Articles filed in category 'Mobile Development'

If you ever thought you’d like to develop the Next Big Thing, you’ll need Q’s advice about how to get started and what to do before you start writing code.

You can avoid all that pesky overhead when dealing with multiple platforms by using Microsoft’s library of APIs, Xamarin.Forms. Wei-Meng shows you how to efficiently map to the various platforms’ respective native UI elements at run time.

The Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) presents a new opportunity for existing applications to extend their potential audience. Microsoft® Windows® desktop applications can mobilize onto the UMPC platform, providing users with desktop functionality while on the move. Windows Mobile™ device applications can take advantage of the larger screen size and storage space of the UMPC to extend the application capabilities.

You can sell your app with creative marketing, but you’ve got to do something more to get customers to not only open your app but use it, too. Jason takes a look at onboarding techniques.

These days, your code really must work across all of the various platforms. Unless you plan to learn a lot of languages, you’ll want to apply Nic’s tips for using NativeScript.

When I was asked to write a few pages on what's coming in the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (code named Whidbey), the biggest issue I had was how to limit this article to a few pages.I opted to list a few categories and drill down into each. I'm not going to cover everything, just some key items in each area. Please note that not all of these changes are implemented in the PDC build that attendees are receiving, and that some of these features are still in... the planning stages. That said, here are the categories that I'd like to discuss:See More

It didn’t take long after the introduction of Windows Runtime (WinRT, the set of APIs that allow Windows Store apps to communicate with the Windows 8 operating system), for Microsoft to unveil the next generation of its mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8, which conveniently includes some of the APIs coming directly from WinRT. It’s easy to imagine the APIs merging together at some point, as that would make writing applications for on-the-go devices such as tablets ...and mobile phones much easier.See More

Mastery of mobile platforms makes you a better developer and can really give you more job opportunities. But let’s face it: The list of mobile platforms that offer more healthy prospects doesn’t yet include Windows Phone and Windows 8. Your outlook is just plain better if you can code for iOS or Android.

There’s no longer a simple answer to what sort of device your page will be viewed upon. Walt examines the options and shows you how to make sure that yours will look great on anything, old or new.

Ink is a first-class citizen in the next generation of Microsoft® Windows® user interfaces.Microsoft built ink functionality into all versions of the Microsoft Windows Vista™ operating system, and the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) makes it easy to ink-enable your applications. Even using ink over moving video is easy in WPF!

CoDe Focus Mobile Editorial by Markus Egger

The Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) expands the market for PC games that run on Microsoft® Windows® XP, as long as developers consider certain design requirements to ensure a good user experience. In most cases, a single version of games can span both the UMPC and traditional PC platforms.

Jason explores TestFlight, a new tool for testing your iOS apps. It has some nifty notification tools, which make it easier to have a lot of testers—or just a few, depending on what your product needs. Check out what else it has going for it.

Remember just a few years ago when we were all excited to get touch technology on our phones, laptops, and tablets? The Next Big Thing is here, and Jason shows us how to develop for the Apple Watch.

The modern web ecosystem is made up of many different types of scenarios of how users interact with online content. With the increasing popularity of mobile devices along with countless hours at Starbucks and on airplanes, users may often find themselves in a position of wanting to use web content while not being able to enjoy reliable and continual access to the Internet.

In this article, you will create a CODE Framework RESTful service and an iPhone application from scratch. For the client side, you will utilize XCode (yes, you’ll need a Mac!), which uses Objective-C as the primary language. This article won’t teach you the language; you need to know the basics of Objective-C. Even if you don’t know anything about it but want to code right away, read the article “Building a Twitter Search Client on iOS,” by Ben Scherman, available for al...l CODE readers in the Xiine application for Windows, Android, and iPhone. For the database, you’ll use any instance of SQL Server 2008. The service will be written in C#, using the latest version of CODE Framework, available on http://codeframework.codeplex.com, where you will find not only the download link, but also a lot of useful information.See More

Take a look at third-party applications and code before sitting down to develop because the tools you need to build your masterpiece might already be available. Jason shows us some clever shortcuts as he builds a weather app.

