I've been trying to develop a cross platform mobile app, very simple one (DB driven), so I had to chose between PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Rhomobile.
I'm a big fan of Ruby and ROR, so using the same MVC structure and Ruby syntax is a big advantage for me.
Anyways I would like to ask few questions here if any of you guys used it already as it's a very risky decision specially that it is the least known framework among the mentioned above.
Do you know any solid smartphone App that used Rhomobile? this could give it more credibility. I don't wanna invest much time developing the solution then to get refused from apple appstore for some reason or to face any major problem in the production.
Did you notice any performance issues? specially with the UI? as it is not a purely native application (unlike RubyMotion or Objective-C) ?
Do you have any idea of the pricing? for commercial uses? is there any fees or is it totally free app?
Thanks in advance
I have been in the trend of developing RhoMobile applications since more than 2 years. In my opinion, i found this more powerful and stable than other frameworks.
Since you are a ROR/Ruby developer, it's will be lightning fast speed for you to catch the flow. you will not believe that most of the concepts of ROR are available in this framework.
Regarding your queries,
Do you know any solid smartphone App that used Rhomobile? this could give it more credibility. I don't wanna invest much time developing the solution then to get refused from apple appstore for some reason or to face any major problem in the production.
You will find no issue while deploying the app to stores if you just simply follow the basic flow as they have on there documentation. Although it's not as easy to check for the apps based upon the technology used, but this link may help you.
https://developer.motorolasolutions.com/thread/1736.
Did you notice any performance issues? specially with the UI? as it is not a purely native application (unlike RubyMotion or Objective-C) ?
All the Hybrid apps usually have a layer between you coding and the native api, which will any how take some few amount of reaction time, be it Rhomobile, Rhonegap or others.
But as per my experience, same performance degradation have been marked by me, than the native one for all the frameworks.
Do you have any idea of the pricing? for commercial uses? is there any fees or is it totally free app?
If you want to use only RhoMobile. Its free. But if you want to use some advance modules and some core modules, you need to have the RhoElement license for this, which is basically a paid one.
Hope these points help you deciding you best framework.
Related
Ok this is more informative question than on a coding question. However this is a two part question.
When building the flavors for example an MP3 player.. you would have free and premium. I started designing a flavor app of an MP3 player to start learning Flavors and Build variants.
What i am trying to understand is when building the flavor is all of the design for the flavors built in Project then each flavor is specific. Premium features for Premium and free features for free. I understand that.
However what i am not understanding about the design is when i design my login with firebase how do i call the flavor thats appropriate. For testing purposes lets forget firebase. Here is an example:
MainActivity has two buttons. One will point to the free and the other paid. So if i press the free button do provide an intent that points to the flavor as this:
val i = Intent(......buildConfig.flavors.free)
Or would i place the package name in where the buildConfig would go. This is not actual code this is just an example.
Keep in mind i have never built a flavored app. So this is a learning point for me.
My original idea was have a free version as default with an in app purchase. You use the in app purchase and if the purchase is successful then the premium would take effect.. the only differences in the actual deaign would be those premium features are enabled.
So the first question would be: Is there really a difference between same design flavors versus in app purchases?
The second question is: when building a flavor app with the same design. Do you have to use flavors, example Free/paid, if the design never changes.
Like i said this is a learning process and all my apps on google play is just a flavorless app with adMob banner ad. So i an wanting to venture out to a more simple aspect than having two apps on google play one app for the free and another app for premium.
I think it would be easier to do flavors. However i have never done a flavored app and all the research i have done does not give clear instructions. They all stop after the gradel file implementation.
So any direction would help with is flavors a must or is it more headache to deal with in my case for learning purposes versus real world application.
I will soon make a mobile application. For the front-end I will use React native and for the back-end I want to make an API but I don't know which technology to use, Django REST API, express js?
My problem is with regard to the videos to store, which technology is going to be the most suitable for storing them?
So, what technology would you use to create an API that can store videos properly and that will be called by react native?
There is no simple answer to a question like this. It all depends on your expectations, experience, resources, time, etc. It is also a very subjective question because most developers have their own preferences about these solutions. The truth is that you can build a solution in A LOT of different ways. Besides the JS frameworks you suggest, popular choices are .NET, PHP, C#, Ruby, Java and Python... and much more!
Besides the backend / API, you will also need a server for hosting your API and maybe another type of server for storage.
If you want to build everything yourself, take a look at the services provided by AWS, Azure or DigitalOcean. If you have limited experience building backends and want to save time, take a look at Google Firebase or Heroku.
The last two are plug-and-play solutions for expecially mobile apps like the one you are describing.
Check it all out and make your own opinion!
Good luck with your project! :-)
I want to do my final year project on augmented reality geo-localization,
Please tell me, from where to start ?
what technology to learn ?
what are recruitments to development this kind of application ?
If you want to perform Geo-Localisation and use GPS, I wouldn't recommend using Unity. It's arbitrary coordinate system can be a bit confusing and difficult to make an app using GPS that's reliable enough.
