#android Archives

Top 8 Android App Development Trends In 2021

Posted on 19/12/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

With nearly 85% market share, Android, without a doubt, is the most popular mobile OS. As far as creating a mobile app is considered, Android OS gets the attention. Android mobile applications are user-friendly and are sure to lead the industry. With the ever-changing demands and supplies of products and services, mobile application development is flourishing with the latest technologies and trends. You should find the future trends that can help you stay ahead in the ever-changing mobile application development industry. Before you hire a top Android app development company, it’s best that you get familiar with the latest trends in Android app development.

LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT THE TOP 8 ANDROID APP DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN 2021 THAT ARE SURE TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE BUSINESS MODELS.

1) Instant Apps

When it comes to Android app development, Android instant apps aren’t a new phenomenon. However, they are becoming more and more popular. They let users try a game or an app without their installation on your device. As a result, end-users do not need to download them. The instant app’s technology helps gaming companies and eCommerce companies mainly. Moreover, the instant apps do not take extra space on the smartphone and decrease any needless interruptions. The most important benefit of instant apps is that you get complete access to the apps without even downloading them, additional storage, compatibility on all the Android devices, and outstanding UX/UI designs.

2) Apps For Foldable Phones

The flip phone was a thing of the past. Touch screen phones have been the latest trend in the market. But foldable phones have again started making a comeback in the last few years. Foldable phones fold to expand or compress the screen size depending on the user preferences. From the viewpoint of app development, content creators and resellers should consider these devices when creating or updating apps. The main idea is that the app should flawlessly adjust the display when the screen of the phone folds or unfolds. 2021 will definitely see an increase in foldable phones users. As a result, app developers should plan accordingly.

3) Flutter

Flutter, the latest Google’s technology, is the Android app development future. Flutter allows app development for platforms like Android and iOS using native interfaces. Most Android developers will shift to flutter in 2021 because of its features and flexibility. The most essential benefits of using flutter for mobile app development are Support for MVP development, simple to learn features, and native designs. App developers are quick including flutter in their app development approach, which is making it the future of Android development 2021.

4) Beacon Technology

This technology has been already included by many industries. From retail to hospitality, beacon technology can add superior functionalities to almost all mobile apps. The key advantage of beacons is proximity marketing, which is known to enhance the client experience within mobile apps. Thus businesses have begun using it to target potential customers already. It also assists businesses to send notifications and target clients when it comes to hotels and restaurants to smart devices.

5) Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence penetrated the mobile app development industry many years ago. But it has recently seen a rise. When we consider Artificial Intelligence, virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri come into our minds. However, it goes beyond this when it comes to app development. Recently, Apple launched Core ML 3, the recent version of the iOS machine learning platform. It helps app developers embed Artificial Intelligence into their mobile apps. The best AI features that you can implement in an app include predictive maintenance, speech recognition, face detection, image recognition, sentiment classification and recognition, image and text classification, and more. AI can make your apps smarter by enhancing their performance at each level. Artificial Intelligence is surely going to change the ways mobile apps are built.

6) Chatbots

Increasingly more businesses are going to advantage from merging the content and services of their applications with Google Assistant in the coming year. The main benefit of this integration is that it allows faster methods for the users to use the app in the Assistant. It also lets you deep-link further to specific features in the app from Google Assistant. Android Slices, another important feature lets app developers display your app’s content from the app to the Assistant users. With an increase in the Google Assistant users, app integration with the Google Assistant will prove to be very helpful.

7) Advanced App Security

Everybody is vulnerable to cybercrime. Right from a freelance content creator to a multi-billion dollar business, no one is immune. An increase of 54% was seen in malware attacks that were intended to harm smartphones. Over 60% of frauds originate from smartphones. Nearly 80% of these figures come from apps. As far as your app security is considered, you cannot take shortcuts. If you are a mobile app reseller, the security of the apps should be your main priority. App users know security risks that are associated with the apps. So, they think twice about sharing information with third parties or sharing passwords. So, in 2021, app developers will begin implementing features such as Sing in With your Apple ID to apps. This will help users make an account and then sign in with their Apple ID.

8) On-Demand Mobile Apps

The on-demand mobile application development, will trend upwards in 2021. Users have witnessed spending over 57.6 billion dollars every year on on-demand services. With on-demand apps, the opportunities are endless. Being an app reseller, it’s a big opportunity to widen your client base. By using the on-demand abilities, your customers can add superior functionalities to their mobile apps and that is sure to boost profits for everybody.

WRAP UP

We see now ideas, trends, and innovations every year leading to a major shift in the technology world. By looking at these Android app development trends in 2021, we can say that Android will move towards a flawless experience to deliver to the user demands.

Why Choose Node.js for your Next Product Development?

