23
Jan
developereconomicstiny

Developer Economics 2013 Report: Devs Want A Third Platform, Tablets Nearly As Important As Phones

Posted by in News

The Developer Economics 2013 report—a sort of State of the Union on app development—is out and it's packed with helpful tidbits, both for armchair analysts and programmers trying to make some sense out of this crazy software world. One of the most interesting observations the survey showed is there is still demand for a third platform. And right now they're getting it in a surprising place: on Blackberries.

2013-01-22_23h28_02

Above is the graph of OSes that developers list as their "main" platform. That is not to say that any of them code exclusively for them, just that it is the primary target for attention.

24
Aug
facebook-logo

Facebook's Director Of Mobile Engineering Discusses Android And Answers Questions On Reddit

Posted by in Applications, News

Whenever you hear someone talking about Facebook's mobile app, the most common complaint is always how slow it is. Even your news feed can take what feels like an age to load, and that's before you've started navigating through your events and photos of friends.

The reason for this is that the Facebook app uses HTML5, so it doesn't perform as well as other apps which are written natively for a particular platform. HTML5 offers Facebook great flexibility, as the development team can alter and push new code at their will without being restricted by the app approval process of whatever platform they may develop for.

16
Aug
unnamed

Dolphin Browser Beta Hits The Play Store, Boasts Major HTML5 Rendering Speed Improvements

Posted by in Applications, News

At the beginning of the month, the Dolphin team released a new version of their popular browser to the Play Store. It featured the normal UI and performance enhancements, but apparently that just wasn't good enough for the Dolphin crew. Today, they have released a public beta of Dolphin Browser that brings some pretty impressive numbers where HTML5 rendering speed is concerned:

How fast? Dolphin Browser Beta's HTML-5 rendering is:
• 5 - 10X faster than the default Android browser
• 100% faster than Chrome (at times)
• Initially scored over 450 when tested on HTML5test.com. (HTML5test.com is an industry respected tool for testing a browser’s support of HTML5)

1

Judging by the few comments already in the Play Store at the time of writing this, it looks like those numbers aren't just smoke and mirrors - the early reports are claiming that it's quite a bit faster than previous versions of Dolphin.

11
Jul
image

Fluid UI Makes Creating (And Testing) Mobile Design Mockups Faster, Easier, And More Productive

Posted by in Android OS, Design, Development, News

Aiming to "unlock the world's creativity," the team at Fluid Software recently completed a project that began in January 2011 with the release of Fluid UI 1.0. The tool, which is powered by HTML 5 and based online, allows users to quickly and easily create mobile UI mockups for Android (both tablets and phones), as well as iOS using a simple interface that includes all of the basic building blocks (clip art icons, navigation elements, system bars, etc.) for beautiful, style-guide friendly interfaces.

image image

Fluid UI's building interface can link, clone, and add pages and other elements, while providing an impressive array of transition options including various gestures and page-transition animations that are automatically baked in to your mockup.

29
May
io

The Ultimate Google I/O 2012 Preview

Posted by in Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Rumors
Last Updated: June 27th, 2012

Google I/O is coming and it's time to get excited! It's like Christmas in June! It will be here in just a few short agonizing weeks - and we need to prepare. There is background information you need to know, rumors you should have in mind, and past announcements and acquisitions that need to be remembered. Google always leaves little news breadcrumbs for those that pay attention, and I pay attention. Fanatically.

This post will be part news recap, part rumor roundup, and part speculation. The last time I did this went pretty well, and now it's time for another look at what the little elves at Google HQ are working on.

21
Sep
ipod_html5

Nexus One Has Better HTML5 Performance Than iPhone 4, But Flash Is Still King

Posted by in Apps/Games, Froyo 2.2, News, Nexus One (Passion)

While trying to figure out the best way to develop a cross-platform game, developer Christopher Black created a simple HTML5 benchmark, which he then ran on a Nexus One (N1), iPod Touch 4G, and iPhone 4. For some further variety, he also tested Flash 10.1 on the N1. The test itself was simply a black ball bouncing, and the results were incredibly surprising: the Nexus One ran the animation 67% faster than the iPod Touch, and 81% faster than the iPhone 4.

barchart

Even better, the N1 managed to keep rendering the ball (albeit slowly) during zooming - not so for the iOS devices.