I am planning to consider to use the Bootstrap framework for one of my clients especially because of its Responsive nature as the app has to work on Smart Phone as well as Tabs (of different screen sizes).
In general, do we face any issues with Bootstrap? Is it right decision to depend completely on the Twitter Bootstrap and Backbone together to develop a web app?
At my company we tend to use Twitter Bootstrap for rapid prototyping web app ideas. However most clients will want a bespoke look and feel at some point so we tend to code up our own interfaces then.
That said I know thousands of sites that use bootstrap without any issue so I would say it comes down to whether you client will be happy with the visual restrictions bootstrap gives you.
Related
I am working on a project requirement.the project will be a ASP.Net Web application.
Database will be Microsoft SQL Server.this ASP.Net Web application will contain all the business logic and functionalities.
I have another requirement that all the functionalities in that web application should be accessible through mobile(IOS/Android) devices.
I hope we can do this in 2 ways.
1.Develop that web application with Responsive UI Design that supports all IOS/Android mobile devices.
2.Develop the web application business logic functionalities as .Net WebServices.Then Develop Separate Android/IOS applications to communicate with .Net Web Services and provide Better user interaction in Mobile.
Which way is the best way? Is there any other ways to accomplish this task?
among above two ways,How hard to make it possible / which is the hardest way?
Please somebody give a good solution.
Thanks
It depends on how "native" the app should be. Is it ok for the client to open a browser to visit the app? Or maybe it's enough to use phone gap to "emulate" a native app. From the actual point of view it`s hard to say what solution would fullfill the requirements. However, developing a native app arises a new maintenance channel. If you develop a reponsive web app it will be the only app that needs to be maintained. With every additional app you create (android, IOS and maybe Windows) you will create an additional app that needs to be maintained and to be tested, rolled out etc. Just keep that in mind while designing the architecture.
I think you should go with responsive web application.
Because as your are developing a new application then if you go with responsive then will save you time and the version problems which users face with **Android/IOS** will not occur with you.
Although you can provide full functionality to user with responsive. If you develop mobile application then it has some limits.
I am quite confused with the info I read online.
Some say for IOS apps,
Apple restricts developers to writing iPhone applications in
Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit
engine.
Apps must be originally written in one of these languages and may only
use Documented APIs in a manner prescribed by Apple. Only code written
in Objective C, C, or C++ may compile and directly link against the
Documented APIs.
while Android apps use Java.
Then I also came across jquery mobile for cross platforms. So I am not sure which route I should take for developing an app. I prefer jquery mobile of course as I think it is not ideal to use two different languages to develop an app. And it takes time to learn Java and Objective-C.
So I want to know - can I just use jquery mobile to develop an app for IOS or Android?
Below is tutorial on developing an app by using jquery mobile,
http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/jquery-mobile-tutorial-creating-a-restaurant-picker-web-app.html
Take a look at my other answers related to this theme:
Hybrid apps vs Native apps: Hybrid vs native apps/
Mobile App vs Web App - Apple no longer accepting web apps?: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14436328/1848600
Tutorials: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14375842/1848600
To make a story short. Hybrid apps are still more then acceptable in Apple app store, you just need to accept some guidelines like:
App must have native look and feel
Do not use 3rd party payment systems
Do not use server side technology to render page content, use ajax instead
There are a range of variables that you should consider before deciding which way to go, as the more you understand your business strategy and IT drivers, the better you will be able to decide which way to go.
Like
Performance
Usability
Maintainability
Budget
Time to Market
Resources
Even though the big corporates like LinkedIn and Facebook are ditching Hybrid, they actually are not [Another debate not related to this question]. Moreover, a lot of small and mid size companies go their own short and long term plans, spanning Hybrid and Native.
Like people will say that if you have small budget then go for Hybrid as you will be able to launch in multiple platforms, but on the other hand you have to think about the long term cost and many other parameters above.
The best Article that lays out, is following, really thought provoking
https://pixyflux.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/how-much-native-binary-vs-spectrum/
I want to develop an application which works both in a regular browser and as an Android app. Both seem suitable but would I be right in saying if I went with Phone Gap, deploying the same html content as a regular, server hosted website is not trivial and would require modification? Also, are multi page applications not desirable in a Phone Gap wrapper?