Posted on 09/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

In little over a decade, Node.js has emerged as a top-developer choice for web application development. Its pros make it a superlative alternative for cross-platform development by integrating a 2-way client-server communication channel. Without plunging into the technicalities, let us know the top Node.js development statistics that substantiate its superiority over the competition:

Node.js is highly popular in the US, with 6.3 million websites using it.
It has found use cases in companies such as Amazon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Netflix, and PayPal.
85% of the developers that use Node.js, do so for web app development.
Research suggests that this open-source JavaScript runtime environment reduces development costs by 58%.

It gives programmers the leeway to use JavaScript to create command-line tools for server-side scripting. However, if you need further convincing, here are 12 reasons why Node.js development is at the peak of its powers and seemingly unshakable in the immediate future.

Reasons Why Node.js for Web Development is the Perfect Choice

The internal workings of this open-source runtime environment involve package management, unified APIs, native bindings, and threading. Below we elaborate on how such technicalities result in productive work.

Speed

The V8 engine, developed by Google, powers Node.js. It allows for JavaScript code to be converted to machine code and contributes to development time savings on program executions. Products for web app development with Node.js can handle a significantly higher number of parallel connections.

Thanks to Node.js app development, Paypal was able to reduce its app response time by 35%. With such an anomalous increase in application productivity, the company processed double the number of user requests.

Cost savings

As a web development company, Anteelo receives multiple inquiries from prospects to hire dedicated Node.js developers. But our product suite consists only of such services whose proof is in the pudding. Upon conducting a cost-benefit analysis, we found that Node.js’s development costs far less than anything else out there. Its memory footprint is smaller in comparison to PHP or Java servers. A server built on Node.js runs on an event-driven loop which saves a huge portion of the Random Access Memory (RAM) and in turn hardware/software resources.

Advance caching

Ask any Node.js developer and they would probably point to the caching capabilities as its greatest asset. It can cache single modules. But what difference does that make?

It eradicates the need to re-execute code as servers call for the first module. Caching allows websites to load faster and alleviate the user experience.

Real-time development

Real-time apps are such that provide dynamic, spontaneous engagement environments for users. Examples include gaming apps, messenger apps, etc. Their development involves a lot of event-based programming and communication with a non-blocking server. Developers can maximize their efforts towards real-time web application development using Node.js as it uses asynchronous operations to optimize the coordination with the CPU and the memory.

Event driven

The platform is event-driven i.e. all its developed APIs in the Node.js library are asynchronous. But what does this mean?

A server based on Node.js does not wait for the Application Programming Interface to return data. Instead, it calls the API, following which the built-in notification mechanism of Node.js aids the server to procure the return-call from the previous API.

Scalable

We are a Node.js web application development company and prescribe its use in areas like data streaming applications, JSON API-based applications, as well as single-page applications. We do so keeping in mind its scalability. Node.js web application development makes for ultra-high-speed computation speeds due to the V8 engines.

Node.js uses microservices with which it divides an application into finer processes. These processes can be allocated in parallel to multiple teams so that they can be developed in sync with the rising user requests. Faster background processes translate to low-lag operations and an increased footfall of user traffic.

That said, never use Node.js for CPU-intensive processes.

Data streaming

Product development is not as simple as people put it. As a Node.js development company, we learned it the hard way. Input-Output (I/O) handling is a key component of software engineering. With the tendency of web frameworks to classify HTTPO requests as whole data, I/O handling gets trickier to integrate.

But that is not the case with Node.js mobile app development which supports I/O bound applications. While using apps built on Node.js users can transcode multimedia files simultaneously as they are being uploaded onto the server.

What makes this a manageable procedure is a provision that writes data streams onto WebSockets.

No-rocket science

Most of the programmers these days are familiar with JavaScript. As Node.js app development is a JS-based runtime system, it is relatively easier for amateur coders to make the switch. They can achieve the same results as working with Django, PHP, or spring boot in much less time and devoting far less computational resources.

Well-rounded community

In a StackOverflow survey, Node.js was voted rank #1 for two years running in the miscellaneous technology category. This goes on to show how well-knit and widespread the developer community is on this tool. Constant upgrades keep people coming back for more, and access ready-to-use plugins and code-bytes accessible on GitHub.

Technical support

Another reason why professionals prefer Node.js for web development is that its parent team offers long-term support. As per convention, following the release of each version of Node.js, the code is maintained for the next 18 months. Instead of continuing to add new features, this period is utilized to fix bugs and collect user feedback for future releases.

It is reported that long-term platform support is prioritized by 62% of developers.

Microservices

On prior occasions, we’ve touched on the topic of microservices and monolithic architectures. Enterprise-grade projects have an inclination towards implementing the microservices-based architecture. This serverless approach pays dividends in the long run and is also supported by Node.js.

