Mobile Dev + Test 2017 - Mobile Development
Thursday, April 27
UI Framework Prototyping with Playgrounds for iOS Apps
Frameworks are a powerful tool for sharing code between applications and extensions. Playgrounds are an awesome tool for quickly trying out code in Swift. Keeping a tight feedback loop with designers can be difficult. So, how can you combine the powerful and the awesome to help keep your feedback loop with design as tight as possible? Use UI Frameworks in Playgrounds! Learn how to build a UI-only framework, and then use it in a Playground. See how you can tempt your designers to the dark side of installing Xcode and tweaking values themselves. Ellen Shapiro discusses how she used this...
Threads, Queues, and More: Async Programming in iOS
PreviewTo keep your iOS app running butter-smooth at 60 frames per second, Apple recommends doing as many tasks as possible asynchronously or “off the main thread.” Joe Keeley introduces you to some basic concepts of asynchronous programming in iOS. He discusses what threads and queues are, how they are related, and the special significance of the main queue to iOS. Look at what options are available in the iOS SDK to work asynchronously, including NSOperationQueues and Grand Central Dispatch. Take an in depth look at how to implement some common use cases for those options in Swift. Joe pays...
Tricks and Tips for Adding Localization Features to Your Mobile Apps
PreviewThe fact that 60 percent of all iPhone users worldwide are non-native English speakers is just one reason for supporting people from many countries and regions in your apps. Even if multi-language applications are not called for, localization features for single language apps will improve usability and acceptance from users across many cultures and geographic areas. Using an English-only iOS application from Nordstrom as an example, Shawn Larson shows you how with little effort you can add international support to your applications. He walks you through implementing code to take...
Gradle for Android Developers
The new build mechanism replacing Ant for Android development is based on Gradle, the popular build tool from the Groovy ecosystem. Ken Kousen introduces you to Gradle for Android developers and shows how easy it is to integrate Gradle into Android projects. See the latest version of the Android Studio IDE to develop applications. Join Ken to discuss using the Android plugin for Gradle; adding dependencies and alternate repositories; creating custom tasks; implementing both unit and integration tests; using alternative build types, product flavors, and variants; and more. Leave with an...
Friday, April 28
A Taste of ES6 JavaScript: The Language and the Tools
Curious about the features and benefits of JavaScript ES6, a,k.a ECMAScript 6 2015? Want to use it today? Rob Richardson says JavaScript has come of age, and it’s time for enterprise developers to embrace it. The latest version of ES6 adds lots of syntactical sugar to make code clearer. Rob covers new features such as constants, extended parameter handling, template literals, object matching, enhanced object properties, generators, and more. The good new is that you can use these tools in ES5 browsers today by leveraging a code bundler and transpiler. Rob takes a look at the new syntax...
Faster Native Application Development with Ionic2
Let's be honest … developing for mobile can be taxing on both you and your company. Hiring Android, iOS, and other developers to write the same code for multiple platforms is expensive and can be a development nightmare. Greg Avola walks you through mobile cross-platform development using an open source framework called Ionic2. Ionic2 supports building highly interactive native and progressive web apps using HTML/CSS/JS for code sharing and a native experience. You can leverage your website engineering skillsets to develop native apps, share code among many platforms, release features...
Ensuring the Happy Path: Automated Developer Testing for Mobile Apps
PreviewIs there anything worse than trying to fix that one small bug, declaring it fixed, and then realizing “the fix” caused another bug somewhere else in your app? And there it is, one more bug and you are at it again. The small voice in your head says if only you had automated tests. We know we should invest more in testing because it can save us headaches down the road. Josiah Mory says that although getting started can be an uphill climb, automated testing does not have to be all or nothing. Josiah introduces approaches for automating developer tests along with test-driven...
Fun with Enterprise iOS Apps
Can building an enterprise app be fun? Not “fun” in the sense of “if this is fun, we’re having it”—but actual, joyful, enthusiastic fun? Join Joe Keeley to explore how to find fun in the development lifecycle of iOS apps in enterprise environments, and (not coincidentally) how to deliver better enterprise apps with improved ROI. Start by looking at what factors are important in the selection of an iOS project, and how to optimize that selection process for apps that are quick to deliver and have high impact in the organization. Next look at the importance of design in the process and how...