I am looking to profile my web application on Android for starts...what is the best way to get the kind of information that a tool like Web Inspector would give me on the desktop? Since I cannot use Web Inspector or Speed Tracer on the mobile device...how can I get such data/info ?
You could use WebDevTools for Android :
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.voltcode.webdevtools
It's a web profiler that gives basic information on how a mobile web page loads on the device.
Loading times can and often differ on a per device/menufacturer basis - this is due to internal HTTP settings and loading, processing and javascript execution differing speeds.
disclaimer I am connected to the author of this tool.
I would use a split lap timer in one hand, and load the application on an Android with the second. Refresh multiple times, and then calculate the average. That should give a good estimate of the startup times. No kidding.
Is your web application heavy on Javascript? Or is it intensive on the server-side, or maybe both? Network latencies may vary, so it's better to not factor that in your profiling. Instead profile the server side separately, which will give you a solid estimate of how fast is a response getting generated. Android uses Webkit so the Web Inspector should give you a fairly good idea of how the Javascript will perform on an Android device. Also, checkout v8 benchmark test suite on your device. Similar to these test suites, you could write your own benchmarking tests specific to your web application. There will be lot of things that can affect those benchmarks that are outside your control so keep that in mind when writing those tests.
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I'm currently designing a speed test app that obviously includes Ping, Download & Upload tests among others.
I already developed the logic behind the multithreaded tests so I can define create as many threads as I need for each test, being able to set multiple connections to avoid throttling for high speeds or unstable networks and having more precise results.
I'm not currently asking for code but I'm asking for the logic behind of the number of threads to use for each test for every network type and available bandwidth.
As a piece of additional information, my download test uses https connections and the upload test uses socket connections. Any required additional information, please let me know.
I've tried research about that but the only thing I could find is that Ookla Speedtest (browser version) uses 4 threads if the speed is at least 4Mbps and 2 threads on lower but browser multithreading limitations are different than the ones we have in Android apps. -> Link
I don't expect that someone gives me the exact logic behind this but it would be really useful if I could be pointed in the right direction. Any article, post, book, resource about the topic would be much appreciated.
As we are now a days fond of bootstrap css which helps in compatiblity. My question is how exactly it deals with the loading as we have more load to the desktop apps and less to mobile. So according to me the css is handling through #media-screen object stylings with toggling of display and alignment. But even if we control the display from client side css or js. Server side will do its task of loading, So whether both desktop website and mobile website are taking the same amount of dataload.
Why am i asking this is if there is same amount of dataload, ill rather choose Android app instead of bootstrap for the fast performance.
Its important to remember that Bootstrap is a client side framework for helping to create responsive websites. You're right in that the same amount of stuff will be sent down the pipe regardless of the device that is used. This is true for any website that just uses client side frameworks to render for mobiles, such as jQuery Mobile.
If your application is big and complex then you may be better off serving up a different page for those mobile devices using Server side technologies. We use the Microsoft .Net stack which can render different views/scripts/css depending on a number of parameters to do with device. You can still use the Bootstrap framework, but maybe render less in the DOM, or have a smaller version of Bootstrap. You could even try a different framework such as the super tiny Pure framework.
Another alternative like you said is to build a native app. This will generally (if you make it right) be faster that what you can achieve in the browser, but you need to be careful that it is actually providing something useful to the user to encourage them to install it. If you are just using it to make it easier to make your website then you're doing it wrong, but if you are building a highly complex app that can leverage some of the extra functionality you can use in a native app then it may be a good way round it.
Without a real question there isn't a huge amount more than my own experience to draw on here, and there is no real right answer to how you go about it, but in answer to the question of how it deals with loading, client side frameworks can't really change what is being loaded without serious customisation or using some server side technology to deliver different pages altogether.
I'm about to start developing my first Android application, I have been reading through the developer documentation, but am unclear on how user interactions are handled.
As a front end developer, I use alot of css/jquery to create rich and interactive user interfaces.
I see that Android has it's own version of stylesheets, which seem pretty straight forward, but I am left wondering how I can replace something like js/jquery. Is it possible to use JQ mobile for native Android apps? Is there a replacement to this? Does android's UI handle this?
I'm a little confused.
Yes, it is still possible to heavily leverage your js/jquery skills and create a solid Android application that provides a rich user interface which is primarily js.
This will obviously depend greatly on what kind of application you're writing however if you own a website that delivers rich web content to end users and you'd like to replicate this in an Android application then you should take a look at webviews. They should support most of what you're trying to do in js or JQuery and it would be a quick process to mock up a test app to see if it meets you needs. I have run into a few quirks when replicating some interactive d3js visualizations which required extra tweaking before working properly on mobile devices.
I expect these minor issues will be ironed out in the next few releases of Android. Kitkat is going to include webviews that are based on Chromium which will include an updated version of the javascript engine. Your best bet is to just test it out, the amount of Java code required for a mock application is quite minimal.
We have an upcoming [big] project, involving a series of mobile apps. Unfortunately we're still new to this market. Our biggest problem is not learning something new, but rather having to develop the same app twice which means approx ~ twice the cost and Hence we're trying to find a cross platform solution.
Since our expertise is in C# and .NET we are very interested in MonoDroid/Touch, and from what I've read that it is a mature framework.
However it is not exactly cross-platform (or am I wrong ?) and so we turned to Phonegap, which lets you build mobile apps with js, css and html which are technologies which we feel comfortable using.
Our apps are going to be very data intensive and might also require to be "invoked" by the server, i.e. there might be 2-way communication between the server and the app.
and so my question, given these kind of apps would you suggest phonegap or monoTouch/Droid?
