Android 101, Developing For Android, Think Like a Web Designer

Android UI Development http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

I read a great article today on Android Developer blog, "Thinking like a web designer" by Roman Nunik and others. It is one of the beset Android or otherwise developer article I read in a while.
Basically honing your familiarity with web UI development, specially the new HTML5 techniques can take you a long way in Android UI development.
We actually do our initial development and layouts using HTML5, aka web app route and then proceed to the actual app development.
It makes a great sense as we develop our Android apps for others (vertical markets) and it is easier to make changes that get requested along during the design phase.

"Web developers have a number of different tools for frontend layout and styling at their disposal, and there are analogues for almost all of these in the world of Android UI engineering. If you’re wondering about analogues to other web- or CSS-isms, start a conversation out there in the Android community; you’ll find you’re not alone"

But the article goes very deep into Android UI development and I suggest you follow the link below save the article on to your Android Tablet, to have it near when you need it, like I did.

Android Developers Blog: Thinking Like a Web Designer

Financial Times App Gone From Apple Store! Available As An HTML5 Web App

Financial Times App Gone From Apple iTunes Store! http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

One of the few publishers to stand up to Apple, and not give 30% Apple Tax, has met with the Apple wreath! The Financial Times App is now gone from the Apple iTunes store. Apple did the Apple tax dance and changed the steps a few times. It was originally, a 30% cut of sales for content sold within apps (and that this content had to be available for purchase at the same or a lower price outside of the app) and then backtracked on it all in June. The price differential requirement is gone from the rules but any content available for purchase within an app is still subject to Apple’s 30% Tax and developers can’t provide links within the app to external stores where content can be purchased.

We think FT, Financial Times knew the outcome ahead of time and prepared for it as we published earlier in "Financial Times Bypasses 30% Apple Tax, Publishes Own HTML5 Web App For Tablets And Smartphones!"

Well unless Apple control what you can browse and read on the web, Financial Times could still be had by anyone who reads it, an HTML5 web app, we don't, we have our WSJ. But, way to go FT! Kudos.

LinkedIn, New LinkedIn Mobile Apps And Mobile Site (HTML5), First Steps In New Mobile Stratergy.

LinkedIn, New Mobile Apps And Mobile Site (HTML5), http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/



With LinkedIn Mobile growth approaching 400% year-over-year with the number of users, LinkedIn has launched the new mobile initiative with vigor. Given the popularity, LinkedIn’s mobile apps needed a face and body lift reflect a better user experience of the growing mobile user base. The company has released new iPhone and Android applications. These Apps have improvements in about four areas—Updates, Inbox, your profile, and groups. You could search for and access updates, your inbox, profile and connections from the previous versions of the iPhone and Android app, but the ability to browser and interact with your groups and add connections through LinkedIn’s ‘people you may know’ feature is new;

• Updates: View updates from your network and top news from LinkedIn Today
• Inbox: You can view your invitations and messages in one place
• You: Access your profile, connections, share updates, and even more in the future
• Groups & More: Browse and interact with your groups, as well as build your network through our People You May Know feature

You can get the respective apps below;

Get the iPhone app now | Get the Android app now

LinkedIn Blog

Box.net Relies On HTML5 For Mobile Web Service; Also Launches PlayBook And Android Tablet Apps

Box PlayBook And Android Tablet Apps http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Making it easier for everyone to share and store files in the cloud, Box (Boxnet) on Thursday updated their Android app to include tablet support, abd have added a new app for RIM's PlayBook, and revised its mobile website with HTML5 features. Box, an enterprise-oriented cloud storage and sharing service, says that in the first seven months of 2011, it has seen an increase in mobile customer implementations of more than 600% compared to all of 2010

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Aug 11, 2011) - Box today launched three new mobile solutions, with Box for Android Tablet, Box for PlayBook, and an all-new HTML5 compatible mobile browser. Due to escalating mobile adoption in the enterprise, Box has already seen an increase of over six hundred percent in mobile customer implementations within the first seven months of 2011 compared to all of 2010. Box's new solutions answer growing demand for multi-platform support, and reinforce the company's mission to make it easy for today's mobile workers to access and share content from anywhere, on any device.

"Enterprises that are embracing mobility are also having to embrace platform diversity, as employees want to have access to tools and content from the devices of their choice," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. "The future of enterprise mobility won't be owned by any one platform, and we're investing aggressively to deliver an unparalleled experience across all devices in a way that platform-committed vendors like Microsoft fundamentally cannot."

