Tuesday 30 May 2017

7 Qualities of a Great Mobile App Developer


Several studies have shown that a large percentage of users nowadays delete mobile apps after one use. Likewise, most users never visit or use a mobile app again 72 hours after installation. Hence, mobile app developers have to explore innovative ways to prevent users from deleting his mobile app and persuade them to use the application regularly. But a great mobile app developer understands how to increase app download number and reduce mobile app abandonment.
While designing and developing a mobile app, he focus extensively on its functionality, performance, usability, security, searchability, and user experience. Also, he foresees the preferences and behaviour of the target audience accurately to prevent users from uninstalling or deleting the app and persuade them the visit it frequently. There are also a number of qualities that make some mobile app developers stand out among millions of mobile app developers and marketers.
7 Qualities That Make a Mobile App Developer Stand out from the Crowd
1) Foresee Customer Expectation and Behaviour
A great mobile app developer knows how to make his mobile app different from others. He collects information from various sources to identify the current and future needs of target audience. Also, he analyzes the pros and cons of similar apps to decide how to make the mobile app deliver richer user experience. The combination of creative thinking and customer behaviour analysis make the great app developer know the pulse of the market. However, he thinks differently to plan and develop a mobile app that meets expectation of target audience precisely, while appearing different from similar apps available at the app store.
2) Open to Suggestions and Revisions
A great mobile app developer always spends some time to understand and analyze the business concept thoroughly. The in-depth understanding of the business concept helps him to conceptualize features and functionality of the mobile app based on precise business requirements. However, he still needs to gather information from various sources and seek suggestions of other stakeholders in the product to make the app better and deliver richer user experience. A great mobile app developer remains open to suggestions, and discuss the business concept with other stakeholders to build a better mobile app. Likewise, he remains open to accommodate several changes and revisions to make the mobile app deliver richer user experience or meet business requirements precisely.
3) Proficiency in Technologies and Programming Languages
Major mobile platforms allow developers to write apps in multiple languages. For instance, a developer can write an iOS app in Swift or Objective-C. Likewise, he can write an Android app in Java or C++. Some cross-platform mobile app development tools even allow programmers to write iOS, Android, and Windows Phone app in a single programming language. A great mobile app developer always writes the mobile app in the best programming language. He further takes the SDK and other development tools provided by the mobile platform to avoid writing additional code. A great mobile app developer learns and evaluates various programming languages to decide the best way to write the next mobile app.
4) Expertise in Picking the Right Tools and Frameworks
Each great mobile app developers understand the significance of keeping the mobile app delivery cycles short and reduce time to market. He always automates common mobile app development and testing activities to deliver a custom mobile app within a shorter amount of time. He also combine open source and commercial tools to curtail mobile app development time without increasing project overheads. The mobile app developers always gather information about the emerging mobile app development and testing tools. He further replaces the conventional tools with more advanced tools to simplify and speedup mobile app development process. Hence, a great mobile app developer always pick the right mobile app development tools, and combine various tools to build high quality mobile apps without putting extra time and effort.
5) Ability to Identify Why Users Delete Mobile Apps
As mentioned earlier, a large percentage of users nowadays abandon or delete mobile apps after one use. A user may abandon or delete a mobile app due to a number of reasons - technical issues, complex user interface (UI), poor user experience (UX), uninteresting content, and intrusive notifications and in-app purchase options. A great mobile app developer identifies the factors that make users delete or abandon mobile apps based on information and data collected from various sources. He further test the mobile app continuously and elaborately to boost its user experience and engagement.
6) Flexibility to Meet Emerging Mobile App Development Trends
Each new version of a mobile operating system comes with several new features and enhancements. Likewise, new smartphones and tablets also come with redesigned hardware features. To remain popular and profitable, the mobile app must deliver optimal user experience regardless of the device and operating system. At the same time, it must cater to the changing needs and preferences of users to keep them interested and engaged. A great mobile app developer remains flexible enough to meet the emerging technologies and trends. He experiments with new ideas, models, methods and techniques to keep the mobile app relevant and profitable despite the changing and evolving mobile app market.
7) Focus on Maintaining the Mobile App’s Goodwill and Credibility
The great mobile app developer always focuses on the factors that affect the app’s goodwill and credibility in the longer run. While planning and developing a mobile app, he explores ways to keep it functional and deliver optimal user experience consistently. For instance, a great mobile app developer performs elaborate security testing to ensure that mobile app remains functional despite targeted security attacks and disruption of service threats. Likewise, he also test all aspects of the app across multiple devices, platforms, browsers and user condition to identify and repair all bugs and performance issues in the application before its launch. The focus on long-term goodwill and credibility helps great app developer to maintain the popularity and profitability of his mobile app over a longer period of time.
However, no great developer can launch popular and profitable mobile apps consistently. But he always identifies the factors that dissuade users from using the mobile app on a regular basis. He always uses his past mistakes and experiences as an instrument to make his next mobile app both popular and profitable.


