clients.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 25,607
Starting Page Number: 42
Article Number: 22005
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Excerpt of article text...

While many developers had been privately testing Xojo's Android framework for quite a while, last August's release of Xojo 2023r2 was the first time that the new framework became available for public beta testing. To say that Xojo's Android framework has been a highly anticipated enhancement to the platform is an understatement. The Xojo community has been anxiously awaiting Android support for several years now.

With Android support, Xojo can now be used to develop apps that run on all of the major desktop, mobile, and server operating systems. In terms of the mobile market, it's estimated that 70% of mobile devices are running Android and the rest iOS. That makes Xojo's Android support extremely important, as it potentially opens up a massive new market for Xojo developers.

If you haven't had an opportunity to test Xojo's Android framework, I recommend that you get started by watching the "Developing Android Apps With Xojo" webinar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-rtcb3Bd4A) that was presented by Xojo's Geoff Perlman and Paul Lefebvre. I also recommend reading about the framework in Xojo's Android documentation (https://documentation.xojo.com/topics/android/index.html). That article will help you install Android Studio (which is necessary so that you can test apps in the Android Emulator), provide guidance on publishing your Android apps, and explain some of the differences between Xojo's Android and iOS frameworks.

Hybrid Apps

For the past few years, I've been using Xojo to develop what are referred to as "hybrid apps." I've been developing hybrid mobile apps for iOS, and more recently developing hybrid desktop apps for macOS and Windows. With my background in Web development, I've found that developing hybrid apps is generally easier and faster than developing true native apps.

In a nutshell, a hybrid app is a cross between a traditional native app and a Web app. The user interface of a hybrid app is developed using Web technologies (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and it's displayed using a Web viewer (which is essentially an embedded Web browser). In most cases, users don't realize that they're interacting with a Web viewer instead of with native controls. When done right, a hybrid app will be indistinguishable from a traditional native app.

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