According to the August 2011 report by Forrester Research Inc., "The Forrester Wave™: Mobile Collaboration, Q3 2011," in which Box was named a leading mobile collaboration vendor, "We now live and always will live in a multi-device world, where companies and consumers choose different smartphone and tablet platforms and expect to get apps on all of them. This means that companies need vendors that already support the most important mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and RIM, as well as Windows and Macintosh computers and the common browsers."

Today's announcement includes Box for Android tablet and Box for PlayBook, both providing simple and secure collaboration and content sharing for Honeycomb and RIM platforms. These new mobile offerings join Box's apps for iPad and TouchPad, rounding out the company's tablet app lineup. Additionally, to ensure that every user has an unparalleled Box experience on any device, Box launched a rebuilt version of m.box.net, its mobile web offering. The new m.box.net site leverages HTML5 features to enable users to easily view files and folders as well as directly add comments, share new content and search throughout their entire account quickly on any device.

Companies such as Pandora, TaylorMade, Clear Channel and Six Flags are successfully building collaborative mobile workforces and realizing the benefits of Box's mobile solution. To date, downloads of Box's native apps total approximately 400,000 for iOS and 100,000 for Android.

To learn more about Box for Android, Box for PlayBook or m.box.net, please visit www.box.net/features/mobile or join our upcoming customer conference at www.box.net/boxworks.

To read about Box's placement in The Forrester Wave™ report, please visit www.box.net/forresterwave.

HTML5 Flash, Mobile Showdown (GuiMark 3)

Guimark3 Mobile Video http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
With all the talk about HTML5 video being better than flash (It is!) GUI expert Sean Christmann has done a full range of tests, and yes HTML5 wins!
The extensive suit of benchmark tests were conducted utilizing a range of mobile devices, Phones and tablets. The Phones included iPhone 4, Atrix, Desire HD, Nexus One and Droid X. On the tablet fronts Sean tested HTML5 and Flash Video on Playbook, Galaxy Tab, Xoom and iPad2. Of course iDevices did not play flash!
Sean has gone through thoroughly testing each device and frame drops when a video is played on the device which he describes as cumbersome. It is cumbersome because Sean first encoded a source video with four different encoding settings, 360p, 480p, 720p and 720p hIgh to represent the videos available on public sources like YouTube. Then he embedded the number of each and every frame in the test videos. I am sure that would have been painfull but that is the love of true tester, a way to find perfection. When the videos were palyed back on devices, Sean recorded the playback with a high-speed camera, so he could examine the recordings and measure how many frames each device had dropped during the playback. Sean deserves great credit, just for the procedure.
He has also released the source code and runnable tests if you decided to verify the facts. He has documented the process and the results also in a very professional manner, follow the link after the jump!

	HTML5				Flash
	360p	480p	720p	720p High	360p	480p	720p	720p High
Phones
Droid X	100%	100%	99%	69%	100%	100%	6%	9%
Nexus One	100%	100%	99%	wont play	100%	100%	7%	11%
Desire HD	100%	100%	100%	99%	99%	72%	7%	10%
Atrix	100%	100%	100%	wont play	100%	100%	100%	34%
iPhone 4	100%	100%	100%	99%
Tablets
PlayBook	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	98%
Galaxy Tab	100%	100%	100%	100%	99%	64%	8%	9%
Xoom	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	97%
iPad 2	100%	100%	100%	100%
Numbers In Percentage of Frames Played

Sean Christmann's GuiMark 3

How Google Docs Plan To Take You Into The Future!

Google Docs Future! http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Some members of the Google Docs Team, went on Reddit and announced that they will be taking questions, about anything on Google Docs and even their lunch. So Rdditians complied and asked questions.
The first question was one I wanted to ask;
"When will we finally have offline, and why did it take so long? It's OK, we won't judge you, we just want to know!"
And the answer was relieving too as we all know, gears did not take Google Docs, offline.
"You're going to see offline start to roll out later this summer. We used to have offline with Google Gears, but it became pretty clear that plugins weren't the right approach. We've been reimplementing offline using HTML5 standards like AppCache, File API, and IndexDB.

We're some of the first webapps that are really putting those standards to the test, so it's taken a while to iron out the kinks."
Among 100s of questions, suggestions and of course answers which mostly centered on Mobile aspects. There were questions on security and reliability of documents on Google docs that received answers like this;
"Document data is stored in a storage system built on top of Bigtable. Storage is distributed across many machines and geographic locations, and all access to the underlying storage is tightly controlled and audited in compliance with SAS70.
For more details, I’ll refer you to this set of FAQs.
The ratio of the people in this AMA does not at all reflect the ratio of our whole team. We have lots more engineers than managers, we just wanted the rest of the devs to stay undistracted and keep working :) (That implies that I’m the least productive engineer, the one they could most afford to lose for half a day."