Monday 15 May 2017

How good is Backbone.js for Mobile App Development?


Many enterprises nowadays build cross-platform mobile apps to overcome mobile device and operating system diversity. Unlike native mobile apps, the cross-platform applications are developed with commonly used web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Also, the developers can make the app available on multiple mobile platforms with a single code base. But the developers need robust tools to accelerate cross-platform mobile application development. The features provided by Backbone.js help developers to simplify and speed up development of HTML5-based mobile applications.
Despite being a lightweight JavaScript library, Backbone.js supports model-view-controller (MVC) concept. The MVC design paradigm simplifies development and maintenance of mobile apps by keeping their user interfaces and business logic separate. The developer can use Backbone.js to build HTML-based mobile apps without additional performance overheads. Also, they can represent data as models, and create, validate, save, or destroy the models to the server. The developers can further take advantage of the features provided by Backbone.js to build cross-platform mobile apps rapidly.
Why Backbone.js is Useful for Cross-Platform Mobile App Developers?
Keep User Interface and Business Logic Separate
The single and unified code base makes it easier for developers to build and maintain HTML5-based mobile apps. But the developers have to make changes to the code base frequently to enhance the app’s functionality and performance. The MVC framework provided by Backbone.js enables programmers to divide an app into multiple modules and keep its user interface and business logic separated. The separation makes it easier for developers to maintain and update cross-platform mobile apps without putting extra time and effort.
Avail Several Building Blocks
In addition to providing a MVC framework, Backbone.js also provides various building blocks – model, collection, events, and router. The users have option to represent data as models. They can even create, save, modify and destroy models to the server. The model will further trigger a change event each time its attributes change due to user action. It further changes the changes to the views displaying its state. Based on the notification sent by the model, the views render themselves afresh. Hence, the mobile app keeps users engaged by providing updated information.
Implement Event-Driven Communication
Backbone.js simplifies cross-platform mobile app development by keeping the app’s user interface and business logic separated. But it enables programmers to facilitate event-driven communication between the model and view. They can easily control the changes made to the view by adding event listeners to various attributes of a model. The programmers also have option to link the models to the back-end. Hence, they can easily facilitate event-driven communication to render the view afresh each time the model changes.
Use JavaScript Functions
While developing a cross-platform mobile app developers have to explore ways to make it look good on each device and platform. Backbone.js developers can build robust mobile apps by availing more than 100 extensions and plug-ins – Backbone Forms, Backbone.Validators, Backbone.localStorage, Backbone.Offline, Backbone.safe and Backbone-orm. Also, it enables programmers to developer mobile app front-ends with JavaScript functions. Hence, the developers can easily add functionality to the mobile user interface by using both predefined and custom JavaScript functions.
Use Underscore.js Methods
Backbone.js is a compact JavaScript library. But it has a hard-dependency on another JavaScript library - Underscore.js. The utility functions provided by Underscore.js help users to accomplish a variety of programming tasks. Also, the functional programming helpers provided by Underscore.js enable programmers to accomplish specific tasks without extending the built-in objects. While developing mobile apps with Backbone.js, the developers can take advantage of the functions provided by Underscore.js to accomplish common tasks without writing longer lines of code. Also, these functions will help the programmers to keep the mobile app code clean and maintainable.
Synchronize User Data
The mobile app developers can use Backbone.js to keep the code base structured and organized. Also, they can use the JavaScript library to manage data model efficiently. Backbone.js enables developers to make the app deliver data to clients without making any modification or conversion. They can display the data on the server side without changing the format used on the client side. The feature makes it easier for programmers to manage data model and synchronize the client-side and server-side data.
Avail Robust Debugging Tools
While developing mobile apps with Backbone.js, the developers can assess its components and evaluate its behaviour by using specific extensions. They can use Backbone Debugger to debug the mobile applications based on real-time information on models, views, collections and routers. Likewise, they can use Backbone Eye to monitor the behaviour of the mobile app when it runs on browsers without accessing the JavaScript code. The extensions help users to identify and repair all issues affecting the app’s functionality and performance.

