I've been looking for the best way to setup/choose my mobile development libraries. It's been giving me an headache of all the options there are.
I've tried UXI, Zepto, JQMobile, Sencha, and a couple more.
What i'm looking for is a highly cross device supported lightweight library. I only want to use it for eventHandling focussed on mobile events like swipe. And i'd love to use some page transitions.
Can anyone talk some sense in me?
Would you mind going over whats wrong with Zepto and JQM?
Zepto is extremely lightweight and deals with animations beautifully. Unfortunately the documentation isn't so great so figuring it out is a bit tricky. I'd go with this if you have the patience to learn it.
JQM is less lightweight but has great documentation and a lot of people able to help you here on stackoverflow. Its perfect for your eventHandling and transitions.
Sencha has very nice features but oh my god is it ever different than anything I've ever used. if you can figure it out, you can make some beautiful apps but I would stray away from this due to how heavyweight it is vs what you want to do.
Here is something that will help you with really speedy touch events / event handling though.
Related
I am a student working on a senior project. It will be a very simple android app to organize karaoke. We are using Flutter for the front-end work.
My education has been in Java, but this is my first time working with Dart/Flutter, let alone on a smartphone app. I have gone through Get Started (https://flutter.io/get-started/), as well as 2-3 step-by-step youtube tutorials that help you build very simple apps from scratch. These have been helpful, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the organization of a Flutter app. All tutorials say "everything is a widget", as if that should make things simple. And maybe it does in the end. But I end up with so many widgets, and I am getting confused about what widget should be inside what other widget and why.
Take a look at this picture (in the middle of the picture I have the widget-tree on display). I have a stack, two columns, scaffold, container, etc. Do I really need all of those? Is this normal for a simple login page?
What helped you get a grip on Flutter? Or maybe it is app development, rather, that I am having trouble understanding. Regardless, I am getting a bit discouraged. Any advice? Maybe there is a particular tutorial that helped you a lot?
Thank you for any help.
I like to learn by downloading and running examples from the developers (like these ones in their GitHub repo).
One thing I struggled with at first too from the whole "everything is a widget" idea was figuring out how to handle state / data changes appropriately. If you're struggling with that, this Google I/O video does a great job showing how you can better architect an app in regard to handling state in a reactive way. A bit more advanced, but from beginning to end they go from their opinion on the worst way to handle state changes to their recommended way(s).
I'm trying to develop my own application, I'm not too bad with code (Java, Objectif C...) nor design (Photoshop, illustrator... ).
But I always have the same problem, I never know how to go from my app Sketch and Storyboard to defining my objects and classes in code. It just makes a huge mess in my head.
I tried looking around but all the sites I can find describe the processus as Having an idea, creating a design, a storyboard, coding your app, publishing and marketing. But none explain how to go from the said storybord to the code or architectures of your code, thus not solving my problem.
As time passes it gets more annoying, I feel stuck :/.
Can you help me with any leads ?
Pretty please with the sugar on top :)
Much insight and understanding can be gained from Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) videos.
Designing Great Apps highlights some videos and guides that may be helpful.
Designing Intuitive User Experiences. Learn about the key concepts and principles that will enable you to make your app more intuitive and approachable.
While one specific video may not cover all the practices you're looking to understand, the principles and recommendations that they present will set you on the right path, and bring you closer to your goal.
If you're not sure what videos to watch, try ASCIIwwdc to search session content.
I am looking to start writing apps for mobile devices. I know a little about this subjec, and I am proficient in both java and python. However, before jumping into creating apps I wanted to get the community's input on a question I have not yet found the answer to:
How/Where should I begin?
I understand this question is fairly general/basic for a community that focuses on solving/debugging complex programs, but if there is a recommended tutorial (or specific platform) that will help a beginner(such as myself), it would greatly reduce the frustration and amount of monotonous questions asked on this forum and others.
Regards
Coursera is offering 3 courses all using android development which started last week. That would be an excellent starting point for anyone:
https://www.coursera.org/specialization/mobilecloudcomputing/2
How/Where should I begin?
I don't know about you, but I often learn by example more than reading. You mentioned that you're proficient in java so thats a great start. After you understand the Android SDK it's really only the UI good practices you need to learn. So here's my suggestion.
Start off with something super simple. Let's say, create your own version of a calculator. Something that can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. This should be dirty, ugly, but works correctly.
