I am thinking about using Gears in a project, but I have doubts about it.
Do you think that Gears will really be (or already were) accepted by the community as the state-of-art solution for what it purposes?
Although Gears seems to be awesome, I think that the community is kind of scared to use it.
What do you think about it?
The client side storage in HTML 5 will provide an upgrade path from Gears, should Google ever decide to deprecate Gears. There's an interesting article about Google using an abstraction layer so that Gears is not required on browsers supporting HTML 5 client-side storage.
Google Gears is not a long-term solution. On February 19, 2010, Google announced that Gears is being discontinued, and that they believe the correct solution is through standards-complaint options such as HTML5.
Gears have SQL engine (SQLite), with scripting (Javascript), and good internet support.
In fact, I don't see anything like it on the market.
And there is the potential to position Gears as serious client side framework, if Google manage to push Gears on small devices (on which both SQLite and javascrpt allready work).
They don't seem to hurry. Can't tell why.
Google has invested a lot of time in it and has also integrated it into some of their web apps. I imagine its here to stay for a while but then there is always risk involved with stuff like this.
Google is about to roll out "offline GMail", which is built on Gears. Given the market share of GMail, I'd expect that to be the killer app for Gears adoption.
But it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. You might want to wait, if you can afford to, and see how offline GMail catches on.
There is always risk with any platform, but at least with this one google are eating their own dog food. I.e. It is required for gmail offline, it is the way you'll take google docs offline.
I think you're probably as safe with Gears from a continued support perspective as you are with most other frameworks. If it meets your needs as it is in its current state, it sounds like a good fit.
Related
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.
Disclaimer: I don't want to start any fight against Google Fanboys. I'm just asking because I didn't find a direct answer to my question and maybe someone who already started working with it (or any googledev) can give advice.
Google recently announced Material Design Lite 1.0 and the project has been starred over 9k times on Github in a few days. I read some posts [1, 2] comparing MDL vs Twitter Bootstrap and I don't understand why anyone outside Google's headquarters should consider start working with it.
As they said:
“We challenged ourselves to create a visual language for our users that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.” – Google Material Design Introduction
So, why are they releasing MDL? I just don't see the point on wasting time on learning/switching to a new frontend framework which offers much less than the existing ones. MDL looks different, modern and has nicer transitions. That's all? Is there any technical advantage?
The answer is, it depends on you.
Do you want Material Design at all? If so, MDL is well worth looking at. If you clearly don't want MD, then of course MDL isn't your cup of tea.
MDL is not a full framework. We aren't trying to cover every little thing you do in development. We provide Material Design components as closely as we can to the specification. You need to play around with it and see if it has what you need and whether it fits with your design goals.
The technical advantages... Depends on your wants. The component handler is a really cool way to handle modularizing your JS out. This however isn't close to the only option. There are plenty of other ways out there. So once again, you should play around and see if you like it.
Material Design Lite is very enticing for anyone building a site or application targeted at people who are in the Google-verse as it were. Speaking to Android developers/users? Chrome people? Then MDL is an enticing choice of libraries to apply to your site to make them feel at home. However, anyone else who simply wants to add Material Design to their stuff simply because they like it also would see a big benefit from MDL.
At the end of it all, MDL is a tool to help people who want MD implement it into their sites and applications. If you need to ask why you should care, then it seems MDL just isn't for you. That's fine. There is plenty of design choice out there to chose from. Just be consistent within each project you build.
I remember I did this once around 2005, but since then a lot of things have changed and don't remember details. I basically want to stream a meeting between two places. Back then I needed a video camera, a software on my computer and a streaming server.
How is live streaming done these days? Is there an easy way to arrange a live video streaming? I can't afford hiring a professional, so I need to do this myself.
Another question is that at one end of the communication, I mean at one of the places, the Internet connection is not too much reliable. Do you think live streaming would be a bad option for this kind of environment?
If you just need 1:1 there are tons of sites that will do this for free. Start with google, maybe look at tinychat (ignore the scary people), or just search for 'free video chat'.
