Mobile Application development

Since we are looking forward that our mobile applications should be as safe as the web applications, we must follow some security tips strictly and determine the security risks through good practices in coding or mobile app programming. As we are accessing web through internet connections on mobile we have same threats persist as on the web with wire connections on the desktops. The reasons are obvious as we are using same browsers on the mobile devices as we use to have on the desktop so executing malicious code through browser is as easy as for the desktops.

In order to prevent our personal data on the mobile like our personal and financial information, our location and our contacts we have to use only trusted route of data exchanges through web. We generally use a common technique to transfer data to a client from the server and that is use of JSON and followed by JavaScript with eval () function to parse that data during our mobile application programming. With this technique, we execute data transfer rapidly than other alternative methods and scripting.

Unfortunately, in this technique we directly execute data feed that contains user generated data in case of dynamic application or website and this the prominent mistake that can costs us dearly in future. Therefore, it is essential for us to escape the user generated data anyhow during the data feed or database transfer on the mobile client during our mobile application development project. There are many ways to mitigate this risk and the best method is to use JSON parser or JSON PARSE where you need not to have eval () function for data parsing. If this is not possible by any means then you must escape the user-generated data during data transfer and data parsing through legitimate ways.

Conclusion

Google has done well for the Android platform. I say this because it has left ii as opensource and selected the Java at the base of Android. As Java is easy to learn and work in compare to Objective C the numbers of Android developers are increasing further, and Android development becomes cheaper, as well as faster than messy iOS development tasks.

Now in this series, I would like to offer some good tips to the Android programmers particularly who are newbie in this field and just started Android programming as their full-time career. I have a simple piece of advice at first hand that before starting any Android development project please run some initial research for your code bank and collect some similar code that can help you to do the things you want to do in your Android application development project.

If you are lucky and able to collect substantial amount of code, which are similar to your various requirements now start adjusting that code according to your expected functionality and start testing. There are more chances of failure than success so don’t get disappointed and continue iterating your partially successful code and try to understand the usage of functions, classes, strings and other elements involved in the coding so you can get reasons to modify them and can do that successfully.

Of course, you can use StackOverflow in your troubleshooting. After plenty of iterations, you will get good insight and will learn two or three things without realizing it. Now, let’s focus on some practical hints.

The first and foremost thing on the Android platform for an android Application developer is its fragmentation on hardware side. Therefore, you need to deal with something more than 100 different screen sizes and resolutions by creating effective layout of your UIs as well as managing various sizes for your images to fit into different resolutions. For Android phones, we have ScrollViews and ListViews properties to adjust the screen height. However, scrolling is not bad for touch screens but good layout is mandatory.

Another blessing for Android app developer is the inbuilt folder structure of Android OS. Where you have ample space to place images, strings, layout files, dimensions, colors and other properties depending on the API levels, use of languages, screen sizes and many other things in some organize manners, so you can easily manage those things without losing the track of Android development.

Conclusion

Summary

Mobile web app development is bit a challenging task in a sense of ever changing technology canvas. We need to develop some good practices during our mobile web app development in order to beat the performance of native apps. Smart use of local storage technologies and avoidance of cookies are some suggestive practices to gain good performance.

Introduction

When we are referring web application on mobile, something immediately strikes on our mind, a picture of some inferior product than native mobile application. However, this is not always true because when we are going to mobile web application development we have wide area of development to serve various purposes that are sometimes not possible with only native coding.

If we take care of some best practices, regarding to the mobile web app programming, we definitely can exceed the performance of mobile web app against the native apps on all major platforms like iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc. We, mobile web app developers should keep some important notes in our mind that we are going to create web application that is for tiny devices, not big desktop or laptop.

Mobile devices have limitations in every aspects of performance. Screens are tiny in smartphones whereas some bigger in tablets. Processing speed is again a big constraint in the way to do things rapidly. The most intimidating thing is the connectivity, be it Wi-Fi or 4G, but that is not matching with cable connections for internet access and reducing the data upload as well as download speed of the web applications from the web and to the web.

In order to minimize such backlogs we can implement some good practices during our mobile web app development. The very first step is the data as we need to data in the device or in the browser of the device for various purposes like filling forms, loading images, emails and some personalization in the websites. Generally, such data are stored in the cookies of the browsers. The very nature of some data like token of the signing in etc. need frequent interactions with the server while some cookies constantly sending requests to the server and keep busy the mobile network.

