1. Simone Olianti
  2. PowerServer Mobile (Obsolete)
  3. Tuesday, 7 May 2019 07:26 AM UTC

Hi there, I've finally decided to migrate to PowerBuilder Universal to take advatage of powerserver to move my pb app to the web/mobile.
In less than a week i've been able to create a little framework and move a simple order entry written in pb to the web with success. Simply amazing. There is still al lot of work but i like what i'm seeing so first of all i would like to congratulate with the Appeon team for the excellent work.
I would like to use the same order entry objects and adapt them for the mobile devices (android for now). I would appreciate if someone could advice me on how to accomplish this task, in particular how to handle the UI and optimize the visualization and use on the mobile display. I know there is a pbl called "appeon_workarounds.pbl" that would help me this way, are there any examples i could use to understand how it works? Or is it better to rewrite the UI interface for the mobile instead of adapt the web ones? By the way i'm using PFC.

Thx in advance

 

Accepted Answer
Armeen Mazda @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Tuesday, 7 May 2019 18:10 PM UTC
  2. PowerServer Mobile (Obsolete)
  3. # Permalink

The appeon_workarounds.pbl has a number of useful features.  Related to creating a universal app, you would want to use the of_getclienttype ( ).  By detecting what mode the app is running on you could hide certain menu items, buttons, etc. so that a web user is accessing the features appropriate to them and mobile user is accessing appropriate features to them.  For example, you wouldn't want on Web to try to trigger the mobile APIs (e.g. camera) that PowerServer supports on iOS/Android.

Although technically possible, you really should ask yourself whether it is appropriate to go in the direction of a universal app?  In a nutshell, this will depend on your app complexity and the type of mobile devices you are targeting.  Some things for you to consider are:  

  1. If your app is simple and would run on tablets not phones it is feasible to have a single app UI (designed with tablet touch in mind of course) that runs in the Web browser and on iOS/Android tablets. 
  2. But if your Web app will be complex and/or on mobile you need to support phones then really you need to build two separate projects.  Of course, you could re-use the DataWindows.  They key point is you need totally different UI for phone vs. desktop, and also usually our customers only deploy a subset of features of their larger app to phone.
  3. In general, we don't recommend using PFC on mobile devices for performance reasons.  For the web that is no problem since computers have so much horsepower and memory.  If you do decide to use PFC on mobile device, I would recommend to not use it heavily.

Our mobile UI design & development guide is a rather long document and a lot of this may be common sense, but anyway might be useful to take a look at it.

Hope this helps!

Comment
  1. Simone Olianti
  2. Wednesday, 8 May 2019 11:31 AM UTC
Thank you Armeen!
  1. Helpful
  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Wednesday, 8 May 2019 17:02 PM UTC
You're very welcome!
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Mariano Collado @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Tuesday, 7 May 2019 21:16 PM UTC
  2. PowerServer Mobile (Obsolete)
  3. # 1

Hi Simone,

You may be interested in this video.


Building Mobile Apps Quickly with PowerBuilder: https://www.appeon.com/developers/library/videos/building-mobile-apps-quickly-powerbuilder.html

Cordially,

Mariano C.

Comment
  1. Simone Olianti
  2. Wednesday, 8 May 2019 11:32 AM UTC
Thank you Mariano!
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