Are there any alternatives I should consider? I'm surprised someone hasn't already written an Android wrapper with all the hardware access wiring done already. Or have they?
There are few things you should know,
If you are going to publish your app also on iOS, you can't use server hosted website for your app.
All of your basic functionality must stand on your app assets, is one of the iOS guidelines, and its also make-sense for best ui performance (both iOS & Android).
Use server-side wisely, when you want to fetch data which have to be up-to-date.
there are some new mobile browser features which will be available in the future, that allow your website to use the device hardware functions:
Device API on W3C
Good luck dude ;)
You can try with jquery mobile framework:
http://www.jquerymobile.com
It is jquery based framework for developing web apps that works on standard web and on multiple mobile devices (with cordova)
I am going to develop a cross-platform app that will need some screen scraping capabilities. The app itself looks like an obvious candidate for Phonegap since the UI is quite static and simple (no fast UI interaction needed) - it is basically a kind of foreign currency comparator which needs to show some updated exchange rates and a few simple graphs.
The problem is however that it needs to connect to certain sites and grab the data from there using screen scraping. There is no API. I have many years experience with screen scraping in PHP, and some experience in native Android using jsoup. And the "app" already runs in PHP (on server) for use in browsers, but the client needs a real app.
What are my choices for screen scraping in Phonegap? I reckon that the javascript support available is not suited for screen scraping, but is it possible without too much fuss to build a native layer beneath the Phonegap app?
I have virtually no experience with Phonegap, so I might have missed some obvious solutions. If so, please advice me.
As a side question, does an equivalent of jsoup exist for IOS (objective C)?
Bobik is the very API you are looking for. It lets you tap into its cloud computing power through the API in which you only provide the urls and xpath/jquery queries. Read my article at http://zscraper.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/client-side-web-scraping/ to see Bobik in action.
I am having a browser-oriented web app build on Rails (3.1). I want to make some features of the web app available on mobile devices, too.
Besides...
1.) Building native apps for each vendor of devices and interacting with my rails web app using JSON/XML, ...
I am thinking about reusing as much as business logic already implemented in my rails app by reusing controllers/models and add some new views targeted to mobile devices (in terms of screen size and the like...).
With this approach, I see two alternatives:
2.) Let the end user access the part of the rails app targeted to mobile devices in the mobile browser.
3.) Set up a native mobile app wrapper, e.g. using PhoneGap, and refer to the same part of the rails app used for 2.).
The advantage of 3.) is that I can reuse business logic of my rails web app and having a "phantom" native app for mobile devices at the same time. (I used the term "phantom" because besides the wrapper, it's not really native, this approach actually just mimics a native app.)
Question 1: Are there any other alternatives besides 1.) to 3.) ?
Regarding 3.)
Question 2: Does Apple accept this kind of apps (which fetch large portions remotely) to be uploaded to the app store?
-> I would be surprised if it is so, because it would allow one to change large parts of the app without the notice of Apple.
Question 3: From an architectural/technical point of view, is it recommended to remotely fetch prerenderd html/js to be executed in a "phantom" native mobile app build on top of e.g. PhoneGap?
-> Wouldn't it be better to set up an independent client app within the native mobile app (maybe using backbone.js), keeping all html, css, js locally within the mobile app, and communicate with the backend using JSON/XML or whatever?
I think this is a good question and I've recently come across similar difficulties. I've ended up using (Q3) vaadin with touchkit. Fine if you're doing free but a bit expensive if you're doing commercial (although then you can probably afford it). I realise this doesn't relate to rails but still, I'm assuming the main point of the question was should I build native apps which use web services / middleware or go for pure web apps.
RE (Q2), during my trawl of this current technology, I did read a few articles suggesting that apple are not allowing the web app style. As in, app which simply masks browser window loading remote web app. Essentially, I think where apple are concerned, you'd need to have the functionality tied down to what they agreed to. This doesn't really affect web apps though as you can surely just access them directly from the browser.
RE (Q1), the only alternatives I can see would be different middleware (e.g. MQ, SOAP etc).