The Master-Slave terminology is outdated, oppressive, and honestly uninspired. Here’s how you update to the 21st century:
git branch -m master main
git push -u origin main
That’s it. That’s the post.
Happy coding.
2 Ways to Run Surface Duo Emulator
Microsoft announced they will be releasing the new Surface Duo in December of 2020. The Duo runs on Android and is one of their dual-screen devices that gives users new ways to interact with their apps. It also introduces new challenges for developers to provide the optimal experience for our users. So, Microsoft has released the Surface Duo Emulator to allow developers to get a head start optimizing their apps.
In this article, we will go over 2 different ways to run the Surface Duo Emulator on Windows:
- Android Studio
- Visual Studio
Shared Requirements
There are a few things that need to be set up any way you run the Emulator.
- Install Android Studio
- Set up Android SDK Settings:
Tools > Android SDK Manager > SDK Tools
Make sure all these SDK tools are installed.
4. In File Explorer, navigate to the Emulator run.bat file. The default path is :
users/[USER]/SurfaceDuoEmulator/artifacts/run.bat
Open this file in any text editor and make sure the ANDROID_SDK_LOCATION is set to the location of your Android SDK. You can find your Android SDK Location here:
For example, this is what the ANDROID_SDK_LOCATION path looks like for the above path:
set ANDROID_SDK_LOCATION=%LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\android-sdk
Great! Now we can start on the platform specific setup.
Android Studio
If everything above is properly configured, you can now run the emulator from the command line.
cd into the directory and run the run.bat script.
The emulator should start running!
Note: It can take a while the first time
Visual Studio
To run the emulator using visual studio, we have a few more steps.
-
1 . Open either an existing or new project with an Android head (including Uno, Xamarin, etc.) in Visual Studio 2019.
I will be using a new Uno project.
2. Set up your Android SDK settings
Tools > Android > Android SDK Manager
Make sure you have these tools installed:
3. In order to run our app, the emulator will need to be running. Search for Duo Emulator in windows and select “Duo Emulator for Visual Studio”
4 . Select “Open”
This will run a different run.bat script. The difference only being that the visual studio version removes the port definitions.
5. Back in Visual Studio, you should now see the emulator as an option in your devices dropdown. It will look like this:
6. Click the big green arrow and your app will pop up in the emulator!
There you have it! Two ways to run the Surface Duo Emulator on Windows. To learn more about developing for Dual Screen Devices, check out the docs.
Breaking Down XAML Grid
If you’re looking to use XAML in your project, chances are you’re going to need to use the Grid layout. Even for seasoned pros, Grids can quickly get complicated. This post will go over the Grid basics and can be used as a reference while building or refactoring your XAML Grids.
The first thing you need to determine is the necessary number of rows and columns. Let’s set up an example with 2 columns and 3 rows.
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition />
<ColumnDefinition />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition />
<RowDefinition />
<RowDefinition />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
If you run this code, you won’t see anything. That is because we are just laying down the ground work for our grid, we haven’t given it anything to display. Let’s change that.
<Grid Background="Pink">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition />
<ColumnDefinition />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition />
<RowDefinition />
<RowDefinition />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<TextBox Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row ="0" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 1
<TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row ="0" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 2
<TextBox Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row ="1" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 3
<TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row ="1" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 4
<TextBox Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row ="2" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 5
<TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row ="2" BorderBrush="Black"></TextBox> // 6
</Grid>
We have added a TextBox element for each space in our grid in order to visualize the layout on our page. Each TextBox is arranged by assigning the row and column in a graph coordinate format. Note: each row and column starts with 0.
Here is what our Grid looks like:
The Grid will automatically fill the space it’s in by evenly spacing each row and column. Next, we’ll go over how to control the size of your grid.
<Grid Width="600" Height="300">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="300" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="300" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="200"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
Here we have the same Grid layout as before, but you may have noticed we now have Height and Width properties on our Column and Row Definitions. Furthermore, there is some funky syntax in the Height properties of the RowDefinition elements. There are a few different ways you can define height and width:
- Nothing – Grids will auto fill the space they’re in
- Integer – Absolute pixel value (ex. 300)
- * – Divides available space using a weighted factor
- Auto – Defines space based on the contents
With these height and width definitions, this is what our new grid looks like:
Since the columns are both statically set to 300 pixels, let’s walk through each of the rows in the order they are set by XAML:
Row 3 (blocks 5 and 6) : This row is set first since it is a definitive 200 pixels (like out columns)
Row 2 (blocks 3 and 4): This row is set based on it’s contents. Since it contains nothing, it will be set to the minimum size. If we had an image inside one of the blocks, the row would be the size of the image.
Row 1 (blocks 1 and 2): This row is set last and is given the remaining space of the page.
Great! Now we can define rows and their sizes depending on our project’s need! If you have any questions about getting starting with grids or when to use them, feel free to drop into the comment section.
Uno – One Platform to Rule Them All
First, we should start off with what Uno is and why you should care.
As stated on their website, Uno is “The only platform for building native mobile, desktop and WebAssembly apps with C#, XAML from a single codebase. Open source and professionally supported.”
What does this mean?
Well if you have any experience (or not) building a mobile app and a subsequent web app, you have essentially had to build both separately, outside of potentially sharing data through an API.
Before Xamarin, you would even have had to build the iOS and Android apps separately using different languages (Swift/Objective-C and Java/Kotlin respectively). Uno introduces a way to build for iOS, Android, Web, and UWP using shared logic and UI.
This is huge.
Sharing logic between platforms has been the “easy” part for developers. Sharing UI, however, is not. There is a huge difference in UI between Android and iOS and even larger differences between web and mobile. Xamarin.Forms allows us to share UI for Android and iOS but we were still on our own for the web.