SEO-friendly

More often than not, developers adopt a backwards approach when it comes to SEO practices. They design a website and then re-design it to become pro-SEO. But that doesn’t have to be the case with Node.js. Its built-in features offer such pre-packed codes that are in tandem with search algorithms.

Another reason for using it is that it’s free!

Knowing and understanding the above mentioned points, as a Node.js development company in the USA we can say with authority that open source is the way ahead. In addition to being free, it offers state-of-the-art toolsets that include Redux and Flux. It is highly integrable with open source libraries.

Typical Projects to Start with Node.js

As a Node.js development company, we suggest the following projects to train your in-house team on the platform.

Single page apps

Present-day web applications bear an overloaded semblance partly due to the fact that they have to process client data. Working in this environment ensures faster response times between the server and client-side. This is a founding tenet that every single page app is based on.

Conventional web apps

An amateur Node.js developer could begin with writing conventional web applications. It allows streaming HTML data effortlessly.

Proxy development

While offering Node.js development services our experts have experimented with installing Node.js as a proxy server and it worked like a knife through butter. It helps in the case of apps that rely on external services to import/export data.

Final Thoughts

As a web development company, Anteelo has the firepower to kickstart Node.js-centric product development in full swing. With 600+ personnel joining forces from home virtually (till the pandemic lasts), we’ve handled cross-border projects and made a name for ourselves. But all that was possible only with the collective efforts of our growth hackers, who have what it takes to push through for technological superiority.

Top 10 Android App Development Trends To Watch Out In 2021

Posted on 09/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Are you an entrepreneur who is looking forward to making or getting their Android mobile app developed? Let’s dig into some trends & stats. When it comes to developing mobile apps, no doubt the Android operating system gets all the attention, an attention that is well deserved.

Are you an entrepreneur who is looking forward to making or getting their mobile app developed? If yes, then you surely need all the deep insights to know about the latest android app development trends.

Let’s dig in for some stats and read on further to discover the popularity of Android apps and the sector’s trends.

The fact is that today, Android is one of the most vitally used mobile OS that has captured almost 85% of the market share.
The Google Store has 3.04 + million applications, that range from web browsers, daily tools, social media platforms, complex games, enterprise mobile apps etc.

These figures clearly state that the app developers need to be aware of the hottest trends in mobile app development and incorporate them in their Android apps at the earliest, simply to provide users a unique experience.

Top Android Application Development Trends To Watch Out In 2021

The android apps continue to see implacable changes, that are primarily dominated by the user experience and constant innovations brought in by Google. As an entrepreneur, you would need to exemplify these trends for staying ahead of the competition.

1. Android Instant Apps

Although instant Android apps are not very common, slowly and surely, these app display types are picking up the pace. Android Instant app provides software developers with Android Instant Apps SDK and App Links Assistant that permits them to build mobile solutions from scratch or convert the existing apps into Instant Apps.

A working example of the type can be seen through the following – the Instant app allows users to try different games on the applications without installing that app on the device, exciting right? The advantage of these apps is that they are compatible across all gadgets, require less storage space, and have a pleasant user experience and user interface.

Instant apps are the future and one of the biggest trends in mobile app development that helps the user use the app without actually compromising on space on their smartphones. This is the technology that is designed to drastically help and push the adoption of multiple sectors like eCommerce and games further to secure a place in top android app development trends of 2021.

2. Navigation Component

Navigation refers to the multiple interactions that allow the user to move around in the different sections and app’s content pieces. Android jetpacks come with components of handy navigation that helps the developers to implement the navigations. The implications could range from a simple button, click to an intricate pattern such as a navigation drawer.

The navigation component’s further benefit is that the component allows a predictable and consistent user experience, as the developers who implement them, follow the stated navigation principles.

3. Blockchain Technology

The blockchain technology has been making rounds for many years; however, it has finally come into action. The blockchain technology provides the enhanced solutions of the decentralized app development that eliminates any unauthorized access and pushes transparency.

The blockchain technology market is said to grow at 62.73% CAGR by 2026 making $52.5 billion. Decentralized apps (Dapps) are an open source, smart contract based software applications that run transactions on blockchain. These applications run on decentralize blockchain and the data cannot be changed or erased in it. These apps are the future of mobile app development; they enable faster payment, reliable data records, and are tamper proof.

With the help of blockchain technology, an android app development company can maintain robust security protocols. This inclusion is fast becoming a part of the trends in android development especially in the financial segments such as currency exchanges, banks etc.

4. Google Assistant/Chatbot

In the coming years, we will see that many business owners would be keen on integrating their app services with the Google Assistant. The primary advantage of investing in such an integration is that it provides users with faster ways of accessing the app directly. By using the Google app actions, the users get access to an app’s deep-link which allows them to perform specific activities inside the application from the Google Assistant.