For Augmented Reality, you can't use anything like Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, because those are Virtual Reality headsets and have no way of allowing the user to see the real world. Augmented Reality peripherals are things like Microsoft Hololens or Google Glass, neither of which are commercially available but there are cheap knock offs that are. AR can also of course be used on any mobile device, since they all have a camera built-in and chips powerful enough to process all the tracking data.
As for making an actual app, the best thing you can do is have a go. Analyse your market, see where the gaps are. If you want to make an app for a specific OS that isn't cross-platform, I would recommend learning some Objbective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android), if you don't know any already.
For cross-platform, I would say something like Xamarin would be useful for making an app on both the major OSes, it was recently made free by Microsoft and you can essentially make one app in C# that works across all devices.
For the Augmented Reality itself, there are frameworks out there that can be used for your purposes. Things like Kudan, Vuforia, Wikitude, etc. Some of them offer free versions of their software. You can use these to deal with all the tracking and projection side of things so you don't have to go about creating your own AR engine.
The best thing to do is probably to sit down for a few minutes, or hours, and think about what you're going to do. Figure out what you want the end result to look like, then work backwards and think about the best way to achieve that goal. Eventually you will arrive at the language and engine you want to use to make your life as easy as possible and then you can get started learning from tutorials online and getting your app out into the world.
you can check my tutorial about geo-based augmented reality solution on Android: https://www.netguru.co/blog/augmented-reality-mobile-android
I have presented there the basics and how to start with simple implementation.
Well a good starting point would be to ask yourself few questions:
What type of devices, you plan to work on(oculus rift, google cardboard, Microsoft Hololens, web etc)?
Augmented Reality is achievable in both Web-Context and Application-context. Which route do you want to go for?
Depending on these questions, if you choose to do a normal application based on a device, then depending on the device(Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Microsoft Hololens), you would need to grab their specific developer kits and learn how to develop apps using the documentation. For Oculus rift and Microsoft Hololens, you would need the respective Headsets inorder to make an app in that, but If it comes to google cardboard, all you need is you mobile phone with a good processing power.
There is another way to work on augmented reality applications, that is by doing a Web Application using some amazing javascript libraries like Awe.js, Three.js and JSARToolkit.
You can google about them and find out more.
One of the more accessible ways to learn Augmented reality is Project Tango.
Devices are around $500 last I checked and you can use a free version of Unity + Project Tango's free plugin:
https://developers.google.com/project-tango/
Which ever hardware you pick I'd recommend checking out Unity3D as it seems to be the platform of choice for AR/VR at the moment. There are other options... this just provides the most flexibility based on all of the platforms it supports.
Side note: I have no affiliation with Project Tango and am in fact working on another platform... but it isn't as accessible at the moment.
I am a PHP developer, and want to learn objective-c usage withing its well known IDE - XCode to start building IOS apps for iphone and then sell them on AppStore.
my questions are:
What's the best (and easiest) documentation to start with ?
Is it that easy for me (as a beginner objective-c developer) to attract customers on AppStore and get them to buy my IOS apps, or is there a huge competition among experts on AppStore so that there is no chance for beginners on AppStore?
If there is any chance to sell my apps on AppStore, what's the possible profit for them on AppStore ?
thanks in advance.
What's the best (and easiest) documentation to start with?
I found this link (for PHP programmers):
http://mohrt.blogspot.com/2008/10/objective-c-crash-course-for-php.html
Otherwise go with books, and use xCode and read code.
Learn Objective - C: (Programming Objective C 2.0) - http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-2-0-Stephen-Kochan/dp/0321566157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298891453&sr=8-1
Learn iOS coding: (Big Nerd Ranch) http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321706242/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298891484&sr=1-1
Is it that easy for me (as a beginner objective-c developer) to attract
customers on AppStore and get them to buy my IOS apps, or is there a huge
competition among experts on AppStore so that there is no chance for
beginners on AppStore?
If your idea is good and your app is well written sure. But there are a few competitors.
If there is any chance to sell my apps on AppStore, what's the possible profit for them on AppStore ?
There is no easy answer to your question here, but you will have a profit from apple with 70% of the product prize.
Good luck out there.
I have learned IOS programming using big nerd ranch guide. It is very nice, updated (this is important because the development environment keeps changing) has lots of good examples and most importantly teach you each concept by making you write the code itself. Following it throughly will result shortly.
Writing an attractive app is a different issue. But if you improve yourself in UI design a little bit, tackle the challenges of the mobile environment and provide functionality & stability to your app, you will have a chance to shine. But I do not like the idea of trying to create an app which profits well. Build an app with good quality and make people willing to support your work instead; profit should be a result, not the aim.
In response to your questions:
The best (and easiest) documentation to start with is definitely Big Nerd Ranch's Objective-C Programming for beginners. It may seem overwhelming at the beginning but if you're able to plug away at server side languages day after day then you will eventually grasp objective-c very well. Also recommend watching Stanford University's iOS videos on youtube in your down time to become more familiar with the terminology while learning the language.
