Xojo Inc is wrestling with the Android target since a while. Now, Xojo ‘Android’ seems to be a totally different thing than Xojo ‘iOS’. Xojo ‘Android’ and ‘iOS’ projects use individual project files.
A low code IDE would allow a common code base for various target platforms with parts of platform-specific code only when absolutely necessary.
A knowledgeable user in TOF points at the challenges Android poses in development.
Members here in INN have also pointed at the challenge and workload the integration of Android as target poses for Xojo’s dev team.
FileMaker’s developer also saw customer demand for Android as a target. They did however abstain from this undertaking, which IMHO was a wise decision.
Xojo’s iOS implementation remains notoriously incomplete, despite being in the market for 8 years now. How will Xojo Android fare?
Addendum: Marc von Breemen deleted his post, probably on the ‘good advise’ of Xojo management or some MVP. Here’s the original post for documentation:
It doesn’t matter. If they had managed to release something stable and working five years ago it might have meant something. Instead it’s long past overdue, with incomplete features, and built in such a way that it’s not easy to share code between desktop, web, mobile, and iOS. Over promise and under deliver - that’s the Xojo way!
Maybe a single proyect for all the platforms is too much for xojo.
But, not being able to have a Mobile proyect that targets Both Android and ios says a lot about the lack of the suposed Abstraction Xojo has .
The mobile target is to agile for xojo to keep up, xojo is going for more of the same, half baked and outdated mobile tool and outdated with bug increasing of the other targets
I fear you are correct in the ‘xojo’ part of this statement. In our company, we write several Android business apps that never get to the store but are directly sold B2B. e.g. We and our customers have no intrest in the ‘store’ story. Our prices for an app can easily go up to several thousands of dollars. And for an ‘on-demand’ Android app, way more. I seriously doubt Xojo will be used for such projects because the clients do not want to use an exotic tool like Xojo if they make such investments.
‘Xojo’ Android was a complete waste of valuable time/resources and sales of it will never be able to pay this back.
Oh I can have one project for desktop, android, iOS and the web. With codename one and also with javaFX. Simply one for all. It’s not that complex. It’s simple. Simply java or kotlin. Ahh. Kotlin multiplatform I forgot to mention. There you need to define the ui for every project type. That’s it. Not complex. When and if they can do, why the inc should not be able to?
Heck I even wrote a blog post about how they could do it
However, its so normal to make a new project type because “its a new target” that I dont think they will make a single universal project
But its surely possible
The technical choice of multiple project files may be motivated by a marketing decision. Now, almost everyone needs a Pro license…
It may be a little short-sighted as well. Professional developers are likely not to engage in this many-project files game without native source control in the IDE and move to other platforms, low code devs are horrified by the perspective of that many different project files and hobbyists may not need all the (costly) targets.
I honestly dont know why they started doing it this way
That choice predates my arrival at Xojo as a developer
They’d done that for Desktop & Console and it was just perpetuated through web & iOS
20/20 hindsight though says that it is, or could be, possible to support a single project file & still have the various license restrictions
IF Xojo ever wanted to know how they could ask me
But I’m sure they wont
I remember of several times where they said iOS and Android would eventually become “Mobile”, merging both of them. But they do the opposite as what the said…
Well, I’ll give them a bit of a pass if they’re taking it in a phased approach. First phase is to get Android (mobile?) out the door. And then 2nd phase would be to make a single ‘mobile’ project.
Phase 1 has only taken 5+ years to get into a (questionable) beta state. You figure another year or two for it to be usable and then another year or two for iOS to get merged into mobile and then another couple of years for those bugs to be worked out.
But I don’t know what their ultimate plans are. I’m not sure they do beyond the ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could do ’ stage.
Once you understand that these are idle, aspirational blue-sky musings and not a commitment to actual realistic plans, you can more readily filter out such statements as “not likely to ever happen”.
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