After doing this, take a look at some other android calculators on the play store. Check out Simple Loan Calculator. I use this example because it offers a lot of android UI components. ViewPager, ActionBar, etc. Download this app, take a look at it, and try to mimic it. This should provide an idea on how to work with the android UI components.
What's next? After you have done these two apps you should be relatively ready to tackle your own project.
HTML apps are easy to port across multiple mobile platforms. I have set up an Android HTML template as a starting point. You can just import this project into Eclipse and take a look at that.
https://github.com/jakewp11/HTML5_Android_Template
Here is my experience for ios,
There are three things that I consider as pillars
Objective C
Memory managment
Design patterns
The first one looks obvious but I'd stress on learning concepts like protocols, categories, extensions. As a beginner I thought that learning the syntax was enough, but time and again I had to jump back to the language concepts to understand what's going.
The memory managment , the most talked and confusing subject and now since we have automatic referenc counting to make things simpler and often new Dev skips learning memory concepts (I did it). So I suggest you to have an idea what actually happens under the hood of arc " the manual memory managment"
The design patters,
When I started off , to pass data and control , what I used to do was achieve every thing through the only design patten I knew (target action) . I lack the knowledge of design patters didn't how easily I could achive better results with less code.
Some resources:
Dev.apple.com
http://www.raywenderlich.com (one of my best tutorials are here, you can find one on design patterns)
http://rypress.com/tutorials/objective-c/
And yes , the sample projects at Dev.apple are the best tutors.
I want to achieve a nice 3D page curl animation in Android. I read some articles and found that nice effect can be achieved by OpenGL-ES so I started to learn OpenGL-ES (I did some of tutorials of OpenGL-ES and am still continuing) but I found it too complex for me to achieve this functionality. Also I got some examples which are available on StackOverflow and on the net, they work but I am not able to understand it, can someone guide me to achieve this functionality?
Based on the question comments I have an answer to this question.
YES, you can do that with OpenGL, BUT you need a deep understanding of math and graphics. This is a lot to learn, this will cost you at least a couple of weeks and it's definitely a hard path to go if you do it only because of this single animation (all of this applies if you don't take code which you probably won't understand and another human being put his whole effort into).
Nevertheless there might a ready to use implementation but unfortunately I can't present you one because I don't know if there's any out there.
Update
You callenged me, so I was eger to know whether there is something out there (because I saw that before and couldn't believe that there isn't a project out there which already does that for you).
And actually I found this question which seems to address the very same issue. And yes, there's someone who published his results here. And I have to admit: I looks awesome. It's also a pure java implementation.
But still: Having some background knowledge about OpenGL would enhance your whole attitude as developer. I'm not saying it's a must because not every one will succeed in OpenGL programming because it's quite hard to learn and implies a lot of math. But I think it's worth it because you will gain some deep understanding of current and all future graphical interfaces.
Just curious. I am already a Java android guy but am interested in the new app inventor beta for android.
I was wondering what "real" developers are thinking. A lot of people want to develop an android app but don't really have programming skills. Seems like a lot of apps could be written with app inventor - not sure since I haven't tried it yet.
Hopefully this clears up some things for people that are still just hearing about App Inventor. (Keep in mind App Inventor is extremely beta right now, so all of this is subject to change.)
If you're interested in playing around with some of the features it offers and haven't had the time or interest to get involved with the full Android SDK, then App Inventor is probably a good fit for you.
The interface of App inventor offers some unique features you won't find in the Android SDK and is pretty easy to get the hang of (make sure to look at the shortcuts for the Blocks editor, or it might start to feel tedious real fast). It has live debugging and live edits to both the interface and the supporting logic. That alone cuts down on time and frustration if you aren't quite sure about the proper way to do something yet and is probably my favorite feature of the whole system. New developers will especially find it rewarding to actually see their changes implemented on their phone without waiting for things to compile and run. It is a huge time saver and much easier to get used to than the traditional compile and wait process you face if you are trying to learn things through the SDK.
It is also quite handy if you have been playing around with the Android SDK and simply want to try something new out that App Inventor supports that you haven't had the time or aren't quite sure how to approach yet. So long as you keep things focused on features that App Inventor supports, this can provide valuable insight into understanding a problem by getting your phone doing something you can see and use in a matter of minutes. That's something even seasoned developers are likely to appreciate.