It seems the app store is no different from doing a website Google search for results, so you may want to consider marketing initiatives to get your app up-voted in order to become recommended by others or possibly just grow your download numbers. This answer is purely subjective.
Depends purely on your marketing efforts to grow interest.
We're about to build a Blackberry application but would love some input on whether to implement using J2ME (MIDlet based) or Blackberry native (UIApplication).
I understand some of the tradeoffs. J2ME will be more flexible if we want to port the app to other devices. RIM has better support for Blackberry native.
The place I'm still lacking information, though, is on the UI side. We want to build an app that has a great user experience, and one that looks like other apps BB users are accustomed to. Can we do this if we go the J2ME route?
Apologies for the somewhat subjective and less technical nature of the question.
I've tried it both ways - building a pure MIDP app to run on BlackBerry and non-BLackBerry platforms and building a separate BlackBerry app (often using much of the same business-logic and networking code as the MIDP app). Definitely go the BlackBerry native route.
It's all about the BB UI classes. They'll give you the ability to (among other things) respond to the different type of menu events (trackball and menu key), respond to BB specific key codes, if you're interested in the Storm take advantage of the orientation sensor and touch support. Plus they're a much richer set of UI elements to work with. You can build up a lot (but not all) of what they do in pure MIDP, but end up customizing so much of it for each platform that you won't save anything in the end. Starting with the BB UI and customizing saves a lot of time and effort.
Even in gaming applications, or for applications where you're custom drawing all your components, you have better access to the BlackBerry graphics APIs and get better performance going the BlackBerry native app route. And you still have better detail about input events.
Finally there are some nice lifecycle things you can do with BlackBerry native apps, like pushing to the background, or auto-running on system startup that you can't do with MIDlets, which may be of interest depending on your application.
Also think about market - if you're planning on supporting BlackBerry right away, and then maybe other MIDP platforms down the road, it's usually a better plan to execute the best you can on your initial platform. There probably won't be much of a reason to port to MIDP later if you don't succeed on BlackBerry first.
BlackBerry is a very difficult platform to program for. I went the native route and found it to be very poorly documented and overall just a miserable design to work with. I did feel it to be necessary because you will lose the ability for certain features (scroll wheel?) if you go the J2ME route. It's a tradeoff and you'll have to choose the one that fits better for your specific need.
I have been working with J2ME since 2002 when the Nextel/Motorola phones were in the forefront of J2ME functionality. I deal primarily with non-gaming applications. Today with J2ME evolving and more phones conforming to the JSRs my application continues to port smoothly. This year I finally got around to moving it to a Blackberry device. Two days later my application is fully functional on a Blackberry. The application is purely generic J2ME and uses many of the JSRs (location, bluetooth, xml, etc ). A strong UI design helps. I extended some of my UI classes to support the QWERTY/SureType keypads. I have used a variety of native applications found on Blackberry devices (not games) and I have yet to justify any reason to venture off to the RIM API to see what I would benefit. The arguments expressed above by other fellow programmers further prove that there is very little to gain unless you are purely devoted to a Blackberry device platform.
Without knowing the scope of your application, meaning which devices you will target, another thing that you will need to take into consideration is the ever expanding differences in input for each BlackBerry model. Some devices, like the Curve and the Bold, are standard QWERTY pads where other devices, like the PEARL, have SureType pads. And then there's the Storm which supports both depending on the orientation of the screen. Also, the SureType pad needs to be used as a standard number pad if the user has it set that way. The native APIs have support for all of this where you won't have that luxury with standard MIDP.
Another tip when designing your user experience, I would get my hands on a few different BlackBerry models and try out some of the apps that come standard as there are a lot of shortcuts that users become accustomed to using that you might not even realize exist. For instance, the SPACE bar pages down. This is huge for reading docs, however I have a third party RSS feed reader that does not have this functionality and I always attempt to use it first before remembering that it doesn't exist in this app. That kind of small detail can make a huge difference to BlackBerry users.
There is a way in between: You could use J2ME-Polish and code natively in J2ME. Polish will add the look and feel of a native BlackBerry app to some extent. That has the advantage of porting your app to other J2ME phones and not be limited to BlackBerry.
I agree with Anthony, I'd go with the BlackBerry specific APIs for BlackBerry apps. J2ME is just not portable, and BlackBerry has a lot better support for their proprietary APIs.
From my experience: stick with the native BlackBerry UiApplication. It is the best for BlackBerry and provides the best user experience for BlackBerry users. You can't copy that with J2ME easily.
J2ME is simple to develop. And, BlackBerry API has many feature also you can use restricted class with simple signing. BlackBerry sells their sign certificate and it is cheap. 20$. You can use this certificate to sign and use all restricted class. In J2ME, sometimes you must use more than one certificate, even you can not use all phone capabilities. So, my suggestion is, use BlackBerry native API and some J2ME Wrapper Codes. So that, you can code easly as J2ME and can use all capabilities of BlackBerry native API.