Uno enables you to write the UI once, then, using native controls, deploys native UI look and feel to each of your platforms. This means, you write the same code for a button regardless of the platform the button is for, and the user will see the native button for their platform.
How does it work?
The Uno Platform works differently depending on what you’re building.
The platform specific UI is created by taking the visual tree and rendering into what the platform supports:
iOS – UI Kit
Android – ViewGroups and Views
Web – Native controls
The logic is also deployed differently for each platform.
When building a UWP app, Uno runs on top of, well, UWP and WinUI. When building Android and iOS apps, Uno runs on top of the Xamarin Native Stack. Finally, when you’re building a Web App, Uno runs on top of WebAssembly. The mobile apps and web apps all run with Mono runtime. When it all comes together, it looks a little like this:
Well this looks nice, but what’s really happening under the hood?
Let’s break it down:
Android and iOS
- You write your C# and XAML code in Visual Studio
- Uno takes the code and lets you add any Xamarin specific libraries or tools
- Mono runtime executes the C# code
This process is essentially the same as regular Xamarin. The big difference between Xamarin and Uno comes with the ability to run the same UI on the Web.
Web Apps –
- You reuse both your logic and UI that you wrote for your mobile apps.
- Uno uses the Web Assembly Bootstrapper to take any .NET standard library and execute these files in the JavaScript console.
- Mono runtime then executes the code
The ability for Uno to utilize Web Assembly (which is what allows you to write your code in C# and not JavaScript) is what makes Uno so unique.
UWP –
- You reuse both your logic and UI that you wrote for your mobile apps and Web Assembly Apps.
- Your code is run through the Windows UI which does not need the Mono runtime to execute.
The big difference here is that UWP apps already have the Windows namespaces and do not need to reference the Uno.UI. The benefit Uno provides here is the ability to reuse the code you’ve already written for mobile and web.
Now that we have an idea of how this beauty works, let’s write some code!
To get started with Uno, follow their instructions here: https://platform.uno/docs/articles/get-started.html
When you create your Uno solution in Visual Studio, there is a similar feel to when you create a Xamarin.Forms solution because of the different projects created for you. Here is a look at the projects that are auto-created:
As you would see in a Xamarin.Forms project, there are separate projects for each platform and a single shared project. The Droid, iOS, UWP, and Wasm projects are all the same as if you had created a blank app for each, the only difference being references to the Uno UI. The magic happens in the Shared project.
Similar to the Shared project in Xamarin.Forms, this is where you will write all your shared logic and UI. Uno provides support for the MVVM, a design pattern many developers are familiar and comfortable with.
So, what does a finished product look like?
Here are examples of each platform using the “TODOS” Demo App from Uno.
iOS
Android
Web
UWP
These projects all use logic and UI from the shared project. Code once, four apps.
Let’s talk debugging.
Debugging in Uno can be a bit different depending which platform you are trying to debug.
Android and iOS – For mobile, you will use the same Mono debugger you are used to using in Visual Studio, with access to all your favorite breakpoints, value changes, etc.
Web – Currently there is only support for chromium debugging, which means Chrome and Edge.
UWP – Here, the tooling comes from .NET studios which is not as efficient with the mono runtime.
Want to try out Uno but don’t want to go through the steps to get set up through Visual Studio?
Then checkout their playground!
The Uno Playground is a fun and easy way to look at how different items render on different platforms. They make it quick and easy to try out new styles and is great for beginners and tutorials.
What are future features we can look forward to?
- Support for MacOS or Linux.
- More features from UWP API
- Support for smart watches
The true beauty of Uno is that it encompasses what we as developers should all be striving to accomplish – building on top of each others’ accomplishments. We don’t need to re-create the wheel, real innovation happens when you stand on the shoulders of giants and we all move upwards.
Happy coding.
Authored by me, originally posted through freeCodeCamp
Xamarin.Forms vs Xamarin Native
If you’re new to Xamarin (or not), one of the first decisions you’re faced with when starting a new project is whether to use Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin Native. In this article, we’ll go through descriptions of each and which situations are suited best for one or the other.
First, what is the difference?
Image Source: Xamarin Docs
Xamarin.Forms is a way to write your app in C# once, and it will run on both Android and iOS through a shared code base for the logic AND the UI. Xamarin.Forms runs on top of native platforms.
Xamarin Native creates a wrapper around the native APIs for each platform which allows the same look and feel of an app that was built without Xamarin. But, Xamarin developers can build both Android and iOS in C# and have access to the tools offered in the C# community. Xamarin Native requires that you build each app separately, but also allows for more specific configuration for both Android and iOS.
But what about speed?
Altexsoft did an extensive test on speed of native apps, Xamarin Native apps, and Xamarin.Forms apps. You can see the full report here . For bootup speed, native apps are always faster, followed by Xamarin Native apps, and finally Xamarin.Forms.
Image Source: Altexsoft
You will also notice that Android and iOS have significantly different speeds. This is something to keep in mind for your project and whether your users are more likely to be using Android or iOS.
Secondly, if your app is retrieving its data from a REST API, you’ll be concerned about those speeds as well:
Image Source: Altexsoft
Here, the speeds between Xamarin and native are more similar. In fact, Xamarin Android is even a bit faster than the native Android apps.
With all this information, here is a quick guide for when to use each product.
Situations best suited for Xamarin.Forms:
• Apps requiring little platform specific UI
• Apps that need to be built quickly
• Apps that require heavy code sharing
Situations best suited for Xamarin Native:
• High level of platform specific UI
• Apps that need to be as small and as fast as possible
• Apps that require platform specific UI
At the end of the day, there is no wrong choice, Xamarin is best way to build your cross-platform mobile apps.
If you want to dive deeper into Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin Native, read up on the docs here.
Kenzie Whalen-Dunn 