Ciao a tutti. Il Gattino Fioco di Neve vorrebbe scrivere un articolo su due tool per sviluppare applicazioni ma, dato che è un po’ imbranato, ha deciso di farlo scrivere al suo amico Jonny il Delfino, che per l’occasione scriverà l’articolo in inlgese.
Vai Jonny…
Thanks Little Kitten Snowflake.
Hello everybody,
As any dolphin developer, I cannot use many fingers to type in a tool like Visual Studio, so I do prefer to use easier tools that allows me to create applications in a very simple drag and drop style.
The re are two main tools you can use for this objective. And I wanted to share my impressions as I tried both of them.
They do have pros and cons to be evaluated depending on your style.
Before evaluating the table with the differencies, you have to know that appstudio is a website tool, meaning you will work from your browser and all your projects will be available into your developer account. While Siena is an app for windows 8. You can work from your PC or tablet and save the work you have done in a siena file saved locally.
You can find the two tools at the following links:
http://appstudio.windowsphone.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/projectsiena/default.aspx
Comparison Table:
| App Studio | Siena | |
| Windows Phone 7 apps | – | – |
| Windows Phone 8 apps | x | – |
| Windows 8 apps | – | x |
| Windows 8.1 apps | x | – |
| Javascript | – | x |
| C# | x | – |
| Ready for adv | x | – |
| Package ready for Store | Yes, only Phone | no |
| .sln to work in Vstudio | yes, both WP8 and Win 8.1 | yes, only Win 8 |
| Connection with Azure | – | x |
| Free design | – | x |
| Template sections | x | – |
| Video | x | x |
| Feed RSS | x | x |
At the moment (18/3/2014) Siena is not giving out a solution for Windows Phone, and the applications are not taking advantage of Windows 8.1 benefits. Therefore it seems better to use appstudio. But by the end of the month a new version of Siena is expected so the possibilities of this tool might still be better than what appstudio is offering.
Conclusions: If you aim to have a nice reference app (company site, catalogue, simple info), appstudio is the right choice to prepare an app in 20 minutes ready for both Windows phone and Windows 8.1
If you want to include additional features and/or better customize the layout and interface, then Siena seems the right solution for you. But just remember, no phone app.
Siena
AppStudio
