Xojo for iOS Development Worth it?

Targets iOS
1

I want to create some iOS apps for iPhone.

Whilst I am competent with Xojo, and it’s my very strong preference, my SwiftUI skills are very very ropey. If I try and develop with Xojo for iOS am I just making my life harder and/or limiting my options vs. suffering with SwiftUI coding?

2

You are definitely limiting your options with Xojo unless you can grok Apple’s documentation and write Declares. There’s SO many things you can’t do natively in Xojo.

Personally, as a hobbyist, I have never been able to grok Apple’s way of writing apps, and the documentation is pretty much gibberish to me. But I have no such problems with Xojo. So I’m creative with my coding so that my iOS app’s UI doesn’t look like the default using System font everywhere. Works for me.

3

Only did few iOS apps in the past where it was mainly getting JSON from a server and displaying the data as a list, clicking on it showed detailed information and so on…

With Swift you get the comfort that many things are built into the framework whereas with Xojo for mobile development costs you way more you would also pay most likely for expensive plugins to imitate look and feel of nowadays iOS/macOS application…tvOS/watchOS won’t ever be doable with Xojo I assume…

I’m going now both ways…cheap macOS lite license and a HackingwithSwift subscription to get more into it…

But what definitively speaks for Xojo: The forum here is one of the best you get…

In the past I posted several questions on the Apple developer forum…never got any answers…

So meaning: With Xojo you have lots of people in the back…with Swift you’re basically alone (o;

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4

I’ve done an app in Xojo and it’s definitely worth it. My app is basically an iOS version of my desktop app. I was able to reuse a lot of code. And I didn’t need a lot of declares or anything like that. The worst part is getting used to auto-layout but beyond that, it’s not that bad. The framework has come a LONG way since it was first released about 10 years ago.

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5

iOS/iPad Apps that use external keyboards are kinda screwed in Xojo.

You cannot add keyboard shortcuts to iOS apps in Xojo, and you won’t be able to have Undo/Redo work on an external keyboard (required by Apple) because there’s no way to tell if Modifier keys have been pressed on an external keyboard.

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6

@Mark_Sweeney Is there a ticket on this in the Xojo issue tracker?

I did a quick search and couldn’t find one. I’m happy to sign on to an existing one or even create a new one.

7

thanks everyone

8

It’s not an issue, it’s two missing features that have been part of iOS/iPadOS for 9 years, and Xojo continues to ignore it.

It doesn’t help that one of Xojo’s programmers, Greg O, has said, “I’ve had an iPad on my desk since Xojo started developing the iOS framework and I have never wanted an external keyboard. I have a MacBook Pro for that.”

That attitude and those 2 major missing features are why I abandoned mobile development on Xojo.

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9

I just created two new requests for anyone interested in signing on…

77787 - Add Keyboard Shortcut Support to iOS
77788 - Add KeyDown & KeyUp Modifier Key Support to iOS

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