It's an interesting first message, to raise such a large question. Are you a current Umbraco user or is it something you are possibly investigating for the future? This is not clear from your post.
It's a well known fact that mobile visitors now exceed desktop, for example see here. Is it the client facing website which you feel should be rewritten using Xamarin, or the Umbraco back office? I'd expect that the former would be much more likely (and much more useful) than the latter.
As to where Umbraco is going in the short term, feel free to look through the Roadmap here. This only goes up to Umbraco 8 which is penciled in for later this year.
If you want to contribute to Umbraco then see how to here, perhaps you could help it move in the direction you have outlined.
Let me explain what i expect
Eg:
Im a small retailer and i want to start a website to sell apparel
I hire a tech guy to build a website for me
so he builds my website www.fashionretailer.com on umbraco
then, i find most of my visitors are consuming my website on mobile
well, the mobile responsive website works well
but i want to amp up the game
so, i want more way to push content to my website visitors
- send push notifications
- send geo based offers
- let him to track his orders on the way etc
so, i see these can be done the best way in a mobile app than a webapp
so, i need 3-5 guys to build an app
android guy
windows guy
ios guy
UX engineer
project manager etc
and still i have to build it from the scratch
product catalog, promo/coupon mechanism, validdations etc etc
if there is a Xamarin build i can download from Umbraco and customize the app and publish any of my apps in any of my preferred store
that will complete my tech mission
So, an app build
is for the consumer end
not for the webmaster, why would a webmaster need an app to manage all the task?
1.Desktop first Build - to run a website and to run an admin
2.Mobile first Build - to publish app to GooglePlay, Appstore and Windows Store etc which can be downloaded by consumers
From an editors perspective, I believe most users would want to do most of the heavy editing in a desktop environment, especially if you're going to work with a lot of content and images which can lead to many clicks back and fourth between screens (content section, media section) and dialogs. And maybe you're doing actual corrections to the text - I'd hate to do that on a mobile phone or a tablet (unless I had a keyboard and a mouse, but then we're back in a desktop scenario)
For quick news updates that do not require much editing, then posting from a mobile phone does work, but cut n' pasting text from another source is a bit cumbersome to say the least.
Umbraco, ASP.NET provides a lot of features that can help you to provide server side information => either it returns HTML, JSON, or whatever you want.
You can build with Xamarin anything you want that could retrieve data from a server.
What could be great is to have some standard API that can help you to work with the mobile user profile more easily, and to have a real personalization plateform. Maybe some other CMS can do it better with already existing functionality :-)
For the parallel of mobile and web. With Xamarin, you could reuse a part of the server development... Views, and models to where data could be retrieved by some Web API you still need to write :-).
Umbraco 8.0
Umbraco 8.0
i have 3 websites.
im not sure about other webmasters
it would be great if umbraco can run a poll so that the results will give a good understanding about the shift thats happening around us
if the average % of visits from mobile is higher than 50% and growing continuously for the past 6months
shouldnt Umbraco be a mobile first platform based on Xamarin ?
or
shouldnt Umbraco create 2 builds
because the sooner the project is live the more people can adopt umbraco
Hi David, and welcome to Our.
It's an interesting first message, to raise such a large question. Are you a current Umbraco user or is it something you are possibly investigating for the future? This is not clear from your post.
It's a well known fact that mobile visitors now exceed desktop, for example see here. Is it the client facing website which you feel should be rewritten using Xamarin, or the Umbraco back office? I'd expect that the former would be much more likely (and much more useful) than the latter.
As to where Umbraco is going in the short term, feel free to look through the Roadmap here. This only goes up to Umbraco 8 which is penciled in for later this year.
If you want to contribute to Umbraco then see how to here, perhaps you could help it move in the direction you have outlined.
Regards,
Tim
Tim,
Let me explain what i expect Eg: Im a small retailer and i want to start a website to sell apparel I hire a tech guy to build a website for me so he builds my website www.fashionretailer.com on umbraco then, i find most of my visitors are consuming my website on mobile well, the mobile responsive website works well but i want to amp up the game so, i want more way to push content to my website visitors - send push notifications - send geo based offers - let him to track his orders on the way etc
so, i see these can be done the best way in a mobile app than a webapp so, i need 3-5 guys to build an app android guy windows guy ios guy UX engineer project manager etc
and still i have to build it from the scratch product catalog, promo/coupon mechanism, validdations etc etc if there is a Xamarin build i can download from Umbraco and customize the app and publish any of my apps in any of my preferred store that will complete my tech mission
So, an app build is for the consumer end not for the webmaster, why would a webmaster need an app to manage all the task?
What you suggest sounds great, but I'm not sure how high a priority Xamarin would be when there are always bug fixes and improvements to make.
As I said in my original post, if you want to see how you can contribute then I'm sure it would be welcomed by the community! ;)
Tim
What is the perceived benefit of using Xamarin in this case? Are we talking about moving away from being web-based?
John,
No, i think there should be 2 builds
1.Desktop first Build - to run a website and to run an admin 2.Mobile first Build - to publish app to GooglePlay, Appstore and Windows Store etc which can be downloaded by consumers
I'm curious too - why mobile first? :)
From an editors perspective, I believe most users would want to do most of the heavy editing in a desktop environment, especially if you're going to work with a lot of content and images which can lead to many clicks back and fourth between screens (content section, media section) and dialogs. And maybe you're doing actual corrections to the text - I'd hate to do that on a mobile phone or a tablet (unless I had a keyboard and a mouse, but then we're back in a desktop scenario)
For quick news updates that do not require much editing, then posting from a mobile phone does work, but cut n' pasting text from another source is a bit cumbersome to say the least.
yes, the apps are for the consumers not for the webmasters
example:
www.polyvore.com is for consumers on desktop
www.polyvore.com/admin is for webmasters
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.polyvore is for mobile first consumers
David, you must be referring to the umbraco backoffice, since the frontend is as mobile-first as anything. (It's up to you as a developer).
But the backoffice is already responsive. So it should be possible to post by ipad or tablet.
Xamarin doesnt really make sense here, I think unless you want umbraco to build to apps?
As a developer,
if i want to build a website i can download Umbraco or nopcommerce or dotnetnuke etc
if i want to build an app
no one provide nothing so far
if umbraco can provide a build like
https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/MyShoppe
i should be able to use umbraco for my website and app both
Im a developer, developer, developer i develop websites and app
IM NOT SOMEONE WHO PUBLISHES ARTICLES ON WEBSITES so, im thinking from a developer's perspective and looking umbraco as a developer's platform
Umbraco, ASP.NET provides a lot of features that can help you to provide server side information => either it returns HTML, JSON, or whatever you want.
You can build with Xamarin anything you want that could retrieve data from a server.
What could be great is to have some standard API that can help you to work with the mobile user profile more easily, and to have a real personalization plateform. Maybe some other CMS can do it better with already existing functionality :-)
For the parallel of mobile and web. With Xamarin, you could reuse a part of the server development... Views, and models to where data could be retrieved by some Web API you still need to write :-).
http://www.sitecore.net/products/sitecore-experience-platform/cross-channel-delivery/mobile
If you have a budget for this :-)
Hey this sitecore exprience is a great fit for his he just needs to learn sitecore for it
Sure, it's a neat idea. :-)
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