Cloud Computing – A New Feather In The Cap Of Mobile App Development
With the realm of cloud computing scaling new heights of success, it won’t be wrong to say that including the concept in more and more industries will aid in the overall growth and popularity of technology. With more and more people incessantly demanding the feasibility to stay connected and updated while on a move; it will be befitting to equip the smartphone apps with cloud computing features and facilities. This blog of mine highlights the significance of leveraging cloud computing for flawless mobile application development. Considering the massive adoption of iOS and Android devices, it would be interesting to see how the consumers react to the incorporation of Cloud Computing features into their regular smartphone applications. Keep on reading this blog to find more on this. Mobile App Development in Cloud- Is it actually worth? Cloud Computing has made it feasible for today’s smartphone user to access his/her social networks while on the go. Right from accessing information on your smartphone to sharing the same with your friends, family and acquaintances; cloud computing has played a vital role in boosting smartphone experiences. Still there are some consumers who’re quite confused about using Cloud Computing in App development. Well, for such consumers, it’d be interesting to note that maximum benefits of cloud computing were initially obtained by Android powered smartphones. With cloud computing catching up with numerous consumers via Android apps like Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote etc; it won’t be wrong to predict an excellent response for deployment of cloud computing in Android applications. Cost controlling is possible via inculcation of cloud computing in mobile app development Since cloud computing lets you provision the resources based on real time requirements, you can easily control the overall cost associated with building the mobile application. In addition to this, the demand for manpower during app management is visibly reduced by using cloud. This is simply because a major portion of the admin task is being effectively handled by the cloud provider that has been used within the respective application. Better hosting is guaranteed with using cloud computing in mobile app development The amazing popularity of Amazon and its Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) offering via EC2 platform has encouraged organizations to outsource the job of application hosting to their respective EC2 service providers. This has helped the app owners/developers to attain a greater control over the operating system and the runtime environment, resulting into a reduced administrative overhead and lesser configuration issues. Cloud-based hosting services have truly worked for all types of mobile applications ranging from the simple ones to the more complex and feature-loaded apps. Web analytics has got a whole new dimension with the collaboration of cloud computing and mobile app development The basic idea of “know your customer” has been taken to an entirely new level with the use of cloud computing in mobile app development. Although smartphones are much more focused in relation to features and functionalities, using cloud during app building has opened doors to an entirely new world of web app analytics and usage. Whether it’s about regular app upgrades or enhancements, relying on cloud-based services has helped mobile apps in capturing, storing and rendering information related to varied user interactions. Cloud services introduce a lot of convenience and efficiency into mobile app development Although the benefits of leveraging cloud for app development aren’t hidden from anyone, yet there are many organizations which are still uncertain about the full-scale deployment in the cloud architecture. Well, if you’re a mobile app developer then you can easily experience the ease of managing code and testing data by utilizing cloud...
Read More8 Tips to Design Apps for Android Screens
Is it really difficult to create apps specifically meant for Android devices? Is Android being an “open source” platform a concern for app developers owing to which safe and secure apps seem to be out of Android’s dictionary? A lot of developers and competitors believe that the open source is a cause of concern especially when it becomes the source of costly and time consuming app development. Nobody can deny the fact that developing apps for Android is indeed a challenging affair, but it is not secure or it is too difficult would be exaggerating the matter. There are developers who vouch for the fact, that though it is difficult and challenging, it is one of the best platforms to develop an app for. It is a robust ecosystem, but the only hitch is that you should know the trick of the trade. Here are 8 tips that might just help you design an app for Android screens. Use Relative References An app developer should always maintain relative references when trying to create an app specifically for Android screens. It is important to understand that Android does not understand or comprehend absolute references. A relative layout view group container is the perfect solution for the apps that you will plan to develop using Android platform. The whole issue with absolute layout view group container is that it works best for old Android devices that run on cupcake platform. Avoid Hard Coding Image Sizes As an app designer and developer, try avoiding hard coding the image sizes. Instead of giving them the specifics, try using codes like wrap_ content or match_parent which can match the dimensions of the image in a much better way. With wrap_content you will see that the image and its contents are resized on their own. With match_parent you will need to specify a size which will be the benchmark for resizing. Define Values of DIP If you are specifying actual values for the dimensions of the images, try to use density independent pixels instead of mentioning the pixel size. This has been introduced on Android SDK to perfect the dimensions of your images. With this DIP being specified, you can always gain optimal resolutions and sizes of your images on Android based devices. You would never have to deal with specific resolutions or densities. You can easily play in the world of generalized solutions. Using Resource Folders Have you tried scaling Bitmaps for your app? You would see that scaling and perfecting a bitmap can become a strangulating affair. With Android, there is a feature that allows you to define the various resources like density etc. specifically for the various bitmaps. All you need to do is use the resource folders and recreate a bitmap atmosphere. Res/<resources_name>-<config_qualifier> is the code that you would need to use to create resource folder and place the specific resources within these folders. The resource folders would be called in when the app begins and thus the various resources would be specified. You can define as many resources as you want using this tool. Use XML Shapes Here is yet another tip to work with Android apps. Try creating XML based drawables for the Android screens instead of hitting on custom shapes that you might get easily. This approach not just reduces the number of bitmaps and hence the resolution required for the screen, but also lowers the use of overheads and custom assets. This in short helps you reduce the size of the Android SDK, and thus fastens the app without any hiccups. 9 Patch Bubbles Instead of creating...