Google, in 2020 announced that they will release a new feature for google assistant at CES. The new feature called “Scheduled Actions” will permit users to communicate with smart devices through google assistant like turn on/off a smart device, make a coffee, etc. The feature will be capable of controlling 20 home devices including lights, coffee machines, AC units, and many more.

5. Multiplatform Development Through Flutter

Google has introduced a new technology naming Flutter, which is being touted as the future of android development. Flutter is a cross-platform framework that helps in developing beautiful apps with a single codebase.

Many developers have been selecting this platform to build mobile apps due to its flexible nature. The primary reasons to choose Flutter are that it is effortless to learn, has a native design, etc.

It is one of the preferred frameworks for minimum viable product development. This means that instead of spending extravagance on two different apps, you can quickly build an app on native platforms such as iOS or Android.

With the latest update Google took flutter beyond mobile and to the web. Flutter developers are now able to target macOS, Windows and Linux and other embedded devices. The desktop support provided by flutter also includes plugins that support various platforms.

The new Flutter and Dart update have been released with Substantial Performance Improvements from its contemporary releases. Flutter is prepared for creating apps for iOS, Android, Fuchsia, web & desktop with new platform support. Moreover, they are in talks with Ubuntu for Linux apps, Microsoft’s Android Surface Duo, and Windows 10X which will be made accessible soon.

Some prominent progressions made in Flutter in 2021-21 are:

decreased size and latency
less janky animations, and quicker treatment of UTF-8 strings
mouse cursor support
new widgets such as Interactive viewer making pen
zoom and drag-n-drop
range slider and date picker revamped
integrating flutter to the current application made suitable with Pigeon
improved help for Metal on iOS, and new Material gadgets.

6. Internet of Things

The key mobile app development trends 2021 is the implementation of the IoT (Internet of Things). In Android, these trends end up translating into many of the Android things that allow the developers to build the devices on the top of the known hardware platforms such as Raspberry Pi. The best part is that developers do not require any prior knowledge of embedding the system design to start. Instead, the developers can develop the apps using Android Studio and Android SDK.

The introduction of 5G will open the door for more devices, and data traffic. According to some reports the 5th generation wireless network technology is expected to connect 1.5 billion devices globally in the coming years. It is also stated that the global IoT connections will triple to 25 billion by 2025, while IoT revenue globally will quadruple to $1.1 trillion.

With that said, IoT will focus on developing smart parking lots, street lights, and traffic controls apart from advancing the hospitality and industrial sectors.

7. APM & EMM

APM (Application Performance Management) and EMM (Enterprise Mobile Management) are two primary elements of mobile enterprise development. These technologies are primarily used to reduce mobile apps’ slowness. With the overall rise in mobile application development trends, they have become the quality tester for mobile apps.

With the upcoming trends, APM will reflect the application behaviour, measure statistics for devices and Oss that are used, and screen user performance to figure out which application features are exploited. With the application landscape and business infrastructure moving to cloud, APM will also provide powerful tools to monitor resources utilized by apps, associate the retrieved data with user insights, and adjust performance with business processes.

EMM will incorporate mobile device management, app management, application wrapping and containerization, and a few components of enterprise file synchronization and sharing.

From the work from home context, EMM has grown many folds and is looking into automation of processes, workflow optimization, easier and smoother communication flow, and exchange of data

8. Motion Layout

The layout used by the developers to manage the motion and the widget animations in the apps. This tool is a part of the Constraint Layout library and is compatible with Android 4.0. With these libraries, the team can quickly fill up all the gaps between the complex motion handling and layout transitions, as these tools are known to offer high-end and useful features.

Developers will be seen using Motion Layout to create multiple interfaces that use the animations, helping them understand what is going on with the app.

9. Beacon Technology

Businesses have slowly started to immensely use Beacon technology, as it helps businesses target potential clients uniquely. Beacons are the transmitting gadgets that get connected with mobile devices, in that particular range. The technology allows the companies to send various notifications regarding the special offers, nearby hotels etc.

Beacon technology transformation from a push marketing strategy to an opt-in strategy is useful for many industries. The technology can be applied on-cloud and at-area, which is helping it to gain traction and promote its growth in the coming years.

Beacon-based notifications are helping out businesses to connect with their users in a highly contextual manner. The beacon technology trend in 2021 will see the coming of beacon enabled airports and mobile payment using beacon.

Some companies are predicting the rapid development and use of iBeacon and other similar gadgets for marketing.

10. Android Enterprise

Digital transformation is now the need of the hour in 2021 for enterprises. The Google-led initiative – Android enterprise helps the workers to use the Android apps in their workplace. The Android Enterprise program helps the developers with the APIs and various other tools needed to integrate support for Android into the solutions of enterprise mobility management.

Wrapping Up

Each year comes with newer innovations and ideas, and these trends keep on rolling back and forth. Looking at the above latest trends in android app development, we can undoubtedly claim that the Android Operating System is growing at a rapid speed towards providing the users a seamless experience.