We will be seeing changes to mobile world of Google Docs and what I liked was the Android version getting native editor, I sure many will welcome that over the current web based editor.

Reddit Discussion

Financial Times Bypasses 30% Apple Tax, Publishes Own HTML5 Web App For Tablets And Smartphones!

Financial Times Bypasses 30% Apple Toll Gate http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Looks like not everyone wants to pay Apple 30% to publish content on iTunes. We all knew it is possible to bypass iTunes and publish content but I guess either big boys are scared or ignorant.
Financial Times, FT has bypassed the norm and has launched the HTML5 Web App that works across all platforms that support HTML5, which means most of the major mobile platforms today. But Financial Times admit that the app has been optimized for iPhone and iPad, for now. But Android and Blackberry readiness is not far away. FT also mentions that it is far easier this way than making a few different Native Apps.
Despite the difficulties in developing HTML5 apps due to the technology being new and the lack of documentation and tool, industry pundits say that the app was well developed and is as good as the native app. But the difference is FT is able to drive customers to the web app by advertising and other means and be able to track the conversations. Which is impossible with the apps on Apple store.
Not having to pay Apple Tax was not mentioned but you can read it in the following statement;
“The FT Web App offers our customers flexibility and freedom of choice with access to our global journalism anytime, anywhere, with a single login or subscription. In a world of increasingly digital complexity we want to keep our service simple, easy to use and efficient to offer our customers the best possible experience of FT journalism.”
The app seems to have been well thought out and features like offline access, auto update of the app is able to access information generated, just for the tablets.
Future upgrade, "Clippings" service will allow users to read articles later, either on the mobile device or desktop PC.
Accessing content is free up to ten articles per month if one registers.
Apple's Publisher tax will kick in soon alongside the requirement that subscribers sign in through Apple store!
FT via Techcrunch

Twitter Releases A HTML5 Based Twitter For Mobile Browsers,

Twitter For Mobile Browsers, http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
While it is only available for some Android and iDevice users, Twitter has released a HTML5 based client for Mobile browsers, another Mobile Twitter. Those who have tested, like Om Malik, swear by it as being wonderful.
According to Om Malik, it is fast, it is similar to the desktop version of the Twitter client and allows on to indulge in daily doze of twittering.

Twitter had this to say about the app;

"The app is fast – you can quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs and compose Tweets. It’s rich – it takes advantage of capabilities that high-end device browsers offer, such as touch gestures and a large screen. And it’s simple – it’s easy-to-use and has the features you’d expect from a Twitter application, including your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists, and more."

Twitter via GigaOM

Flash Sucks So Go Away, Steve Jobs.

Flash Sucks http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
While preaching to us about open systems and standards from his not so open Apple arena, Steve Jobs has reiterated why Flash Sucks.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

He also seem to have forgotton what sold his precious Apple Macs before iPhone came along. Most of the people who ran Adobe Apps, wanted to run them on Apples!
Anyway Jobs has some points regarding Flash, like it being a resource hog. I cringe when I see flash based web sites. I usually avoid sites full of flash, unless I really have to. Like at work, we port some of our reports presentation to flash, to make them look good while being dynamic. Yes we are working on HTML5 and those reports now!

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

But I am sure those could be over come and otherwise flash on Android FroYo will be dead horse from get go. The difference I can see is that Android will run HTML5 and Flash, iStuff will only have HTML5.
Jobs why all those negativity? is it because Adobe is too close to Google Now? 
You can read Jobs rant at Apple.

iPhone And Palm WebOS Gets Google Voice.

Google Voice comes to iPhone and Palm WebOS snapvoip.blogspot.com
We all know the saga of Google Voice App for iPhone which is yet to be approved was replaced with a web based solution, while we wait! (Apple testers must be asleep, shame on you Apple and AT&T)
Android and BlackBerry users are already enjoying the Google Voice App. I have it on my Google Phone and I am yet to place it on my blackberry.
But I am happy with the Google Voice webapp for the iPhone which is available from m.google.com/voice. The webapp is also availble for Palm Phones with WebOS, Nokia S60 and WinMo and others from the same address.
HTML5 app is fast and features like AppCache lets you interact with web apps without a network connection and local databases allow you to store data locally on the device.

You get one number for all your calls and Free SMS messages (Yes Free) and you get voicemail transcription, a lovely feature for those who yse a phone, any phone.
The free text messages is the way to beat those high priced testing from all the careers I know.
You can also make interbnational calls for lower cost and you can check out all these features on the Google Voice mobile site