Read MoreWhat Is More Sought After: Native or Web Application
The evolution of Smartphones has introduced mobile applications as a harmonious whole. Ever since its emergence, the mobile application development has amazingly gathered the attention of innumerable developers across the world. Today, we have myriads of mobile applications in the app stores that are used by the consumers to perform high end complex or day-to-day activities with a flair. Observing their growing popularity, it can be said that mobile is dominant in every way. For the folks, who want to develop an application either for promoting their businesses or increasing their productivity, it is essential to thoroughly research. Since, developing a mobile application is not an easy task, it is advisable to perform elaborate research and planning before diving into the development process. An application development requires several processes including, • Basic idea of app, • Creating a plan for app, • Defining the app design, • Developing the app using programming language and other development tools, • Testing the app for bugs and other vulnerabilities, • After executing all these steps successfully, the developed application is deployed over suitable mobile devices. Is there something missing? Yes, the most important thing that is needed to be decided even before executing any of the above-mentioned application development stages, and it is to choose between a native app or web app for defining an approach for creating and deploying the application. Native Application: These are specifically designed for a particular mobile device. Users can download it from the dedicated app store like Google Play store for Android applications and Apple App Store for iOS applications. Mobile Web Application: these Internet-enabled apps run in the device’s web browser. Users can execute these applications without downloading them on their mobile devices. Let’s ponder into the benefits and pitfalls of both native and web app; and consider their behavior under certain factors. 1. How the rapidly increasing diverse mobile devices can affect your choice If we consider the mobile platforms, obviously the native applications will be a preferable choice. The development factors would be user interface fluency, screen size, touch gestures and more. Those who are interested in creating an Android or iOS application are advised to get their hands on the Java or Objective-C respectively. The upcoming Samsung Tizen platform will allow one to develop an app in HTML5. Choosing between the two options of web or native primarily depends on your requirements. For instance, there is no need of creating a native location based application for a mobile platform, when you already have one that identifies and indicates the empty parking spots. Hence, it can be said that instead of treating the web apps and native apps as a counterpart, developers must reap the benefits of both the approaches by integrating the functionalities of both into one software. For example, Facebook offers an app to its users for a convenient access and facilitates mobile users including (iOS, Windows Phones, and Android) with Facebook Messenger and other mobile apps for enhanced mobile experience. 2. Which one offers more accessibility Both Native and web applications have different kind of accessibility. If we consider web application, it will integrate only limited native features of a device and it can be accessed in a browser on a mobile device, whereas native applications are standalone entity, which are completely compatible with the native features and hardware of a mobile device. However, unlike web applications that get updated on its own, users are required to update their native applications from time to time. Thus, both of them have some pros and cons, it’s hard to choose one until...