Given the trends for mobile app development, businesses are opting for app development and are looking for an estimate of the cost.

Boost Development: Custom Android Templates

Posted on 14/05/202117/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Every time when we work on a new project, we have to write a lot of code repeatedly and over a period of time, it becomes very tedious. I experienced it while creating an Android Application where I had to write too much boilerplate code whenever I created an Activity or Fragment. Not only it takes time, but also causes frustration to the developer.To overcome that, Android Studio has some inbuilt templates which are also helpful when we start working on any application. For example, when we create Activity or Fragment, we just need to write the name of the class and that’s it. Android Studio will write some necessary snippets for us.The solution to this problem is provided by the Android Studio, i.e Custom Templates. In this blog, we will take the example of the RecyclerView adapter and will create a template. Next time when we will create RecyclerView and want to create an adapter, we don’t need to write the boilerplate code again. This will surely help us in speeding up our development.

So what is a Template?

Templates are the files that have some boilerplate code. For example, when we create Activity, Service, Fragment from the list of predefined options, we see a lot of boilerplate code already written from the predefined templates.

Let’s create our own live template of creating RecyclerView adapter with inner ViewHolder class with the below mentioned steps-

1. 1. Right click on the package folder and then select New->Edit File Templates
  2. Click + button to create a new template. You can name this template as you like.
  3. Paste the following code in this file.
  4. ${<VARIABLE_NAME>} is used to create variables in the templates. When you use this template, there will be a prompt asking to enter values for them to create code.
  5. The #if directive is used to check that package is empty or not. It adds the name passed as the ${PACKAGE_NAME} variable for the non-empty package.
  6. The #parse directive is used to insert the contents of another template.
  7. Now again click on package folder and then select New and you will be able to see your template there. Clicking on that template will open a prompt box to fill the values defined in the above variable.
Isn’t that cool? We can also create similar templates and can use anywhere in the project to avoid the boilerplate code. Android Studio is a very powerful tool and features like templates are really helpful in speeding up the development process. These templates are really helpful if you’re working with other team members so that all of them can use it to their advantage.

Andriod’s in-app update API

Posted on 14/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

We all use a lot of apps on our devices these days. One for shopping, one for banking, others for ordering food, booking tickets, buying groceries and what not. But the moment the app shows “a new update is pending” notification, we mostly ignore it. As a result, we miss downloading the latest and important feature which can further improve the experience of the app. That’s the story from a user’s end.But on the developer’s side, the story is a bit different. We want all our users to stay updated with the latest version of the app. We imagine users clicking on the “update now” button and start using the new feature almost instantly. But the harsh truth is that only a few users keep their apps updated with new versions.The reason is because most of the times, users don’t bother about opening play store to update their apps. In other words, they don’t have the interest or the time to open and update the app until the app stops doing certain tasks which they want to accomplish.

Google has come up with the solution to this problem. It offers an in-app update feature to update the app without interacting/opening the play store. With this feature, a user can download the latest features while using the app. So let’s dive in to see how we can use this feature.

The in-app update is available in Android Play Core library, that shows prompt to the user for an in-app update. There are two different ways in which we can prompt our users that an update is available.

Flexible Flow

If the core functionality of the app doesn’t get affected by the released features then you can use the Flexible Update flow. It allows user to download the update in the background. Once downloading is done, user will be asked to restart the app. Doing so will update the app during the restart process. The benefit of using this Flexible flow is that a user can use the app until the download process is finished. So there is no block time while using the app. User can still use the features as the downloading process is being done in the background.

Immediate Flow

If the core functionality of the app is highly dependent on the released features then you can use the Immediate Update flow. In this feature, a dialog will be prompted to ask the user for downloading and installing updates. The user can’t use the app until the downloading, installing and restarting the app.

Checking if an update is available or not –

For a good user experience, we should always ask the user to update the app only if updates are available. We can check if an update is available or not from the backend.

For that you can use the AppUpdateManager, which will give the AppUpdateInfo object that contains the information about if we need to show the update dialog or not. The updateAvailability method returns these values for the update state :

UNKNOWN

UPDATE_AVAILABLE

UPDATE_IN_PROGRESS

DEVELOPER_TRIGGERED_UPDATE_IN_PROGRESS

Start an update –

Once you have checked for the updates and in case of updates are available then you can use

startUpdateFlowForResults() to update the app.

We will get the following request codes in onActivityResult.

RESULT_CANCELED : This will indicate that user has denied/canceled for the update.

RESULT_OK : This will indicate that user has accepted the update.

RESULT_IN_APP_UPDATE_FAILED : This will indicate that there is some problems occurred during the update.

