ASP dotNet as a Good Facilitator for Mobile App Development

The mobile websites and mobile apps have become an integral part of modern lifestyle by users to access the required data at any place and any time. The huge popularity of mobile app also encourages many experienced web developers to acquire new knowledge and skills. However, the web developers still have option to create robust mobile apps by using an interoperable and platform-neutral technology like ASP.Net. ASP.Net comes with a number of features that make it a good facilitator for mobile application development.

Features that Make ASP.Net a Good Facilitator for Mobile App Development

Mobile Controls

The ASP.Net programmers have option to create robust mobile app by using a wide range of mobile controls. Along with acting as the building block for creating mobile applications, the mobile controls further provide the required capabilities to the programmers. The developers can access equivalent Mobile Controls for each WML tag. However, some of these tags can be used to beyond the WML tags. For instance, the developers can create Calendar Mobile Control that is not available in WML.

ASP.Net Mobile Detection Properties

ASP.Net is designed with features to determine the device used by a client while making a request to the web server. The feature helps programmers in differentiating the content delivered by the app according to the type of device. The httpRequest.Browser.IsMobileDevice property of ASP.Net helps the application in detecting the device and delivering relevant content. The Browser object can further use properties like MobileDeviceModel and MobileDeviceManufacturer to gather additional information about the physical device. The active community of .NET developers has also designed several projects that make it easier for the ASP.Net application to accurately detect a device and get the information required to deliver the most relevant content.

Validation Control

While creating mobile app with ASP.Net, the programmers can use five validation controls to check the user’s input. Whenever a form is selected, the validation controls will check the user’s input, and will send the page back to the client’s device in case the input fails to pass these validation controls. Based on the nature of the validation, programmers can use CompareValidator, CustomValidator, RangeValidator, RegularExpressionValidator or RequiredFieldValidator. Also, they can use the ValidationSummary to summarize and view the validations that occurred. On the whole, these validation controls make help developers in optimizing the security of their mobile apps by checking the user’s input thoroughly.

Mobile Project Template

The ASP.Net programmers also have option to use the Mobile Application project template to create sites specifically for mobile and tablet browsers. The feature is designed based on jQuery Mobile, the open source library that is used widely for creating ouch-optimized UIs. Despite sporting an application structure identical to the Internet Application template, the template powered by jQuery Mobile is effective in optimizing the application’s look and feel for touch-based mobile devices. At the same time, the ASP.NET MVC4 display modes can be used to detect the requesting mobile device, and render several views according to the device’s screen size, browser support and internet connectivity. The programmer can further add custom display modes to render specific view by detecting specific mobile devices.

Support for HTML5 Form Types

Within a short span of time, HTML5 has become an integral part of cross-platform mobile application development. The web developers can combine HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to create sophisticated apps that run on multiple devices. ASP.Net 4.5 makes it easier for them to create mobile apps by supporting several HTML5 form types. The programmers can use the support to easily access a number of nee controls in HTML5 including email, search, URL, number, range and date pickers.

Microsoft recently announced .NET vNext with several mobile-first and cloud-first development options. The next major release of ASP.Net also comes with a number of features to facilitate mobile app development. Along with allowing developers to quickly build robust mobile apps, these features further help them in optimizing the application’s overall performance. To get maximum benefits of .Net, you may consider hiring services of a custom .net development company.

We provide .net application development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified asp.net developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Mobile App Development with ASP dotNet - How to Build?

Mobile devices are getting increasingly popular and this is reason enough for the developers to target various types of mobiles as they continue developing newer and more advanced websites. While developing sites that are meant for phones, they face a string of challenges because of the complexity of the device detection process, the size of the screen along with the associated browser support. It is here where ASP.NET comes into play. The framework makes the life of the developers much easier, eliminating the challenges and providing some easier ways of site development and the same for cell phone based applications.

Mechanism of developing cellular phone applications with the help of ASP.NET is quite similar to the development of ASP.NET. In fact, it is much easier for the developers to develop these phone apps with ASP.NET than with anything else. This is mainly because of the fact that virtually each and every mobile site page is derived or inherited from Mobile Page class, which exists in System.Web.UI.MobileControls namespace.

When it comes to developing .NET pages for browsers of the cellular phones, the process does not differ too much from developing pages for the desktop browsers. However, for creating applications for phones, the ASP framework provides a System.Web.Mobile namespace that is exclusively devoted to mobility app development.

Developers are able to create sites from the base class of the MobilePage, add different controls as well as functionality, from the Web Mobile namespace. This particular namespace is scripted to define a suite for the adapters as well as controls of the server that are particularly handy for creating various applications required for various types of iPhones, smart phones. The Web Mobile namespace is categorically designed to develop apps for phones. A mobility page can be created from MobilePage class while the server controls can be created from Web Mobile namespace. Server controls of Mobile web server come up with quite a few specialized adapters in .NET framework. Hence, they are specially equipped to develop various cellular phone based applications, capable of targeting a variety of smart phones.

.NET framework also comes up with a specific control-adaptive architecture that provides the developers a unique option of creating customer device adapters for controls of .NET server. The adapters are equipped to create various customized rendering for a particular control or a set of controls that are based on the browser in question. Thanks to this adaptive architecture, it is possible for the developers to develop custom adapters for server controls of .NET for rendering output that are specific to devices designed to access applications on the desktop browsers along with those for mobile devices.

Whether it is for development of desktop browsers or for mobile devices, the process of development follows the customary .NET model that is basically event-driven and is equipped to respond to the requests of the users, button clicks and the likes.

Though the .NET technology integrates various parameters for development of mobile based web applications by following the more or less same model or pattern of traditional web based apps development, the first and foremost objective of the architecture is denying the creation of single pages that can be compatible with both desktop as well as mobile devices.

The majority of the server controls that are based on .NET framework comes up with typical unified adapter architecture. This implies that all the controls are able to behave in a different way, depending upon the requesting device, through the process of calling a particular custom adapter, which provides various actions or behaviors that are appropriate for that particular device. Now if the adapter in question is configured in the definition file of the browser in question, ASP will call the adapter at each stage of the web server control life-cycle. Then the adapter is able to adjust the rendered output in accordance to the requirement.

Thus, when it comes to development of apps for phones, ASP.NET comes in handy as it simplifies the process and makes it much quicker as well as user-friendly. To get maximum benefits of .Net, you may consider hiring services of a custom .NET development company.

We provide ASP.NET development services. If you would like to hire ASP.NET devs from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.