Wednesday 28 June 2017

What is React Native


Presently, numbers of mobile app developers have started using React Native to develop mobile apps. From a new startup to fortune 500 companies, it provides excellent experience for developers to use this open source development platform. It allows you to create an app using JavaScript. React Native is a JavaScript library useful in developing user interfaces as described by its creators.
It mainly focuses on the view part of your app. It means that when you write a react native app, your view code comprises writing react components which are nothing but small portions of your code that portray the portion of your app look like based on the set of input data. Apps created using react native includes Facebook App, Instagram, Facebook Ads Manager, Bloomberg, UberEATS, Vogue, Walmart, Airbnb and many more in which some of them are React Native/Hybrid Native Apps. When it comes to developing an app, it requires deciding whether need a native app or a hybrid app to develop. Native apps include an alarm clock, an address book, a calendar, a browser and other programs which are built-in in your device by default.
When a mobile app developer starts developing apps using specific platform and programming language such as Java for Android or Swift/Objective-C for iOS, the application is known as a native. It can access features of operating systems of a mobile phone such as calendar, camera, media files, accelerometer and many more. Cross-platform apps are designed in such a way that users can access it without connecting internet. Such apps support all platforms and adapted to most of the devices. The platform such as Cordova, Ionic, PhoneGap and other are used in developing hybrid apps that allow an app to access the features of software and hardware platform.
Hybrid app is growing popular as it eases development as well as enhances user experience. React Native is an efficient tool from Facebook to benefits developing a hybrid app for Android and iOS. It is designed to make interaction with native API platform and based on the ReactJS library. All About The Benefits of React Native Useful in Hybrid App Development Highly Portable Facilitates developer to port almost half of the app code to another platform.
Developer can migrate all of the app’s logic, other than the view elements for display information templates on the screen. Firstly, it supports only iOS, but now facilitated support for both Android and iOS, the library can provide mobile UIs for these both platforms. Compatible with the Third Party App It allows integration with the third party, hence, the functionalities of the third party app can be benefited by the device. Moreover, the integrated APIs do not make any additional load on the device causes operation smoother. Memory usage also minimizes during the time in order to maintain the best performance. Reutilization of Code The key advantage of React Native is that it facilitates developers to reutilize the code which was written for a specific platform. Hybrid app developers need not to write the code from the scratch. The primary goal of React Native is ‘Write Once and Use Everywhere’. Thus, it saves valuable time of developers to concentrate more on their product rather than striving on coding. Furthermore, they can also use their code written in any platform which becomes highly beneficial for mobile app developers to focus on other things rather than writing the same code each time when developing a new app. Make the App Development Efficient Using ReactJS, high speed and responsiveness as well as agility, effectual processing and best user experience makes possible in offering app users, native app experience.
React Native covers popular UI library of Facebook, ReactJS for web applications. It carries DOM abstractions, best performance of an app and makes the programming simple for hybrid app development. A Mobile UI – a Key Focus Designing a mobile UI is the key focus of the React Native. It is like a JavaScript library than just a framework that enables the UI more responsive and makes the processes to run smoothly because of the synchronization of the native environment and the framework. This makes possible for users to minimize loading time compared to a traditional hybrid app and give excellent experience to them.
Better Scalability In React Native, there are wide API interaction with native elements and several modules ready-to-use of third party developers as well as the opportunity to write your own native modules. Besides, the problem of browser compatibility needs not to face using React Native as it renders native views and not Webview.
It gives developers an opportunity to concentrate on other important app development process by preventing their time in solving bugs for hours or days. With native views it gives better performance and with smooth animations, it gives the feeling of native. You can also update your app anytime using ReactJS library.
Conclusion

React Native is popularly used for hybrid app development due to its number of benefits. Even fortune companies also use react native apps for their businesses to provide their end-users excellent experience for using their app. Reusability of code, highly portable, focused UI, compatibility for third party app integration as well as enhance the efficiency of developers has made react native popular for Hybrid app development.


Friday 23 June 2017

Android vs iPhone: Why iPhone is Better?