So now we know how to use in-app update feature to update the app. It’s a good practice to use the Flexible Flow to update the app when there are very few updates and it doesn’t affect the core functionality of your app. However, you have to make a decision on which flow to use as per your requirements and the kind of app you are making. I hope I was clear and concise in my blog and I hope now you have an understanding of how in-app update API work in Android.

Road to your company’s success: Develop Website

Posted on 13/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Anyone who has ever been involved in running a business knows that an effective product or service does not guarantee success. When your potential customers are unaware of your company’s existence, or they don’t understand how you can benefit their lives, they won’t buy your product.

That’s why strong website development is so important. When designed by talented website developers who approach each project individually, websites can be an extremely powerful method of lead generation. The following are just a few of the ways your web presence can help you achieve success:

GETTING CUSTOMER ATTENTION

In most cases, potential customers do not stumble across websites unprompted. It’s much more likely that they’ll find your website as a result of an internet search.

By incorporating keywords into your website’s content, you’ll boost your chances of appearing in a relevant Google search, helping you achieve that critical first step: getting potential customers to know you exist.

To increase your visibility on the web, you should not only feature the keywords prominently on the homepage, but also host a blog that shares relevant information with users. Doing so gives you even more opportunities to reach the kind of people most likely to be interested in your service or product.

DEMONSTRATING YOUR PRODUCT

An intuitive website could be designed to show off to customers what exactly your product or service can do for them. For example, if you’re selling a new tool or promoting an app, a quick video embedded on the homepage to demonstrate it is an excellent visual element to include.

That said, you don’t need to rely on video. Many great websites make effective use of clean and simple graphic design to explain how a service benefits customers in easy-to-digest visual language (e.g. infographics). Whatever route you choose, if your website is organized around explaining what your product does in a concise and engaging manner, you’ll have made your way through another major hurdle on the path to success.

MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES

Although a great website can often convince someone to buy your product right away, it’s true that even your target user will not necessarily click through and convert to a paying customer. Luckily, you can build your website to clearly direct viewers towards additional marketing campaigns, such as an email newsletter. As such, marketing experts often suggest that companies include numerous lead generation forms throughout their sites.

Do you offer free estimates for your service? Include a form for that. Are you currently offering a free promotion? Make sure potential customers can easily spot the form to sign up for it on the relevant portion of your site.

ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY

While you may be fully aware of the fact that your past clients have been thrilled with your service, it is safe to assume new customers are unaware of this fact. Fortunately, a great website easily solves this problem for you: All you need is a page which features testimonials.

Your homepage should be the main feature that grabs the attention of a customer and explains to them how you can address a need in their own life. Testimonials from previous clients help to establish your credibility because consumers are more likely to trust their peers than just the brand speaking for itself. This can be a critical ingredient in your recipe to success, getting previously skeptical people to make a purchase.

CREATING A BRAND

There is a universally accepted fact in the business world: Proper branding is key to success. Your company should have a fully-realized identity that customers recognize in the form of visual imagery, language use, and overall attitude.

The right website may be the most powerful tool you have for establishing your brand early, because it allows you to include all of the elements of effective branding. The images you display on the screen, the tone of your content, and the user experience itself will all come together to reflect the values of your company.

Your website is a representation of your unique brand, and as such it is essential to hire experts who work hard to understand what makes your business stand out. They’ll translate what they learn into a website that will set you on the course to success.

Outsourcing App Development? Here’s how!

Posted on 13/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

App Development

Maybe you have a great idea for a stand-alone app, or that you’ve decided your existing business could use one. Either way, there’s a big difference between having an idea and seeing it through, especially when it comes to mobile apps.

App development is not a simple process. A successful app must perform a useful function, boast appealing design features, and be easy for users to navigate. Understanding these goals is easy; achieving them is not.

If you don’t have much experience in technical design, it’s often smart to outsource your app development project to a web design firm. While you could hire people on a full-time basis, this poses a significant risk: You can’t be completely certain that your app will excite users. If it fails, you’ll be stuck with a department that’s of little use to you, and will cost significant money.

Better to collaborate with professionals who have a track record of delivering quality products to their clients. However, in order to find the right web design firm for your needs–and to ensure that you meet your goals–it’s important to keep certain, key points in mind.

Prepare Thoroughly

When you’re enthusiastic about a new app idea, it’s easy to forget that not everyone will share your vision exactly how you imagine it. You may have detailed plans for how the finished product will look and what it will do, but if you don’t effectively communicate those details to the people actually involved in creating it, there’s a good chance that you’ll wind up with something that misses the mark.

Before meeting with a web design agency, prepare thoroughly. Determine exactly what your app will offer users. If it resembles other popular apps, elaborate on the similarities and how you plan on differentiating.

When you plan to outsource your app development needs, it’s essential that your goals are made clear to the developers. You should also decide whether or not you want the app to be available on iOS, Android, Windows, etc. early on in the process, so you’re not stuck with a team that can’t accommodate your plans.

