8 Facts to Consider when developing iOS Mobile Apps

At present, iOS has a smaller market share than Android. But Apple App Store generates 75% more revenue that Google Play Store. That is why; most mobile app developers make their apps available on iOS before Android. But the developers have to explore ways to make their apps profitable and beat completion. They must focus on the user experience delivered by the iOS app to keep the users engaged and implement app monetization options effectively. Also, each mobile app developers must keep in mind a number of important facts to accelerate iOS app development.

8 Facts Each Developer Must Keep in Mind while developing iOS Apps

1) New Features and Enhancements

Apple has been updating iOS consistently to optimize user experience. Each new version of the mobile operating system comes with several new features and enhancements to boost the popularity of iPhones and iPads. For instance, Apple announced iOS 11 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017. The upcoming version of iOS will make multitasking easy, and support drag-and-drop functionality of iPad. At the same time, it will enable users to take advantage of Apple’s augmented reality (AR) platform. The developers must use and evaluate iOS 11 public beta to know the new features to be provided by the upcoming version of the mobile OS. While developing iOS apps, they must take advantage of these new features and enhancements to boost user engagement and experience.

2) The Right Programming Language

At present, mobile app developers have option to write iOS apps in two programming languages – Objective-C and Swift. Objective-C is a mature programming language, whereas Swift is a modern programming language. Both programming languages are fully compatible with each other. The developers can even use both Objective-C and Swift code in a single iOS app. But Apple has been upgrading Swift consistently to accelerate iOS app development. In addition to being an open source programming language, Swift also helps programmers to keep the app code organized and maintainable. Hence, the developers must decide the right programming language for iOS app development according to their proficiency and skills.

3) App Store Discoverability

Apple has been launching new initiatives to make it easier for users to find and download relevant iOS apps. It recently revamped its App Store to enhance app discoverability. The redesigned version of App Store makes it easier for users to find apps by through today tab, search tab, and apps and games tabs. Also, Apple recently updated its App Analytics services to help developers to make their apps discoverable. The updated App analytics services enable developers to enhance the discoverability of an iOS app by changing the keywords. Also, the developers can promote the app effectively by assessing, identifying, and analyzing the source.

4) Siri

In 2014, Apple introduced Siri as an intelligent personal assistant for iOS devices. Siri is designed with a natural voice user interface and responds to voice queries. Many users already use Siri to accomplish common tasks like making calls, sending text messages, initiating searches, and access files. Apple has been upgrading Siri consistently to respond to varying voice commands proactively. For instance, iOS 11 will enable users to interact with the digital assistant more efficiently by typing to it. The growing popularity of Siri makes it essential for developers to create iOS apps that users can access and operate with voice commands.

5) Model-View-Controller (MVC) Paradigm

While writing a mobile app for iOS, developers have to use objects as building block of code. Also, they need to keep the app code organized by adopting MVC paradigm. The MVC paradigm requires programmers to separate objects as model, view and controller. They will include the graphical user interface of the app in the view and the data objects in the model. Also, they need to use controllers to application’s flow. The MVC paradigm helps programmers to keep the app’s user interface and business logic layers separated. It further helps programmers to make changes to the app code without putting extra time and effort.

6) Event Driven Programming

The user interface (UI) of an iOS app is designed with Storyboards. The Storyboards along with Interface Builder control the interaction between the app’s UI, database and other components. The back-end and front-end objects of an iOS app also interact with each other based on events. An event is triggered based on a specific user action, sends the user request, manipulates the data, and responds to the user. Hence, the developers have to keep in mind the events that will be triggered by varying user actions. Also, they must focus on the interaction caused by various events while writing code for executing business logic.

7) Testing Under Real User Conditions

A number of studies show that most users nowadays abandon mobile app after one use. While developing an iOS app, the developers must focus extensively on its user experience to prevent reduce abandonment. The user experience delivered by the app will be impacted by its functionality, performance, usability, discoverability, and security. Also, the user experience delivered by a mobile app differs according to real user conditions. That is why; the developers must test the iOS app under varying user conditions to assess its user experience precisely. They can consider getting the app evaluated by users before its launch, and enhance its user experience based on the feedback received from users.