Read MoreThe ‘What’ and ‘Why’ Behind WordPress Multisite
If there is something most obvious among the web developers and designers, it is the fact that WordPress is conquering the web at an unrelenting pace. And that’s something easily validated by the statistical piece that suggests that close to 75 million websites on the web depend on WordPress in some capacity. Thew Internet economy is being overwhelmingly dominated by this highly customizable and unwaveringly powerful content management system. The staggering popularity of WordPress has further pushed the WordPress developer community to aim for higher grounds and get to there with ease and effect. There is no denying that the competition to WordPress is stronger than ever. You have platforms like Joomla, Drupal and Magento that are very popular, especially among the business owners and online merchants. But in sheer numbers, they are yet to catch up to WordPress. The success of WordPress can be owed to so many factors, but most to the proactive developers and designers who turn every stone in their strides to perch WordPress up and beyond its closest peers. There more and more reinventions happening every hour. And among the latest goodies that WordPress has swung at us, WordPress Multisites are grabbing headlines. What is a WordPress Multisite As is the norm, a tree would offer you not more than one type of fruit. Likewise, there are CMS platforms that allow you to run just a single website from a single installation. WordPress multisite however glides past this constraints and gives you a feature by which you can run more than one websites from just a single backend. This is among singularly the most amazing features that WordPress tosses at us as it gives us so much more freedom and saves a truckload of time. Every time you install a plugin or theme on one of the websites, it runs seamlessly on other sites on the network too. The cherry on the cake is that you have the control to restrict the access of these plugins for certain users. The question a number of folks reading this post might ask to themselves is “Have I ever encountered a WordPress multisite?”. If you have not been living under a rock, you most certainly have. WordPress.com is the best example of a WordPress multisite. It is a single domain that lets you append your preferred name as and when you decide to have your personal blog. It is, in its bare bones, a massive network of multisites and you are a part of it if you are running a personal blog on WordPress.com. Apart from WordPress.com, there are other noteworthy examples of WordPress multisite that include websites lie Edublogs.org and TeachForUs. On these sites, you can have your own subdomain and share your knowledge and opinions. “Be it As it May, Why Do I Need a WordPress Multisite” The benefits of WordPress multisites have been reasonably documented by now, and most of it points towards the versatility you inject in your website using this feature. Your website may be populated with several users and as an admin, it would most certainly be the most arduous job to manage the accounts of each of them. With multisite, you got to do is to aprove the subdomains on your site of the likes of • myblog.abc.com • abc.com/myblog Once that is done, your users have websites of their own and they can tinker around it at their will. They can place the elements like headers, widgets, and other sidebar elements at their preferred position and also can change the backgrounds. They can also install themes of their choice....
Read More10 Meetups To Join If You Are A Serious WordPress Developer
WordPress theme and plugin development has really taken off in the past couple of years. You can build an entire career off of affordable – or even free – tools that enhance other people’s websites. Being a service that eagerly encourages such third party and independent development, WP is the perfect platform to focus your efforts on. Once upon a time this was more of a hobby, but the best devs are getting serious about it. So much so that local networking groups are growing all over the world. Especially in the US, in those cities where technology is big business. If you are a WordPress developer, whatever genre that might be in, now is the time to really get your head in the game. These meetups offer you an opportunity to connect with others in the field, share trade secrets, strengthen your position within the niche, and just get together with like minded individuals to discuss a topic you are passionate about. DC Tech Meetup This isn’t a WP group, but it is a wider tech and business group. It is also a very big one that has massive meetings once a month in the Washington DC area. With around 800 attendees each go, it is a great opportunity to meet with developers, business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and more. Primary location: Washington DC; use this site for travel info. WordPress NYC In NYC, this WP specific group has more than 3,000 current members. However, they tend to hold smaller meetings that make it easier to network with others, each one drawing about seventy attendees. Every third Tuesday of the month they hold their get together centered around a lecture. Primary location: New York City; NYCgo is your best bet for travel tips. London Bloggers Meetup Talk all things blogging with other bloggers living in the London and surrounding areas. They do mini conferences every couple of months, but you can connect with locals for one on one, or form smaller meetups, if you choose. Primary location: London; I prefer this site for international travel info. Boston WordPress Meetup All WP fans are welcome to this group, where plugin and theme developers, marketing experts, bloggers and more get together once a month either in person or online (they provide webinars). Events are usually held on the last Monday of every month, in the evening, unless otherwise stated in the event details. Primary location: Boston; This site provides lots of Boston travel guides. The San Francisco WordPress Meetup A rather trendy group, this one believes in being on the cutting edge of WP technology. They welcome beginners, though there are a fair number of well established and knowledgeable people already in the meetups. They have get-togethers sporadically, sometimes once a month, and sometimes every couple of months. Primary location: San Francisco; Bookmark this site for travel help. The Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group Once a month, Vancouver residents gather for these meetings that include presentations from members, lectures, Q&A panels and plenty of networking among WP fanatics in the area. They regularly have special themes, such as Women Talking WordPress, and Icon Fonts. Primary location: Vancouver Victoria WordPress Events This is a smaller – but often more active – group in Greater Victoria. While they might skip a month of meetups when everyone is more likely to be busy (such as December), they also often have multiple gatherings in a month. Many of these meetings are bootcamp or workshop style events, meant to give you hands on training from experts on different elements of WordPress use and development. Primary location: University...
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