apps Archives - Applied Information Sciences

@JohnBlumenauer

Despite the terms Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP), Inversion of Control (IoC), Dependency Injection (DI) and Service Locator existing for many years now, developers are often still confused about their meaning and use. When discussing software decoupling, many developers view the terms as interchangeable or synonymous, which is hardly the case. Aside from misunderstandings when discussing software decoupling with colleagues, this misinterpretation of terms can lead to confusion when tasked with designing and implementing a decoupled software solution. Hence, it’s important to differentiate between what is principle, pattern and technique.
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John Blumenauer

@JohnBlumenauer

Given the widespread use of the Android operating system running on today’s mobile platforms, Android development has become an excellent choice for enhancing a developer’s skill set. Fortunately for the seasoned .NET developer, learning Android development is not a huge stretch. While there are several avenues for .NET developers looking to break into the world of Android application development, currently the most popular options are made possible by utilizing any of the following technologies:

Xamarin platform
PhoneGap framework
Native Android development via Java

The Xamarin platform provides the ability for .NET developers to harness their C# knowledge, create cross-platform (iOS, Android and Windows) applications, reuse existing code and perform development within Visual Studio. The greatest advantage of utilizing the Xamarin platform is a reduced time to market while supporting multiple platforms. However, due to the additional Xamarin runtime contained within the final application, the footprint tends to be larger — this could be an issue, especially for some Android devices.

The PhoneGap framework is another option for writing Android applications. The PhoneGap framework is a client-side web application comprised of HTML5 pages using CSS and JavaScript. While it’s possible to utilize Visual Studio to code and test the application, ultimately the code will need to be packaged into a real Android application. This will require an IDE such as Eclipse or JetBrains’s IntelliJ IDEA. The PhoneGap Build service may also be used to accomplish the application packaging. While the PhoneGap approach will provide multiple platform support, the application type should be given consideration because the PhoneGap framework relies on JavaScript, which may have performance limitations compared with native Java Android applications.

While Xamarin and PhoneGap certainly have their merits for creating Android applications, native Android development via Java provides an opportunity to take advantage of a device’s full feature set with fast execution, all wrapped in a smaller package for more rapid downloads. For a complete discussion of the various mobile platforms’ benefits/drawbacks, please read Eric Svendsen’s excellent article where he provides plenty of depth on the issue. For now, the remaining content of this post will be to provide valuable insight for .NET developers looking to expand their language set by utilizing native Java for Android development. Read More…

Warren Steger

At AIS, we work with clients to help define the overall vision, scope and detailed requirements for the applications they want to build. I recently had the opportunity to work on a project where a client wanted to reach a new set of users through a Windows Store app that was based on an existing iPad app.

We had a very short timeline and limited budget to work with. That was the bad news… The good news was that we were able to use Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) — in this case the TFS 2010 version — in conjunction with Visual Studio 2012. This gave us the opportunity to leverage new PowerPoint 2013 storyboarding stencils for defining the app’s User Experience (UX), and TFS for efficiently creating and managing our product backlog. We also used Visio 2013 for visually defining the overall functional scope and high-level release plan for the app.

In this post, I’ll share how we used these tools to rapidly define the requirements for the app, and talk about some topics related to converting the iPad app information architecture to a Windows Store app information architecture. Read More…

Brent Wodicka

@bwodicka

“Utility billing” or “only pay for what you use” are often cited as cost-saving benefits of cloud computing. All that is fine and dandy, but it is still the consumer’s responsibility to turn any unneeded stuff, such as virtual machines, off. In fact, as most of you already know, turning virtual machines off is not enough. Unless you delete them, you will continue to accrue charges.

One way to make sure you don’t leave stuff running unnecessarily is to periodically check your current bill to make sure it is not out of line. Unfortunately, this means logging on to the billing portal, navigating to the page that displays the current balance etc., and doing so on a regular basis. Let’s be honest…we all know how likely that is.

Fortunately, products designed to alleviate the aforementioned challenge are beginning to be appear on the market — even though the market for cloud management tools is still fairly nascent. However, these solutions tend to be “enterprisy” (i.e. targeted towards enterprises that are running large cloud-based applications). We were looking for a simple tool that allowed us to keep an eye on the outstanding Windows Azure balance.

Enter Azure Ticker App.

Sam Larko

@SPSamL

Microsoft has been a busy company this year with refreshes on most of its biggest solutions. Not only has SharePoint gone through a massive update, but so has Windows. If you’re still unfamiliar with the changes in Windows 8, then be prepared for a shocker. In the new UI, applications have been stripped of chrome and are full-screen solutions. Windows 8 was designed with touch as a first-class input method.

SharePoint 2013 brings several new features, but the two that will empower client application development the most are the greatly expanded Client-Side Object Model (CSOM) and the REST APIs. While the maturity of these features is important for Microsoft’s push to SharePoint Online and client-side development, it also opens up complex functionality for Windows, mobile, and external web applications. Read More…

Ryan Cromwell

@cromwellryan

We recently started working on a new iOS project. As part of this adventure, I asked the team if we could build a case study around XCode and TFSPreview.com. TFSPreview, if you’re not aware, is Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server 2012 as a service, hosted in Azure.

This isn’t your normal pairing. Mac developers aren’t exactly flocking to the Microsoft stack and the Microsoft development tools haven’t exactly catered to the predominantly OSS community working on Macs. In recent years, though, that has changed. ASP.Net is now OSS, first class Azure tools ship for the Mac, even the Nodejs for Azure tutorials feature Chrome on a Mac. It’s a brave new world out there!

Starting with this post and continuing over the next few months, I’m going to be sharing some of our experiences building iOS/XCode apps on TFSPreview using the cross-platform (yes, they used Java – who are these guys?!) git-tf plugin.

BlogPosts tagged with “apps”

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