8) Human Interface Guidelines

Apple recommends iOS app developers to adopt Human Interface Guidelines to create mobile apps that can be integrated seamlessly with iOS platform. The developers need to design iOS apps based on a number of principles – aesthetic integrity, consistency, metaphors, direct manipulation, user feedback and user control. Likewise, they can make the iOS app more appealing and interactive by availing the bars, views, and controls provided by a robust programming interface like UIKit. At the same time, Apple recommends developers to create iOS app UIs that support 3D touch. The 3D touched based interaction will enable users to access additional functionality by applying different levels of pressure on the display.

A developer can accelerate iOS app development by implementing various mobile app development best practices. Likewise, he must build the iOS app according to the emerging mobile app development trends to meet the needs of users over a longer period of time. That is why; the developers must implement a comprehensive mobile app development plan to make the iOS app popular and profitable in the long run.

7 mistakes that every .Net developer should avoid making

Often there are errors when a new application is programmed. As a result of this it does not run as per expectations. Though Microsoft keeps adding new features to ease the developers’ work and make things interactive but the errors keep occurring. Some are minor mistakes while others are major – both can impact the performance in a negative way. Thus it is important that every .Net developer keeps in mind some of the common mistakes so as to avoid them in the beginning and not regret later. The 7 mistakes that can be avoided are:

1.     Not being able to achieve browser compatibility - Users have a large choice of web browsers to access the different applications. While Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome are popular and catered for in the coding, certain cross-browser compatibility issues do crop up while testing. These can be minor problems regarding placement of elements, but they can have a negative impact on the performance of the application. Customized testing tools that can help check whether the application is performing as per expectations, across the widely used web browsers, are the solution.

2.             Not adhering to Complier Warnings -  Developers tend to ignore warnings from the compiler during the coding stage. This creates major problems later on and so should not be ignored. Apart from this, the programmer is supposed to test the application unit wise so as to identify where the error lies and also fix the minor problems early in the process.

3.             Not documenting for upgrade and reuse – Often developers skip the code documentation part. As a part of the development team, documentation of code is important so others can upgrade it later as per need. This can be done by adding comments that make accessing the codes an easier job. Also, most users reuse code to save their time and efforts. While coding, separating the user-control and creating a separation between different elements will make the code reusable. In bigger applications, the property definitions need to be repeated several times. Mapping tools like Automapper etc can be used in such cases for more efficiency and accuracy.

4.             Not preserving the stack - MSDN guidelines call for the developers to preserve the stack trace for the original exception. .NET programmers often break the stack while throwing exceptions. This is a simple but common mistake with grave repercussions. This can be avoided if the developers review the code to fix the problem, and avoid losing the stack trace. Preservation of stack is useful as it eases out the process of debugging an application. It also helps to locate the exact error details in the error log.

5.             Not Disposing the IDisposable Object Properly - According to MSDN guidelines, the developers need to declare and instantiate each IDisposable object. For this they need to use the using statement. This is an effective method which makes the object go out of scope immediately. However, when developers forget to use the using statement, the object does not get disposed properly and creates errors later on.

6.             Not verifying the data adequately – The data that is used in the application can be processed and manipulated in a number of different ways in the application code. This calls for verification of each type of data both for validity as well as integrity. Amongst many things, the data should not return a null character. Therefore a thorough check of the data before execution is mandatory. Applications that require inputs from users need more attention for data verification aspect to ensure smooth functioning. Developers will be able to handle situations better once they have identified the data that returns null values.

7.             Not using the right web services in the application - Web services are assumed to be an integral part of each of .Net project. Developers do not analyze the web services’ pros and cons and use many different web services in their applications. Choosing the right web service is the key to boosting performance and efficiency while an incompatible one can do just the opposite. Therefore evaluation of relevance and necessity of service for a particular application is essential. Here the developer has a lot of choice and with the technology available can even use remote services to their advantage.

It is essential for a developer to understand .Net development to the fullest in order to incorporate the best practices in the same which will result in an efficient build. Apart from the common mistakes listed above, there are some of the tips and tricks used by other Dotnet developers that can also help. Building an application without committing coding errors might not seem to be humanly possible. However developers can aim to reduce the errors and provide an efficient solution.