From users to developers, mobile applications used to be (not so long ago) uninteresting. Complicated flows, non-intuitive screens and limited features available used to discourage anyone. PDAs had a poor user interface with limited colors (the first ones were only black and white). It was very complicated and boring to write any code for it. Cell phones used to be a device where you could make and receive phone calls. Eventually you could play some games. But you know w...hat? Even the games were boring most of the time! See More

This article will cover building a simple Twitter client that allows users to search for tweets, save those search terms, and recall them at any time. The sample in this article will use Xcode 4 and the iPhone SDK 4.3. All examples are in Objective-C. You can find the code for this article at http://github.com/subdigital/code-mag-twitter-searcher. I encourage you to download the code to help out if you get stuck.

In this article, we take a look at what’s involved with building a simple Twitter Search client for Windows Phone. We will cover what tools you need, where to download them, how to design, build and test the app and finally, how to publish it to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Markus Egger discusses mobile development and mobile devices.

Although some of us write code for the pure joy of it, Dino invites us to think about mobility and the cloud to make apps reflect the world we live in.

In the Fall of 2002, Microsoft introduced Tablet PCs based on the popular Windows XP operating system.By default, this new platform includes applications with special Tablet PC features enabled, such as Ink Input and Pen-based operation. In order for this platform to become truly popular, third-party vendors will also have to ink-enable their applications. Luckily, this is a pretty straightforward task.

Chris shows us how to make sure that your app is not only cross-platform, but international and global as well.

Using Flutter, Google’s latest cross-platform framework for developing iOS and Android apps, Wei-Meng shows you how easy developing mobile-apps can be.

In all but the simplest applications, data is stored in a central location and accessed over a network.However, in many scenarios, distributed applications can not assume a certain kind of network connection, both in terms of performance and reliability. In scenarios where users access their applications on mobile PCs, network connections may not be available at all. This introduces relatively complex data access scenarios with which modern applications need to cope.

You’ve probably heard about Facebook’s new JavaScript library, React. Milton shows you how it works and encourages you to consider using it on your next project.

In Apple’s new releases, there are a ton of new features to play with—even the AppStore has changed. Jason shows you how all of this impacts your development chores.

Wei-Meng gives us a step-by-step guide to making seamless cross-platform mobile apps with Xamarin.

Vassili extends his own custom scripting language for mobile development and makes creating and placing widgets fast and easy.

Harkening to Dick Tracy comics, the new “smart” watch creates new opportunities for creative development. Wei-Meng introduces us to the coolest new mobile app-development platform with an exploration of what the Pebble is capable of already and some interesting things to think about for building your own apps.

Growing up in the 80s, two of the concepts that drew me in to computer science were computers that were small enough to take with you (called “Luggables” then) and displays that were thin enough to hang on a wall.Technology has come a long way in that time-and the Ultra-Mobile class of personal computers that run the Windows Vista™ operating system is a great example of that progress. So what is a UMPC and why would I be interested in writing an application that is optimized for it?

Markus Egger talks about TabletPC development.

Pocket PC devices, such as the Compaq iPaq, present both an opportunity and a challenge for software developers.While there are many standard applications available, what tools can you use to develop custom applications? Don't despair, because the Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools Development Kit will get you off to a great start.

The Tablet PC SDK makes it easy to incorporate digital ink and handwriting analysis into applications; and now the InkAnalysis API (available in Windows Vista™ as well as downlevel to the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system through a redistributable) takes it one step further.Actually, the InkAnalysis API exposes some of the lower-level functions that make handwriting recognition possible. It also exposes some functionality that can improve recognition results, suppo...rt shapes, alternative recognition results, and spatial analysis. In this article, I will take a deeper look into what goes on behind the scenes and how to take advantage of the tablet team’s hard work.See More

You have decided to take the plunge and create a Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system-aware application. This decision comes with a new set of requirements when it comes to enabling Tablet PC-specific features and deployment of your application. This article will take you through the process of creating a Tablet PC-aware application and deploying it in the enterprise.

As part of his series, Walt dives deeply into Xamarin.Forms and roots around in the details of the object model.

Paul teaches us how to use Bootstrap’s accordion features to make easily mobile-adaptable navigation panels.