No need to install SW or setup a special server unless you have specific requirements that go beyond what you have described.
You have to know a little about networking to be able to do live streaming this days.
Fast Internet connection is needed.
check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NG&hl=en-GB&v=Sm3DfJ2ISRc.
Hope you find it helpful. You can start from there.
I'm looking to track how many people on the web have made my software program file available for download without my permission.
I've thought of searching for my product name and file size to catch possible thieves.
Do you think a web search API is the best way forward?
EDIT: I plan to use the detection data for survey purposes.
There are web analytics companies which could probably help you more than a roll-your-own solution. Consider the companies that big music and film vendors use, or check with the Business Software Alliance.
Ultimately, you are chasing your tail if you are looking to thwart piracy with the results of this kind of activity. However, if you are steadfast that you must try to understand what is going on, you need professional (web analytic) help. There are so many variations out there that you need someone experienced in tracking this kind of information, since you could easily get a false sense of security, or an inflated sense of activity.
No. This ultimately doesn't help you. What are you going to do? Send them emails tellings them to buy your software? Sounds like a spam filter will get it.
I would suggest in prevention rather than detection. A registration or activation process is pretty popular and reasonably successful, though if you have an amazing app it won't stop the really bad people from hacking it, however it will make it much more difficult.
The recent article of steve jobs link
made me think about the future of flash. I'm learning actionscript 3.0 in my studies but is it the right decision still to go for it? I was pretty sure that I will be able to build application in as3 for iphones/ipads in the near future. It seems to me, while I would stay with flash, the market will be polarized by apple and adobe and you will always work double for both clientele, or just lose half of them.
Which decision would you take as a designer, if you were still at university and you intend to become a freelancer?
This question has been around a lot of times. For my opinion on flash's future please look at this answer: Should I Abandon Adobe Flash for HTML5 and <canvas>?
If you are a designer, you will probably actually feel good working with Adobe's Creative Suite, including Flash CS3/CS4/CS5. CS5 will be able to export HTML5 in the near future: http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash-html5-canvas-35409730 . You shouldn't be too worried. OTOH you should consider, that whatever CS5 exports is likely to perform poorer in HTML5, than on flash player.
From my perspective as a developer, I think there is no harm in learning any language, altough ActionScript 3 is relatively boring and easy to grasp. However this makes it a good language to learn programming, including many best practices. The most important things you learn as a programmer transcend languages. The more languages you try to really fully understand and exploit, the better you become by understanding the approaches they promote.
My personal advice to web developers is to have a look at Haxe. It is a much more powerful, elegant and expressive language than ActionScript and it allows you to target many platforms. Enough to build a whole web app on 'classic' platforms with only one language. Haxe's C++ backend allows building native iPhone apps using an SDL based port of the flash player API, although currently it's not very clear whether Apple's policy will allow distribution. Nonetheless it is an open source language with an enthusiastic community, that moves really fast and adapts to changes rapidly (e.g. unlike ActionScript Haxe can leverage flash player 10's alchemy opcodes for fast memory access) making you as a developer independant.
edit: I have personally dropped any plans of targetting the platform until Apple is willing to ease its very restictive policies, since I find this kind of behaviour intollerable. Nonetheless, I think Objective-C is a great and inspiring language, so you may actually wanna have a look at it.
I think that reports of the death of flash have been greatly exaggerated. Flash has always been "the bad guy" - self-proclaimed experts have always loudly declared that Flash sucks and is on its way out, but oddly enough I've never had any trouble finding lots of Flash work. There are things that you can do quickly and easily in Flash that are either much harder or flat-out impossible without it. It's an amazing tool and it's going to be in use at least in some capacity for the foreseeable future.
