Review: Crossfire

AppForge Crossfire 5.6, starting at $1,000
AppForge
Atlanta, Georgia
(678) 686-9000
http://www.appforge.com/products/enterprise/crossfire/index.html

One of the nice things about Visual Studio .NET is that you can use it to build applications that target mobile devices, thanks to the .NET Compact Framework. But there are some limits to this strategy, most notably that it only works for Windows Mobile devices. That's fine if you're an all-Microsoft shop, but often impractical for the real world, where mobile devices come in a staggering array of flavors, from Palm to Symbian to Nokia to Intermec to Sony Ericsson to Symbol to...well, you get the idea. Each of these systems, of course, has their own dedicated programming environment available. But what do you do if you have to support two, three, or even more different devices with the same application?

Enter AppForge Crossfire. Crossfire lets you work in the Visual Studio .NET environment using all the familiar visual programming tools and either VB .NET or C# as your development language. It also does its best to level out the differences among all those devices by deploying its own Crossfire client to each one. After the client is installed, you can build your code for any device and it will just work. The net result is that you use the same code and the same tools (with occasional adjustments to make use of the unique abilities of individual devices) to build cross-device applications, and deploy them to as many devices as necessary. AppForge issues frequent updates on the client side to keep things working well with new devices.

If you know how Visual Studio .NET works, you'll find getting started with Crossfire trivially easy (the little demo movie below shows me clicking around to build "Hello World" in a minute or so). But you can go quickly beyond simple user interface to take advantage of databases and other advanced capabilities. You get support for Bluetooth, TCP/IP, SQL Server CE, Pocket Access, SymbianDB, an object model that supports contacts and calendars on various platforms, synchronization, Unicode, bar code scanners, GPS, basic telephony, and cell-ID, among other features. AppForge has quite a bit of programming help available online to help you navigate the shoals of all these different devices and capabilities, and it's clear that there's plenty of expertise to back up the product. I had no trouble writing code for the PocketPC, which is my own area of mobile knowledge.

I've done some fairly heavy work with the .NET Compact Framework, and I think for the next serious project I'm probably going to go with Crossfire instead. It just has the feel of a much more sophisticated and targeted environment. Yes, you pay more (and you do pay for client licenses, at $25 a pop in small quantities, which may be a deal breaker for some apps), but you also get more. If you want to compare for yourself, you can download a 30-day evaluation or register to have them send you a copy on CD to try out.

  Click for larger screenshot

  Click for animated movie (528 KB GIF made with DemoCharge 2004)

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.