If you need access to native platforms, you’re going to want to see what Ryan has to say about Xamarin.Forms. He’ll show you that migration isn’t the pain you thought it might be.

In today’s world of fast food, fast cars, and instant gratification, people expect to be in touch at all times.We have become conditioned to staying in touch with businesses, friends, and families. Because of this desire for instant data, we have the Internet, cell phones, Wi-Fi, MP3 players, and DVD players. As the equipment needed to drive this thirst has become smaller and smaller, we find ourselves looking for portable replacements for our bulky desktop computers.

We all know that applications have evolved, and not just towards Web deployment, .NET Framework development, and mash-up functionality.

Have you been struggling with sluggish apps? Perhaps all that’s needed is a little tightening of the code. Mohammad makes your apps lean and mean again with a simple ToDo example.

Using Firebase Cloud Messaging, Wei-Meng shows you how to enable PWA push notifications as if they were native code, and how to host your REST API as a serverless app.

In the past year, new technologies from Microsoft have changed how we can add ink to Web sites and the change is definitely for the better!

While creating a simple little mobile game app, Jason shows us the power of Game Center’s tools.

You’ve made your website pretty spiffy, but the one thing it’s missing is the one thing that makes social media platforms so hard to compete with. Add sound and video to your content by making it YouTube-capable. Jason shows you how!

Tablet PC and Mobile PC development is very popular today, and it will get more popular and important in the future.For Mobile PC developers, there are significant changes coming in the near future, some in the Windows XP timeframe, others in Windows Vista. This article provides an overview over what’s on the drawing board or already available in technology preview builds.

The article "Introduction to Cloud Firestore" by Wei-Meng Lee introduces developers to the Cloud Firestore service from Google. The author explains how Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database that allows developers to store data on the cloud and keep clients synchronized through real-time listeners. Lee provides step-by-step instructions on setting up Cloud Firestore in a React Native application, as well as demonstrating how to add, retrieve, update, and delete doc...uments in the database. The article serves as a beginner's guide to getting started with Cloud Firestore and highlights its benefits for building responsive apps that can work online and offline.See More

As the bedrock to the web, HTML has evolved in many ways from its birth in 1991. While the markup language has had its share of ups and downs, the advent of what’s being called “HTML5” is a welcome and much anticipated addition of new semantic capabilities and valuable APIs.

Kotlin is now the preferred language for Android developers. Are you ready to make the switch? Wei-Meng shows you how.

Whether you’re familiar with programming in Objective-C or not, you’ll learn something interesting as Mohammad takes a look at the new high-level Swift programming language for the iOS framework.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the new Swift language that’s taken the iOS/OSX community by storm. Learn some of Swift’s basic features as Mohammad explores what’s new in this second release.

If you are familiar with development on PCs using Microsoft’s tools, you know most of what you need to develop for Tablet PCs.The main addition in the Tablet PC development arena is that of Digital Ink and the features that go along with it, such as Ink collection, Ink management, and Ink recognition. There are also a few minor additional things, such as new user interface considerations and screen operation in portrait mode.

I think we’re making progress toward the goal of bending computers to conform to human factors rather than bending my human factors to conform to the way computers accept input.Ultimately, our brains will be plugged directly into “the grid,” but until then, users still have to learn how to type, control a mouse, and press buttons in certain sequences. The arrival of the Windows Vista™ operating system with Microsoft® Windows® Tablet and Touch Technology is another step t...oward really natural computing.See More

Today's world is about information. People want it wherever they are, in front of a television, at a PC, in a board meeting, or waiting for a bus.The Internet is great on your PC, but when you want your data on the go, lugging a Pentium PC around in your coat pocket just isn't going to cut it. Enter the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), a way to get data to mobile wireless devices.

John starts his new series on JavaScript with a list of interesting problems and solutions.

The sometimes connected nature of computers means that we need to build software to work smoothly as networks connect and disconnect.This article shows how you can build network-aware software using the Network Location Awareness APIs.

These days, you can’t build your apps for only one platform, which could mean multiple dev teams and keeping track of parallel projects. Jason shows us how to use React Native to get the best mobile development without breaking the bank or going crazy.