With the app market as highly competitive as it is currently, it is best to have your app function across multiple platforms. Try to source a development team that has expertise across more than just iOS, and have them show you how each platform will perform to meet your goals.

Establish Timelines & Communication Procedures

If you don’t know much about developing an app, you probably don’t know how long the process generally takes. Save yourself any confusion be establishing milestones and timelines with the team you hire for the job.

Agree upon communication procedures. Even though you won’t be actively working on the project, it’s still yours, and you should be kept in the loop. Know when and how you can reach out to the vendor for updates.

Using a collaborative, organization software can come in handy here or virtual communication methods (e.g. Skype). Whatever the method you choose, make sure it’s easy for you to communicate with each team member throughout the process, and be able to keep track of development goals.

Stay Involved

When you outsource your app development work to a web design firm, you’re most likely not going to participate on a day-to-day basis. That said, along with project milestone timelines, you should put in place timelines for reviewing and testing the product at various stages in its development. This is necessary to confirm that certain key features work properly before moving forward to the next stage in the process.

During these review sessions, you should be involved, especially as the developers get closer to finishing the work. Sometimes, a potentially groundbreaking app fails because issues or problems got overlooked due to lax review processes. You want the opportunity to address these types of issues early.

Be Understood

Just as you may not know a lot about app development, it’s also likely that the team you hire doesn’t know a lot about your business. However, if they’re developing an app related to your brand, it’s important that they have a reasonable familiarity with it.

When considering which design agency to hire, pay attention to how clearly they seem to understand your industry. There are a number of ways to do this: You could seek out development teams that have created similar apps before. You can deliver a thorough presentation explaining the field in as much detail as possible. Or you could simply pay attention to the questions they ask when discussing your project; if they’re truly comfortable with your industry, they’ll often ask the types of questions people in that vertical would ask.

Review Previous Work

When you hire a contractor to paint your house or remodel your kitchen, you look at examples of past work to determine if they’re right for the job. It’s the same with app development.

After you’ve decided upon a list of potential candidates for the project, find out what apps they’ve created in the past and spend some time using them. Ideally, you should find apps that are reasonable similar to the one you’re planning.

Many vendors can tell a good story about their experienced programmers and dedicated approach to customer satisfaction. The ones worth your attention can also supply you with proof that they’ve delivered quality results in the past.

A good place to start are the case studies listed on a developer’s website or profile. Delve into these to really gauge what they’re capable of, and how their past experience can apply to you.

This is an especially important point to remember if you have very little experience or familiarity with the process of developing an app. In order to confirm that your design team understands your thinking and knows how to execute on a concept, it’s useful to test out other apps they’ve developed. This will give you a better idea of how their products work when they’re actually completed.

Outsourcing app development to a software design firm is frequently a better choice than sourcing in-house. In order to get the best results, you need to take the time to properly vet the developers.

Once you have, you also need to remain involved to some degree. While they’ll handle the details, you’re still the one whose vision fueled the project in the first place. With a collaborative approach, you’ll boost your odds of success.

How to Implement App Shortcuts in Android 7.1 Nougat?

Posted on 14/04/202117/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Google has released a major update of the 7.1 version (API 25) with some pretty cool features. One of the extra features is App Shortcuts.

What is an App Shortcut?

App Shortcuts uncover common tasks or activities of your application to the launcher screen. Users can use the App Shortcuts feature by long-press on the app icon.

App Shortcuts are great for making common actions of your app visible and bring back users into the flow in your application.
App Shortcuts can be static or dynamic.
- Static remain same after you define them, you have to redeploy app if you want to make any changes in it.
- Dynamic one can be changed any time or on the fly.
You can create/manage the stack of activities once you open one through a shortcut. Here you can set the flow of all the activities using intents.
You can reorder the shortcuts in their respective. Static shortcuts will come always at the bottom as they’re added first (there’s no rank property to be defined on them)
The labels are char sequence. So you can play with the span in order to change anything in the text of the labels.

App shortcuts can be of two types-

Static Shortcuts– They are defined statically in a resource file; you can’t change without redeploying the build.

Dynamic Shortcuts– The one that can be defined at runtime or on the fly; you can change without redeploying the build.

Note: App must have a minimum SDK version set to API 25.

Let’s start with creating Static Shortcut first.

Static Shortcuts

Open your AndroidManifest.xml and add the following meta-data tag to your parent or main activity which you want to open as soon as your app starts playing the role.