This is the most sensational debate between school or college friends whenever either of the two leading mobile brands in the world release their products. Apple is known for its sleek design and focus on aesthetics. The company is also quietly becoming one of the most secure in terms of technological breaches. Whereas Android's open source operating system allows for mass customization, it also bogs down the process of making necessary updates available and leaves devices open to dangerous malware.
iMessage
Apple makes it easy to carry on conversation across all devices. The iMessage service allows for free voice and text messaging between Apple products in a way that is seamless and efficient. You can link your iMessage account to your Mac, your iPhone, and iPad adding an ease to going between devices that Android simply cannot match. Their closest technology, Google Hangouts, does not allow for similar cross-device conversation. Likewise, while iMessage is in the same app as regular texts, Android users have to manually switch settings to combine the two.
Full Searching
Google may be a fantastic search engine but Android's native search function certainly doesn't make it easy to find things between apps, contacts, and settings. Apple's Spotlight search culls from everything on your phone, including emails and even voice memos.
Less Clutter
There is a word for software pre-installed on devices that cannot be removed and provide little function for its users — bloatware, according to Forbes. Android is notorious for loading up its phones with apps from carriers and manufacturers. Apple, on the other hand, has a marginal amount of bloatware, if any. Sure, you can't delete the Weather or the Stocks app, but they're far more useful than a Sprint app you'll never use. Google is allegedly doing away with the bloatware, according to AndroidCentral, but that has remained to be seen.
AirDrop
iPhone users can easily share contacts, photos and other media over Bluetooth via AirDrop, whereas there is no native technology on Android that offers the same service. AirDrop even provides an extra layer of security by prompting users to set their visibility, making it so that only your contacts can connect and share with you.
Security
In a 2014 PulseSecure mobile threat report, it was revealed that 97 percent of malware targets are Android phones rather than iPhones. Given the fact that Android is open source, which means there is more freedom to change the operating system as a whole, it's difficult to implement widespread fixes to such threats as Stagefright, a notorious virus that can infect phones via a simple message.
Faster Updates

This brings us to our last point: iPhones simply update their software far faster because there is no set way to alter the iOS operating system as with Android's open source designation. That means that any viruses, threats, or issues that need to be debugged are easily fixed in a widespread way.


Wednesday 21 June 2017

Top 5 Mobile App Development Tools


We all know how bothersome multi-platform mobile app formatting can get. Each platform is unique and exhibits different features, capabilities and behavior. But then, multi-platform apps are truly “in” today, so you as the developer, need to find solutions to develop the best cross-formatted apps, without emptying up all your resources on developing for just a couple of platforms at one time.
Fortunately for you, there are some really great multi-platform developer tools in the market today, using which you can easily achieve your aim. Here is a list of the top 5 dev tools for cross-formatting mobile application development company.

Read Also: iOS Tools To Develop Your Mobile Application


RhoMobile

RhoMobile offers Rhodes, which is an open-source framework based on Ruby. This permits the developer to create native apps, spanning over a stunning range of OS’ and smartphones. The OS’ include Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and RIM, which pretty much covers it all.
The framework supplied by RhoMobile is such that you only need to code once. This code can be used to build apps for most of the major smartphones. Native apps are great for
working with available hardware, so your job gets done with ease, speed and accuracy.
RhoMobile also offers developers RhoHub, which is a hosted development environment, and RhoSync, which can be employed as a standalone server to keep all the app data current on the users’ handhelds.

PhoneGap
PhoneGap, which won great acclaim at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco’s 2009 Launch Pad event, is an FOSS environment that allows developers to create apps for Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. This platform uses standard web development languages such as HTML and JavaScript.
PhoneGap allows the developer to work with device hardware features such as accelerometer, GPS/location, camera, sound and much more.
PhoneGap additionally offers an Adobe AIR app and also online training courses to help the developer access native API’s and build mobile apps on its own platform.

Appcelerator
The Titanium Development Platform from Appcelerator, which incidentally has a formidable fan following in Twitter, aids the development of native mobile, tablet and desktop apps via web programming languages such as HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. It now powers over a 1,000 native apps per month. The best thing about Titanium is that if gives users easy access to over 300 APIs and location information.
Additionally, Appcelerator also offers customizable metrics for actions and events. Apps can be totally hardware-based and all app data can be stored either in the cloud or on the device.  