Thanks in advance.
Monotouch is NOT cross platform. It allows you to create reusable elements, but you can't build once and deploy to all platforms, especially if your project is really as complex as you are making it sound.
I don't know much about phonegap. I've always steered clear of it. It might have changed since I looked at it last, but as I gather its not very robust and doesn't create very good apps, especially (again) for a complex app.
There is another cross platform framework called Titanium, but similarly to the both above its not great. There is more support for it every day, but it is missing some key components and you tend to get so far into a project and realise that you're not able to get any further.
My answer, which you're not going to want to hear, is that you should do it for each platform separately, and charge your client as such.
Creating a mobile app cross platform is like creating a t-shirt that will fit everyone. Ok, so you can make it stretchy, and you can design it in a way that will "suit" everyone, but what you'll end up with is something that is going to be too big or too small, and no-one will enjoy.
iPhone, android, iPad, blackberry, windows phone 7, bada etc etc they're all VERY different platforms. Just because they're both mobile phones doesn't make them similar at all. The way that the UI is designed and displayed is varyingly different, and the way you interact with the hardware (and ultimately the user) is also different. Case and point - iPhone as you go down views you create a navigation stack which you navigate using a back button in the title bar (which has the title of the current view in it). Android you navigate with the back button on the device and the action bar is used for the app title and other "action buttons".
To this end I would suggest, if you REALLY don't want to do everything natively (which is definitely the best option) then I would suggest looking at Monotouch and creating two apps with reusable components.
With PhoneGap you will create a web application. It can look like a native app, but it's really a web app running inside a browser object.
You'll be programming the client HTML and javascript, just like any other client side web app. You can create ajax calls to the server to get your data and do all your usual C#/.Net stuff there.
With Mono, you will create a clients side application, and you can program that client in C#/.Net.
PhoneGap will be more or less free and can be used for other platforms than Windows, iOS and Android as well, though you'll have to setup environments for each version. You can compile for all platforms in the cloud, but that'll cost you money.
MonoTouch/Droid will set you back a few hundred dollars.
For each platform, you will have to do some extra tweaking. Probably giving it a native look and feel, call different API's, etc.
I would personally advise the Mono route, since you know C#/.Net already. It'll give you results faster. Make use of the free trial for MonoTouch and see if it's something for you and if it's worth buying ($698 for both 'touch and 'droid).
It depends.
I agree that going native gives you the best possible performance and user experience. It's certainly the only feasible option if the app has a demanding UI. But if the app is more informational (perhaps displays news feeds for example) then a hybrid HTML5 app could be the go. The support of HTML5 within a UIWebView on iOS has some quirks in the older iOS versions so tread with caution. And on Android and other platforms, HTML5 isn't quite there yet. Certainly not on older hardware that doesn't have the grunt or browsers with suboptimal javascript engines.
With your .NET background, I suggest you have a look at http://www.vsnomad.com and evaluate it for yourself. Throw a quick demo together and see how it holds up. Otherwise, yeah, go the native route.
Im writing up a business plan and im having some trouble with the finance part. I put an estimate on the cost of developers, web designers and everything but server costs. Im not a programmer so I dont know all the details. But how much would you think servers are going to cost for a complex app. I cant get into too many details but it keeps track of user preferences, stores data about the user and there is quite alot of back-end to it.
As i said in my response to your comment to #mark; this is a tough question as we don't know enough to make good predictions. To help you make your own predictions
As its only a business plan (i.e. not set in stone) think of a number of users that you want to run on a given piece of hardware - for the data / web servers.
Be aggressive but in the real world as the developers will have to code to make this target and make that part of the spec for the software - 200 concurrent users on a web server for example and that 10 web servers needs a dual core xeon database server or whatever the app needs.
Then you can plot a graph of expansion as it goes; they tend not to be linear so have a lying weasel factor to handle that that rolls the graph off as you go.
Then don't forget about backup, load balancers, firewalls, content managers, caching proxies and all the other network kit you will need.
You will also need to budget for someone to run it all... If its a web app probably 3 to handle it in shifts. Either that or make sure your IT people are the most dedicated so that the servers get restarted in the night when it all goes wrong.
Finally ... Does the system need DR? if so that will need to be included.
It really depends upon the complexity of the app, how much traffic you expect and what platform you need. The real cost is in the time managing the thing.
I would consider amazon aws (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/). There's even a free level to get started.
They have system images prebuilt, free and purchasable, that might have the configuration you'll need. You can use one to build an image of your own and deploy it to many servers quite easily if your app takes off.
This heavily depends on the numbers of users that concurrently use your service and of course how much traffic you will have. Without more details it is not possible to estimate any costs.
Edit:
Possibly it is the best if you sit down with a developer, explain her/him what you want to do. There is a good calculation program from amazon webservices (cloud).
You can find it here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
For example if you would need 5 Linux CPU medium instances for one year + Load Balancers (they will spread the load to the instances) + Traffic (50000GB out + 500GB in) (per user out 1GB/month + in 100MB/month)
This would be all together a One-Time payment $2275 and monthly $7101
http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html?key=calc-DE0DC116-63C1-440E-BE15-213263DC4E2B
But this is a too complex question to rely only on guesses. The advantage of Amazon AWS is, that you can grow with the application. Perhaps it would be the best to start small and see what you will need.
Take a look at the Dell, IBM or HP sites, say, and see if they quote rough figures. Compare with the cost for services like Amazon's EC2, or Microsoft's Azure. It's impossible to tell you what you need, without knowing what you're actually doing.