However, the mobile app developers must remember that Backbone.js is a compact and lightweight JavaScript library. It lacks several features provided by other cross-platform mobile app development tools. For instance, Backbone.js does not provide a user interface (UI) framework despite supporting MVC paradigm. The programmers have render user interface of the mobile app by using additional UI frameworks. Also, they have to use libraries and plug-ins compatible with the JavaScript MVC library to build cross-platform mobile apps efficiently and rapidly. 

Tuesday 2 May 2017

Python vs. Flask: A brief comparison


At present, Python is a widely used popular general-purpose programming language. Unlike other programming languages, Python enables programmers simplify development and maintenance of software applications by writing clean, concise, and readable code. Hence, many developers use Python for development of desktop GUI applications and web applications. But the developers have to use a number of Python frameworks and libraries to simplify and speed up development of various software applications.
Flask is a lightweight web framework written in Python programming language. Like other micro-frameworks, Flask enables programmers to build a variety of web application that perform smoothly without relying on third-party libraries. However, it allows programmers to add functionalities to a web application by adding plug-ins. At the same time, the libraries, tools and modules provided by Flask make it easier for programmers to build websites and web applications without putting extra time and effort.
Understanding Important Differences between Python and Flask
Programming Language
In addition to being a general purpose and high level programming language, Python also supports object-oriented, functional, and imperative programming. It further features a dynamic type system, and supports automatic memory management. At the same time, the simple syntax rules of the programming language makes it easier for programmers to build and maintain applications by writing clean, readable and concise code. At present, Python is being used by programmers for building both desktop GUI applications and web applications.
Many programmers use Python as web scripting language to build and maintain a variety of web applications easily. But Python lacks the built-in features required to build web applications efficiently. Hence, developers have to use web frameworks additionally to write web applications rapidly in Python. Flask is a modern and lightweight web framework for Python which comes with a built-in development server. The built-in development server make the web applications run smoothly with minimal third-party dependency.
Web Framework
Python is not designed with built-in features to facilitate web application development. Hence, developers have to use various web frameworks while using Python as a web scripting language. Based on specific needs of the project, the Python programmers have option to choose from several full-stack and micro web frameworks including Django, TurboGears, web2py, Bottle, Pyramid, Hug and CherryPy.  Flask is a micro and non full stack web framework for Python. It enables programmers to create web applications that function without depending on many third-party libraries and plug-ins.
Design Rule
The web developers have option to choose from several lightweight web frameworks. But the libraries, modules and tools provided by individual micro frameworks differ. Flask is designed based on two Pocco Projects - Jinja2 and Werkzeug WSGI toolkit. The developers can use Jinja2 as a robust template engine for Python. Jinja2 makes it easier for programmers to render dynamic web pages by combine specific data sources with particular templates. At the same time, the developers can use Werkzeug WSGI toolkit to facilitate client-server communication by executing various utilities functions like request implementation and response object generation.
Specific Features and Tools
The features and tools provided by Flask make it different from other lightweight web frameworks for Python. In addition to allowing users to take advantage of Werkzeug WSGI utility toolkit and Jinja2 template engine, Flask comes with built-in development server and debugger, and supports RESTful request dispatching, integrated unit testing, secure client-side cookies, and Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI). These features help programmers to enhance the user experience delivered by the website without writing additional code. Also, they can assess the functionality and performance of the application easily by performing integrated unit tests.
Usage
As mentioned earlier, Python is a general purpose programming languages. In addition to being used a web scripting language, Python is also used widely for scientific computing, artificial intelligence tasks, and big data applications. But the Python developers have to use a variety of frameworks and libraries according to the nature and usage of each software application. For instance, they have to use libraries like SciPy, NumPy or Matplotlib while using Python for scientific computing. Flask is a web framework for Python. Hence, the developers can use Flask to use Python more efficiently as a web scripting language.
However, one must not forget that comparing Python with Flask is similar to comparing apples and oranges. Python is a general purpose programming language which is used widely for web application development. On the other hand, Flask is a lightweight web framework written in Python. No programmer can build web applications with Flask without being familiar with Python.