MoSync
Mosync, yet another Foss mobile app development SDK tool, is based on standard web programming. This SDK offers the developer integrated compilers, libraries, runtimes, device profiles and other useful tools.
MoSync offers support for various types of OS’, including Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, and even a linux Mobile distro.

WHOOP
This one, though not really a top tool, is interesting. Whoop confidently states that they are “The one-stop mobile app publishing platform for non-developers”. Even if you are not a developer, you can still get some cross-formatting done with Whoop.
Of course, we cannot guarantee that your product will have the same glossy look as those of your geeky coder counterparts, but Whoop is still definitely worth more than just a look.
The Whoop Creative Studio is basically a WYSIWYG editor that lets you easily drag and drop mobile app elements onto it, to achieve desired effects. What is more, you can even export your app in many formats, depending on the OS, including Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and more.



Monday 19 June 2017

Mobile Application Testing: Agile Methodology

Mobile Application Testing

Didn’t get your newspaper? You look for the news app in your device. Want to order pizza? You again rely on the app in your phone. With such varied facilities all from the comfort of our phone, we often forget what really goes on behind the development of a mobile application.
Developers work day and night to provide us with the best experience possible. So how do they do that? Recently, a new process – Agile methodology – is being undertaken to provide you with the best quality mobile application.
Agile Testing?
If in your childhood, you were reprimanded at every little mistake that happened, you are sure to turn out a responsible person. The same analogy applies to agile methodology for mobile application in which integrating, documentation and quality testing is involved at every step. . As this method requires high customer engagement to take into account the customer’s requirements and feedback after every step, it can be used in projects where the customer is committing to engage in interactive communication from time to time.  
This iterative and flexible approach can be used in complex project where the customer requirements change frequently. A big project can be broken s down into smaller parts and agile methodology can be applied to each of these small parts.
The agile approach to mobile app development focuses on customer involvement, flexible planning, constant evaluation and — of course — risk management. This approach enables requirements and solutions to evolve through the combined effort of the development team and the customer.
Why Agile Testing?
With so many different mobile devices available in the market today and more being developed each year, how does one cope with such ever-changing demand?
  • Constant supply of valuable client software, thus ensuring close contact between customer and developers at all stages of the project;
  • With changing technological trends, it gets difficult to implement all features into an app. But, with agile testing one can make changes to the project and put forward new demands to it at any stage of development (even before the release);
  • Priority information exchange method is a personal conversation, which gives opportunities for all participants of the project;
  • The main indicator of Agile implementation success is the high-quality working application;
  • Self-organizing teams performing particular tasks, often give better results than a large team dedicated to everything at once;
  • People and interactions are emphasized more than process and tools as the customer, developers and testers are in constant communication with one another.
With such advantages, why wouldn’t one want to adopt it?  
Mobile application developers make an app for a device with small screen, less memory and less processing speed. With the sheer number of mobiles present with different operating systems and different carriers, making a mobile app which is fit on one and all devices becomes quite a difficult task for the developers.
Other than that some other problems that the developers face are
  • Short Software life cycle development,
  • limited hardware,
  • rapidly changing technology  
  • changing user demands according to the changes in technology.
  • Also, UI/UX needs to kept in mind; but with ever changing customer demands it gets difficult.
But, all these shortcomings can be easily met through Agile methodology. First developed in 2001, this approach has been in use for the past 16 years. That itself is a monumental feat and it would be difficult to question its authenticity.
Agile Vs Waterfall
In the waterfall methodology testing and development is the last step of the SDLC. The testing and documentation phases are the most fundamental part of development hence agile methodologies for mobile application development are more effective and efficient for goal driven apps which require error free delivery of information whenever required. The traditional development methodologies can be put to use in the case of entertainment apps. After determining the methodology, we can further refine the process to best fit our project goals. Ultimately, although the way in which we do our work is important, delivering a solid and maintainable product that satisfies our customer is what really counts.
Conclusion

The number of steps involved in Agile mobile app development ensure a smaller footprint, easy and smooth download, error-free app. But, as every coin has two sides , this process has its shares of problems : the lack of integrity of the project and the low quality of the finished product’s architecture. Having said that, you wouldn’t question an executive with several years of experience; similarly, agile methodology has been trial and tested and also after several years of use, it only adds comfort to a developer’s life.