The real problem is more when you start hitting walls. Walls that you simply can't climb. And you quickly realize that the limits of this tool must be understood or you will probably spend a lot of time trying to do something that just isn't currently possible. Sooner or later your going find yourself in this position if you use App Inventor very much.
All coding is graphical.
Look at some of the demos or screen shots of what's available through the Blocks editor if you don't understand what that means. Setting values in those big colorful blocks is as close to code as you will get with App Inventor, for better or worse.
If you have any previous development experience, you are going to find yourself longing for the ability to do some simple coding to supplement what you are doing. Or at least the ability to export your project and pick up where you left off in Java. Sorry, this isn't that kind of tool.
Your only options when you get to this point are to pick up and start all over in code or forget about it, at least until the desired feature gets added to App Inventor (which may be never). That right there likely to irk a good number of people and turn them off to it.
If you are looking at getting into Android development, I see no problem with starting out with App Inventor. It might even save you hours of effort that might otherwise be spent trying to wrap your head around some concepts that are simple to understand when you do them, but a bit confusing if you are building them for the first time.
If you are a seasoned developer, or looking to make money or gain Android experience beyond just the concepts, this isn't your end destination by a long shot. If you are a student that is new to programming, this is probably a good environment with sufficient challenges and room to play around in to keep your interest for a decent amount of projects.
Despite it's current limits, I still see App Inventor as valuable resource to learning new concepts and as a playground for trying out new ideas. It is proving to be an awesome tool for introducing someone to Android development, and would probably do as good a job as you could ask for when introducing someone to programming in general.
I have been playing with it for a bit and my thoughts are that is is great for:
An introduction to programming. It is not something people can pick up and develop great programs with straight away, it does still require a lot of thought and logical thinking, but it doesn't require people to learn the correct code syntax
Prototyping. As it is relatively quick and easy to develop with (and has live debugging on the Android device), it allows you to prototype and see/interact with it in real time
Quick coding. If you want to develop a program quickly, this might be the simplest tool
As the tool develops, it will allow more feature-rich applications (it already allows integration with other back-end programs, etc.). The screen design right now is very basic, but will be improved soon.
Overall, I think that if you know Java for Android, then you will be able to pick up Google App Inventor within an hour and start making some functional apps. You might find it more suitable for building some apps, or you might prefer to stick with your current tools.
For people looking to start programming, I think it is an excellent introduction. They can concentrate on logic and program design, instead of setting up their IDE, code structure and syntax. Plus they will see results as they code.
To answer your question 'Should I learn it'. I would suggest that you play with it for an evening - that is all it will take you to get a good feel of it.
It probably won't make you a better developer, but all knowledge is good, so it can't hurt :)
I plan to play around with it anyway.
The generic answer to any "Should I learn ..." question is usually "Yes, it can't hurt to know things." From a practical standpoint, I would skip it. These sorts of things are usually nice ideas that never catch on. Sure this might be a neat way for non-programmers to build very simple applications and perhaps a real programmer could build a compelling application with it but it looks like if you are a programmer the benefits to using App Inventor don't seem that compelling.
I haven't checked it out, but I think it might be worth a look to help in UI development. Most software engineers are good at really solving problems with software or coming up with cool ideas for apps, but when it comes to UI design we find a lot of obstacles. At least myself, I've always been used to working with UI Designers.
I honestly don't like tools that generate code, (except WSDL to java or java to WSDL) but pretty much anything else I find myself spending more time trying to trouble shoot an issue when it comes up than the time I would've spent writing the app from scratch...
Appinventor is so easy to learn, I would suggest go for both options.
Concentrate most of your time on your main Dev environment and learn AppInventor, in the background, to give yourself a break.
The advantage of Appinventor is you can put together reasonably complex apps
in a relatively short period of time.
It's also pretty forgiving, for example, if you have a numeric variable, you can treat it either as a string, or a numeric value, meaning you can put together
prototypes pretty easily and quickly.
If you want an app putting together, quickly, Appinventor might be the better
option, if you need something more powerful, more control over you UI etc, then
a more sophisticated Dev environment might be called for.
With Appinventor being so easy to use and learn, you're giving yourself more options.
Considering Eclipse seems to introduce errors I can't find and can't remove--even after using Project-Clean, I'm looking forward to any alternative.