That said, even if Flash on the web goes the way of the dodo in two years (which won't happen) it's still a valuable tool. It's a wonderful way to learn Object Oriented Programming, and its uses go far beyond shiny websites. You can use something like Flash Builder in Eclipse to get accustomed to working in a code-oriented IDE, you can build AIR apps to deploy across platforms, you will soon be able to publish saleable apps to every major phone including the iPhone, etc. I've been having a lot of fun with it lately getting it to work with Arduino - it's just a hobby project but I'm trying to build a little helicopter that I can control from an AIR app. I'd be curious to see someone do that in HTML5. ;)
Flash is amazingly powerful - your abilities are in many respects limited only by your imagination and willingness to figure out how to make it work. It's really bizarre to read all of this stuff about how (some) browsers can now play (certain types of) video one their own, ergo Flash is Dead. How unimaginative. :)
This is a tough call. Flash is a fairly dominant technology at this point when it comes to media-intensive web sites. Flash is also very popular for delivering mini-games. I do think that Flash video, which is currently also dominant, will gradually be replaced by HTML5 technologies. I'm not so sure that Flash can be replaced easily when it comes to those media-intensive sites. There is a large number of very talented people comfortable with Flash that might be reluctant to adopt other technologies. I would probably hedge my bets and get comfortable with Javascript and other HTML5 technologies.
Apple vs. Adobe controversy reveals two opposite views of mobile computing.
Apple wants that its developers make the best of its devices by excluding middleware. The aim is to deliver the best possible user experience.
Adobe wants that its developers publish their work on as many platforms as possible. The aim is to reach the widest audience.
Nobody knows which view will win in the future. The mobile war is just beginning...
I think it depends on how far into the future you want to look, and what you think is most important. Flash on the desktop will not die for a long time, if ever. If that is good enough, keep going with where you're going. If not using flash on iPhone/iPad is a deal breaker, you only really have two choices - Objective-C or HTML5.
HTML5 is definitely gaining momentum, but it can't be used directly in all browsers yet, and likely for a while. However, in the mobile space, there is pretty excellent support in the major smart phones.
There isn't a single platform/technology/language that can hit everything. If I were going to bet money on the future, though, I would say HTML5 is going to win for the most reach across platforms. And given it is on the rise, I would bet that in the next few years, there will be a lot of demand for good developers in this area, but don't expect the path to be fully paved for you. You'll have to get your hands a little dirty. If you're looking for a decent editor, I use Netbeans, but I also do Java development, so that makes sense for me. Search around, though, and you'll probably find a decent set of tools that work well for you. It is a very active space.
As far as I'm concerned, Actionscript is a pretty good language to learn OOP. Javascript is a bit shit. Eitherway, I would expect you'd learn a certain set of (frontend/2d graphics) skills which will come in handy regardless of the vehicle you'll eventually use to deploy your work.
Personally, I like the flexscript language used by Flash, it's more structured and object oriented than Javascript. Also it has real inheritance, not the prototype based crap, and compiles to bytecode. For the artist, Flash is easier to use in many ways due to the available tools.
I do hope for better integration into browsers. The current flash plugin is clunky and causes crashes for many users, also the plugin system makes it integrate badly into the flow of pages.
With HTML5, I think the browser plugin idiom is dying in general. Everything from video playback to fancy vector animations can be done with just HTML + Javascript. Even a standard for 3D graphics in webpages is on the way (O3D).
Also I wonder how Adobe will cope with the current explosion of platforms/operating sytems/browsers, especially in the mobile realm. At the moment, the Flash support for systems except for Windows on PC isn't much good.
Just as projects like SVGWeb brings SVG capabilities to browsers that don't have native SVG, I would expect that if/when HTML5 gains traction against Flash there will be conversion capabilities from existing Flash to browsers without Flash. In fact, Adobe already has a conversion from Flash to iPhone using Flash Professional CS5. IMHO, there's too much Flash content in the wild for this not to happen eventually, and there are too many people for which Actionscript is their primary (or only) language for some conversion not to happen.
Career-wise, the clear long-term trend is away from Flash, and I agree with Tom that hedging your bets is wise. However, HTML5 is still fairly new, and you might do yourself a disservice to ignore Flash at this point. With conversion technologies, a Flash skillset will likely be usable for at least several years.