In this first installment of his new series, Sahil begins writing an end-to-end mobile infrastructure using some familiar tools.

Sahil continues his interesting series by writing a fronted to the Mobile app he wrote the backend for in the November/December 2014 issue.

Windows or Web? A question you've asked and have been asked countless numbers of times for the past five years.And yet, when it comes to the mobile field and building business applications for smart devices, many are surprised when they realize the same question needs to be answered. The question is slightly dissimilar but the answers are entirely different. "Windows CE or Mobile Web?" you might ask. As for the answer, the .NET world can steer you in two very opposite di...rections: .NET Compact Framework or ASP.NET Mobile Controls.See More

Mobility is one of those fields which everybody knows is a definite part of our future, in 5 to 10 years or so. Think again.Amber steps out of her client's office, enters her car, pulls out her mobile phone and dials the number to her main office. She's calling Martin?her internal sales representative to inform him that she finally closed a deal with her client. She needs him to place an internal order at the warehouse. There are many items on that order, including 500 u...nits of product X, configuration A. After a quick query in the central inventory management system, Martin informs her that there are only 250 units left of that configuration, but there are more than plenty for her order if the client would be willing to switch to configuration B. Amber now needs to call her client back and save the deal. The client will be very disappointed, the whole thing will have to be negotiated over the phone, and Amber will probably have to cut her margins or else she'll lose everything.See More

Walt continues his series of articles on Xamarin, this time, exploring the nature of pages. You’ll learn what a page is, how to navigate among them, how to create sub-pages, and strategies for loading data onto pages.

If you’ve been paying attention to programming trends, you’ll see that Swift, Apple’s new language, is gaining popularity at an impressive rate. You don’t have to toss out everything you already know, though, as Jason helps you see Swift’s similarities to Objective-C.

Bilal continues showing us just how interesting, useful, and easy it is to integrate Nest.js with TypeORM. You’ll get to replace mock data from the first article with real data this time, too.

Developing applications for the Palm OS may seem like a daunting task to a VB developer.The traditional Palm SDK requires at least moderate knowledge of the C programming language and has a substantial learning curve. Further complicating the situation are the memory management requirements of the Palm OS and its specific API references. Now, in version 3.5, MobileVB is a well thought-out add-in for VB6 that alleviates the drawn-out development process and makes Palm OS ...programming a viable option for even novice VB programmers. Enhancing development effectiveness, MobileVB allows VB programmers to take advantage of existing skills without the need to learn a new programming language or another IDE.See More

It seems like only yesterday that Facebook acquired Parse so that developers could focus more on the frontend than the backend of their apps. In January 2017, they’re shutting Parse down. Jason tells us what our options are.

Digital content is becoming more popular. E-book readers encourage people that like to read, to read even more because they can take all of their books on one lightweight gadget. Even though I still love hard copies of a book (you don’t need power to read it), I have had very good experiences with several digital readers.

It’s the responsibility of the developer to ensure the best user experience for the increasing number of mobile PCs being bought and used.Every activity your application carries out can affect the power consumption of any computer. This article will help you understand the critical role your software can play in helping increase battery life and provide some places for you to get started.

Microsoft has recently launched the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform for Pocket PCs and Smartphones. With the proliferation of Windows Mobile-based devices in the marketplace, companies are gradually mobilizing their enterprising applications to let their staff gain the competitive mobile advantage.

With all the new things on the market, it’s hard to keep a user’s attention where it belongs: on your app. Jason explores the push-notification aspects of One Signal to help you keep your app in the forefront.

Providing access to information on your PC without having to boot the PC is one of the goals of Windows SideShow™.Windows SideShow device technology consists of a separate screen, CPU, and memory that you can use to view this information. The devices range from displays on the back of laptop lids to remote controls to credit-card sized screens you can put in your pocket. This article will explain how your applications can provide information on a Windows SideShow device.

Jason shows us how to keep the development team focused on developing while creating built-in post-launch features that keep your users happy too. It’s not magic, it’s Intercom.io.

