{"id":6903,"date":"2012-11-30T17:44:42","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=6903"},"modified":"2012-11-30T17:44:42","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:44:42","slug":"infragistics-building-cross-platform-development-strategy-on-xaml-says-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/6903-infragistics-building-cross-platform-development-strategy-on-xaml-says-ceo.html","title":{"rendered":"Infragistics building cross-platform development strategy on XAML says CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spoke to Dean Guida, CEO at Infragistics<\/a>, maker of components for Windows, web and mobile development platforms. Windows developers with long memories will remember Sheridan software, who created products including Data Widgets and VBAssist. Infragistics was formed in 2000 when Sheridan merged with another company, ProtoView. <\/p>\n

In other words, this is a company with roots in the Microsoft developer platform, though for a few years now it has been madly diversifying in order to survive in the new world of mobile. Guida particularly wanted to talk about IgniteUI<\/a>, a set of JQuery controls which developers use either for web applications or for mobile web applications wrapped as native with PhoneGap\/Cordova. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the market is looking at doing hybrid apps because it is so expensive to do native,\u201d Guida told me.<\/p>\n

Infragistics has also moved into the business iOS market, with SharePlus<\/a> for SharePoint access on an iPad, and ReportPlus<\/a> for reporting from SQL Server or SharePoint to iPad clients. Infragistics is building on what appears to be a growing trend: businesses which run Microsoft on the server, but are buying in iPads as mobile clients.<\/p>\n

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Other products include Nuclios<\/a>, a set of native iOS components for developers, and IguanaUI<\/a> for Android.<\/p>\n

I asked Guida how the new mobile markets compared to the traditional Windows platform, for Infragistics as a component vendor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole market\u2019s in transition,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople are looking at mobility strategy and how to support BYOD [Bring Your Own Device], all these different platforms, and a lot of our conversations are around IgniteUI. We need to reach the iPad, and more than the iPad as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a huge market doing ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WPF. It\u2019s still a bigger market, but the next phase is around mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about Windows 8, does he think Microsoft has got it right? Guida\u2019s first reaction to my question is to state that the traditional Windows platform is by no means dead. \u201c[Microsoft] may have shifted the focus away from Silverlight and WPF, but the enterprise hasn\u2019t, in terms of WPF. The enterprise has not shifted aware from WPF. We\u2019ve brought some of our enterprise customers to Microsoft to show them that, some of the largest banks in the world, the insurance industry, the retail industry. These companies are making a multi-year investment decision on WPF, where the life of the application if 5 years plus.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilverlight, nobody was really happy about that, but Microsoft made that decision. We\u2019re going to continue to support Silverlight, because it makes sense for us. We have a codebase of XAML that covers both WPF and Silverlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guida adds that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are \u201cgreat innovation\u201d, mentioning features like Live Tiles and people hub social media aggregation, which has application in business as well. \u201cThey\u2019re against a lot of headwind of momentum and popularity, but because Microsoft is such an enterprise company, they are going to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

How well does the XAML in Infragistics components, built for WPF and Silverlight, translate to XAML on the Windows Runtime, for Windows 8 store apps?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt translates well now, it did not translate well in the beginning,\u201d Guida says, referring to the early previews. \u201cWe\u2019re moving hundreds of our HTML and XAML components to WinJS and WinRT XAML. We\u2019re able to reuse our code. We have to do more work with touch, and we want to maintain performance. We\u2019re in beta now with a handful of components, but we\u2019ll get up to 100s of components available.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out that XAML is critical to the Infragistics development strategy for iOS as well as Windows. \u201cWe wrote a translator that translates XAML code to iOS and XAML code to HTML and JavaScript. We can code in XAML, add new features, fix bugs, and then it moves over to these other platforms. It\u2019s helped us move as quickly as we\u2019ve moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about Windows on ARM, as in Surface RT? \u201cWe fully support it,\u201d says Guida, though \u201cwith a straight port, you lose performance. That\u2019s what we\u2019re working on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spoke to Dean Guida, CEO at Infragistics, maker of components for Windows, web and mobile development platforms. Windows developers with long memories will remember Sheridan software, who created products including Data Widgets and VBAssist. Infragistics was formed in 2000 when Sheridan merged with another company, ProtoView. In other words, this is a company with … Continue reading Infragistics building cross-platform development strategy on XAML says CEO<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,26,56,67,79,80,94,96,97],"tags":[104,482,586,825,999,1040,1045],"class_list":["post-6903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net","category-apple","category-development","category-mobile","category-professional","category-software","category-software-development","category-visual-studio","category-web-authoring","category-windows","tag-net","tag-infragistics","tag-microsoft","tag-silverlight","tag-windows-8","tag-wpf","tag-xaml"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}