Therefore, using cookies supported programming or websites are not acceptable and advisable on the mobile platform and we should avoid use of cookies in our mobile web app development in order to avoid cookie related caveats. Instead, we can use the local storage technologies for local data and get good performance in our mobile web app development. Today we have HTML 5 dependent functionality to store your data for offline purposes so we can leverage such programming techniques to create local data storage. Another benefit of local storage is that you can access data display immediately without waiting for the server responses. With local data interaction, we can get responsive interactions with server and can save lots of bandwidth. Apart from HTML 5 BONDI and OPERA widgets can help us.

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Summary

At present, we are living in mobile era where tons of mobile platforms are competing and adding new OSes as well as mobile hardware in already fragmented market. Therefore, getting some common approaches to create universal mobile development platform for all fragmented platform and combine them in one OS or system is essential step to perform wide range of field operations.

Introduction

Today mobiles are in-things, in all cultures and countries of the mother earth, and people like to use these devices as their mini computers in day-to-day life. Today market is flooding with various handheld devices running on different OSes because we are living in somewhat primitive smartphone eras where fragmentation is a rule rather than the expectations.

For instance, majority of affluent class of advanced countries are using iPhone and iPad as their choices for handheld device. Whereas, huge adaptability of Android devices and its OSes are the matters that none can avoid at any cost. If I say broadly, we have some more than ten brands or platforms used by the majority of populations around the globe.

Unfortunately, all such platforms are running with their own operating systems with their own native codes. Therefore, entire mobile application development community has a big question that how to deal with fragmentations of OSes effectively. Some smart mobile developers have find out the ways where web access is common among the all operations through mobiles. They have taken help of XML technologies to mitigate the OSes related issues.

Now, we have technologies that can efficiently manage such platform differences like XML for application controls whereas web apps of various mobile platforms where the most common web technologies are the ultimate solutions like HTML, CSS, advance JavaScript and some jQuery. If I am going to define them clearly, we can termed them as cross-platform mobile app development or mobile web apps programming in some simple trems.

Now, let’s have technical insight-out of the Universal Mobile Application Development (UMAD). As stated earlier we have more than one operating system as well as fragmentations for the OS versions at hardware counterparts where different version management is tedious due to the client side installations. Managing mobile applications at client side is a daunting task. Therefore, we need some universal solutions, which should have server like central system to assist each device takes part in the system. Thus, mobile developers have to think of only server and some minor issues at various clients.

In short, the above restrictions mitigate the growth of mobile platform for wide range of operations covering wide areas.

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Summary

In this fiercely competitive era, winning the hearts of our end users matters more for our own survival and get success. Therefore, we need to do careful mobile app development by giving the best user experiences, usability, and ease of use with the help of latest technologies.

Introduction

Today mobile has grabbed nearly 50% audience of web on mobile only net and nearly 70% population of world is using mobiles of different range including smartphones. Although, smartphone users are less in numbers, but has significant impacts on the overall consumptions of digital gadgets for computing purposes. Therefore, designing efficient mobile applications for wide range of audience is bit tricky and challenging task.

If you are an iPhone app developer or iPad app developer or Android app developer and planning to have some exclusive mobile applications in the respective market places you have to consider your end user first, just before your client. I emphasis on end user here because if no one is looking at your app or using it, your client won’t get any benefits that you have intended well before starting programming.

Thus, the attention of your users are matter more for we all to thrive in business and we can do this with some handy tricks like we can make our mobile application development process such a way that you can test thoroughly and frequently your app to avoid any trace of bug or error in your well framed application. Here again, I would like to say that only bug free app is not enough to win the hearts of your targeted audience, but you should plan and implement the best user experiences in your mobile app programming and designing.

Sometimes I have observed that we only build mobile apps, which can only work with live internet connections where internet connectivity is an essential requirement for its functioning. Therefore, if we use latest technologies that allow us to work offline for some defined period or occasionally we can give good user experiences in our endeavors.

It is true that none of us can deny the usability of mobile applications by-and-large, but we can’t forget the ease of use in our iPhone application development or iPad application development or Android application development at first hand. If our mobile app is not easy to use by damn any stupid user, it will boomerang and will ruin our future prospects to get high at success. Similarly, if your mobile app is failing to add or contribute something in the lives of its users you never be able to record high downloading rate for longer period in any mobile app market.

In short, do exclusive mobile app programming keeping your end users in center and give excellent user experiences by avoiding cluttering by adding unnecessary features as well as content.

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