Most applications will require some form of text input. By using the ITextInputPanel API you can optimize the pen text-input experience on Tablet PCs.If you have ever used a Tablet PC, you have most likely used Tablet PC Input Panel. Input Panel is the handwriting input tool that lies on top of your application so that you can insert handwritten text into any non-ink enabled Microsoft® Windows® control. Using Input Panel programmability is a great way to ensure that Inpu...t Panel provides the best possible pen input user experience in your application.See More

Rod Paddock - Editorial for Tablet PC 2006

What if, as a developer, you could focus all of your efforts on building a robust front-end experience and not have to worry about constructing a complex backend infrastructure? Jason shows us how to do just that with Parse.

When Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition appeared in 2002, developers were sometimes confused about whether to write code on a Tablet PC or if it were possible to develop Tablet PC applications on existing desktop computers.The solution turned out to be fairly straightforward, if less than intuitive. However, with the addition of Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs), multiple releases of the Tablet and Touch Technology API, and now the Windows Vista™ operating system, this ques...tion arises again: What do you need to do to set up your developer environment and create applications for these form factors?See More

Want a great way to tell prospective customers or conference attendees that you’re open for business? Wei-Meng explains how iBeacons work, tells you how to build one, and shows you many clever uses for iOS and Android mobile devices.

Before any upgrade development begins, you need to know how users interact with your app. Jason explores one great tool, Mixpanel, and shows how to get the data you need.

Windows SideShow enables users to use PCs even when they are turned off.SideShow allows users to remotely control PCs and servers. It allows PCs to create interactive output on devices other than monitors so users can view useful data stored on their PCs when they are away from it. It enables users to interact with their PCs in scenarios that would previously have been very cumbersome, and allows for the creation of secondary display and interaction devices that would pr...eviously have been cost-prohibitive.See More

Welcome to our second CoDe Focus issue on mobile PC development.

Have you ever found a great app idea but struggled to use it? Q explains some basic steps you can follow to be sure that your creation doesn’t get put in the pile of unused apps.

As readers of this magazine, you are all experts at certain facets of software development, be it for the desktop, the web, SQL Server and now mobile platforms. Mobile programming was a fairly arcane development arena up until the recent announcement of Windows Phone 7 (WP7). Prior to WP7, you had to become intimately familiar with the myriad platforms and form factors available and write your programs to each of those phones. With the advent of WP7, Microsoft is now con...trolling the hardware capabilities of the phone making it much easier to develop for these platforms. You can now also leverage existing skills in Silverlight and XNA to write your apps. But the question always remains: how do I get started and what is the best way to write for the new WP7? In a previous article, <i>CODE Magazine </i>Jan/Feb 2011, I showed you what to do to get started; now I want to show you the best way to apply what you have learned in that article. I will use Silverlight, the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, and Silverlight Unit testing to build a sample app.See More

“Why should I upgrade to Windows Vista™?” is the single most-asked question I get at work these days. Curiosity is driving a lot of folks towards this latest and greatest operating system from Microsoft. What’s new? What does it do? What’s in it for me? Everyone wants to know what’s so special about it and if it is worth it. “How much time do you have right now?” is usually my first reply, closely followed by, “Do you have a laptop?”

Smart phones are constantly evolving to fit your mobile lifestyle. Most modern phones function as full featured music and video players. Windows Phone 7 follows the path blazed by other smart phones, but adds its own twist. Your musical life on this device revolves around the Music + Videos hub. This article contains details on how to interact with the Music hub from your application.

Developing for Windows Phone is easy if you have been doing any XAML at all. That’s because you use Silverlight for Windows Phone development.

In Part 1 of this article you learned how to work with orientation changes on the Windows Phone and how to create horizontally scrolling pages using Panorama and Pivot pages. In Part 2 you’ll see how to interact with some of the built-in applications on the phone through the use of the Launcher and Chooser applications.

Xamarin has a new version of their Cross-Platform Mobile Development tool out, and Jason takes you on a tour of all the great new features.

In the next article of his series on Xamarin, Walt takes a look at the all-important UI and how to make it work best for the development process and the user.

These days, you can’t target only one platform with your innovative apps. They have to look good on many types of devices and operating systems. Sahil looks at how Xamarin and Cordova translate into native apps and how you can use a combination to build even more versatile systems than ever before.