Mobile Development in Basic (Android and iPhone)

Rolf Brandt · December 10, 2010, 04:53:34 AM

NSBasic AppStudio is out since a couple of days.

http://www.nsbasic.com/app/

It allows visual development in Basic for Android and iPhone. Java code can be implemented too. Code is VB5/6 compatible. There is a 30-Day-Trial version.

NSBasic's forum is on Yahoo Groups which is not so nice and well-arranged like this forum. But George Henne provides very quick and good support (similarly to Paul).

I am using NSBasic/CE since a couple of years - I prefer it over the NET development. (NSBasic also has a Desktop system, but that is only a VBScript compiler, so you cannot compare it to Firefly/PB. It also is not as comfortabe as Firefly.)

Marc van Cauwenberghe · December 10, 2010, 12:04:52 PM

Thanks Rolf for the info.
I just bought an apple mini to do some programming for the iPad. I will certainly look into this.

Marc

Ivan Iraola · December 10, 2010, 12:34:17 PM

Interesting, even though I don't like the whole "bookmark" and manual "shortcut" creation idea, I might get it for Xmas

.

I still have somewhere my copy of NSBasic for Palm, oh the memories!!!

Rolf Brandt · December 10, 2010, 01:38:28 PM

Yeah - I had also used NSBasic/Palm. Long time ago.

NSBasic AppStudio is still a little bit Beta, but they added quite a bit functionality during that one week it is on the market. I think it has quite some potential. The nice thing is you get very quick results using Basic.

It reminds me a little of Elias' BasicToPhp. AppStudio translates to Html5 and JavaScript.

Ivan Iraola · December 10, 2010, 03:16:53 PM

Honestly, I would get it just because the "Visual designer" for JavaScript, it will save a lot of time to code an app, currently when I write code, I have to use an HTML editor and then add my JavaScript, same deal when I write PHP apps, this NSBasic Studio is just a convenient way to write JavaScripts, but I like it.

Paul Squires · December 10, 2010, 10:02:16 PM

This looks like another market that PB had the opportunity to grab, but sadly will miss.... or release a product 5 years too late to be any type of contender. The mobile apps market is explosively huge and growing.

Elias Montoya · December 11, 2010, 10:19:07 PM

Ah... so they beat me to it.

Rolf Brandt · December 12, 2010, 04:25:46 AM

Did you have something for the Mobile Market in mind, Elias?

Haakon Birkeland · December 12, 2010, 10:16:10 AM

Lovely!! â€" Thanks, this was very interesting indeed.

QuoteWhat about Palmâ€™s WebOS?
Posted on December 2, 2010 by George Henne

Michael Strupp took some time to try out NS Basic/App Studio on a Palm Pre Plus. In theory, it should work OK: it uses the same HTML5 + WebKit + JavaScript framework that NS Basic/App Studio does. Hereâ€™s his report:

I had a chance to try out NSBasic App Studio on my Palm Pre Plus and it looks like it works fine â€" even the email example worked great (the message loaded into my gmail app, including the body of the text). From what I read, WebOS (the OS running on the Palm Pre) is basically all built upon the WebKit model, so the two seem made for each other.

The only sample app that I tested that I couldnâ€™t get to work right was the one where you squeeze and expand the picture of Mario â€" I think this is because the WebOS browser natively responds to those gestures already. Otherwise, it seems to work great.

Elias Montoya · December 13, 2010, 12:24:44 AM

Yes Rolf, Since my partner already got his copy of PB he was already working on it.

He wanted to make BasictoPHP a multi language platform with translation from BASIC to other languages (so the correct statement was 'they beat us to it'). So far PHP works great. 100%. No bugs found in 1 week so far, but i dont know when he will release it completely.

Rolf Brandt · December 13, 2010, 03:35:30 AM

You all should continue it - another tool in Basic for mobile development would centainly be welcomed, I think. There is something going in in mobile development. Another interesting approach is Google's AppInventor, where you visually shift code blocks.

Douglas McDonald · January 05, 2011, 08:45:13 PM

I used the NSbasic stuff a few years ago for Palm OS and CE. I was not impressed. Like many things like that its ok for very simple apps but try to do I/O or more complex things and its worthless. I ended up just using VB.net for the windows mobile platform and AppForge (bought by someone else now) for the Palm OS stuff.
On top of no low level access NSbasic is very SLOW. Now that was a few years ago maybe it has changed a lot. Oh they "Claimed" it would do it all but in fact it did little.

Best to just learn JAVA then you'll cover 90% of the mobile OS's. I think all the apple stuff is in C. Android is in Java. Windows Mobile can use any .Net

Yes it is too bad PB can't open up to other platforms. But, I think we are better off just how it is. Put 100% effort into Windows apps making it the best tool for the job. It would take a lot of resources to even make it compile to Windows Mobile........There's just too many platforms (hardware) to support.

I suppose you could use PB for Windows Mobile since it can access the .net framework. Would be a big job.

Doug

Roger Garstang · January 12, 2011, 01:40:16 PM

Quote from: TechSupport on December 10, 2010, 10:02:16 PM
This looks like another market that PB had the opportunity to grab, but sadly will miss.... or release a product 5 years too late to be any type of contender. The mobile apps market is explosively huge and growing.

I've been telling PB that for some time. They finally release a new version of the PB Win compilers that have things myself and others have suggested for years. Heck with PB Linux, they missed that boat. They need Android. I don't care much for iPhone and WinMobile went the wrong direction with WinMobile 7.

Michael Stefanik · January 12, 2011, 02:51:26 PM

Quote from: Roger Garstang on January 12, 2011, 01:40:16 PM
I've been telling PB that for some time. They finally release a new version of the PB Win compilers that have things myself and others have suggested for years. Heck with PB Linux, they missed that boat. They need Android. I don't care much for iPhone and WinMobile went the wrong direction with WinMobile 7.

I agree. Although Apple relaxed some of the restrictions on iOS development, with the limitations of the platform and their license agreement, I'd agree it's not terribly attractive for third-party compiler/tools development. By and large, it's still heavily biased towards using Objective-C. Windows Phone 7 (they retired the "Windows Mobile" name) uses the .NET 4.0 Compact Framework and Microsoft gives away all of the development tools for the platform for free. As a side-note, Microsoft just announced native support for the ARM processor in the next release of the Windows NT family, which opens up some interesting possibilities.

There would be space for PowerBasic to move into the Android market, but I'm not sure that's even on their radar.