You can add multiple shortcuts in the root tag <shortcuts>. Let’s understand the properties one by one.

enabled: It indicates that the shortcut is enabled or not. If you want to disable this shortcut, just set the parameter value as false.
icon: It will set the icon to your shortcut menu on the left side.
shortcutDisabledMessage: This will show the message if someone will click on the disabled shortcut. However if you have set the “enabled” feature as false, the option will not be shown when you will do long-press but the user can pin a shortcut to the launcher. So pinned shortcut will be disabled at that time and click on it will show a toast message to the user.
shortcutLongLabel: The longer text that will be shown as a label but it will only be shown if there is enough room.
shortcutShortLabel: A short description of the shortcut. This field is mandatory.
intent: The intent will be invoked when the user will click the shortcut icon.

Multiple intents in shortcuts tags will maintain the stack of the activity as you can see in the above example. When you will press the shortcut icon, then “MainActivity” followed by “MyStaticShortcutActivity” will be opened, and when you press the back button it will take you to the “MainActivity”.

Dynamic Shortcuts

The dynamic shortcuts can be modified on the fly without the need of redeploying your app. They are created in java code.

I will show you how you can add dynamic shortcuts. We will use the ShortcutManager and ShortcutBuilder.Info in order to create dynamic shortcuts.

Here we have built the shortcut info using shortcutManager. We can set the properties for the shortcut using it. The properties are the same except id and set rank. So I will explain these two only in case of dynamic shortcuts and other properties have same behavior as static shortcuts.

Here in the above example, we have defined the id shortcut_dynamic as the second parameter of ShortcutInfo.Builder and setRank() are used to set the order of the shortcut which is not present in the case of static shortcuts. Here the first static shortcut will appear followed by rank 0 and then rank 1 shortcut.

As you can see in above image that static shortcut always takes place at the bottom of the list. You cannot change the rank of static shortcuts. They will always be shown in the order they’re defined in the file shortcuts.xml

If we see the method setShortLabel(CharSequence)of ShortcutInfo.Builder we can see that it takes CharSequence as a parameter. Which means that we can play around with it. We can change its color on the fly. We can create a SpannableStringBuilder and set to it a ForegroundColorSpan with the color, we want to apply and then pass the spannableStringBuilder as a shortLabel (as the SpannableStringBuilder is a CharSequence):

ExoPlayer and UI customization

Posted on 23/01/202121/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

In this blog, we will learn how to detect different events of ExoPlayer and how to customize its UI components. The feature to customize the ExoPlayer UI components is available from V2.1.0 onwards.

So let’s start with ExoPlayer events first:

Events

ExoPlayer.EventListener: This event listener gets called when there are any changes in player state. For example, this listener will get called if we change the seek position of the player or if we change the current playing track. There are several callbacks related to this event listener:
- onTimelineChange(): called when the duration of the source has been determined.
- onTrackChange(): called when the source track has changed.
- onPlayerError(): called when some error occurs in playing the source file.
- onPlayerStateChange(): called when the player state changes from one to another. The possible player states are idle, ready, buffering, paused, playing, stopped, completed, error, etc.
- onLoadingChange(): called when the source starts or stops loading.
- onPositionDiscontinuty(): called when the source seeks to some position.
- onPlaybackParameterChange(): called when the current source parameter gets changed.

So if you want to perform any operation or any customization during any of these events, then you can implement this listener. To start getting callbacks for any of the events mentioned above, you can set the ExoPlayer.EventListener to your player object using the addListener() method of the SimpleExoPlayer class.

AudioRendererEventListener: This listener can be used to listen to events related to audio rendering. For example, this listener will get called if the audio format gets changed or if the audio decoder gets initialized. Below are the available callback methods of the AudioRendererEventListener:
- onAudioSessionId(): called when the first audio frame gets rendered and a random integer id is assigned to the audio stream.
- onAudioDecoderInitialized(): called when the audio decoder gets initialized and the audio is ready to play.
- onAudioTrackUnderrun(): called when the audio track gets cut down because of any reason by the ExoPlayer.
- onAudioInputFormatChanged(): called when the audio format gets changed from one to another.
- onAudioEnabled(): called when the audio track is enabled by the track selector.
- onAudioDisabled(): called when the audio track is disabled by the track selector.

To start getting callback events for any of the above-mentioned methods, you can implement the AudioRendererEventListener. You can set this listener to the ExoPlayer object by using the setAudioDebugListener() method of the SimpleExoPlayer class.

VideoRendererEventListener: This listener can be used to listen to events related to video rendering. For example, this listener gets called when the first video frame is rendered on the screen or if a video frame gets dropped because of any reason. Below is the list of available callbacks of VideoRendererEventListener:
- onDroppedFrame(): called when any video frame gets dropped by a player because of any reason. It will also give you the count and duration in milliseconds for the dropped frame.
- onVideoSizeChanged(): called when the size (resolution) of the video gets changed.
- onVideoInputFormatChnaged(): called when the source file format changes from one format to another.
- onVideoEnabled: called when the video track is enabled using a track selector.
- onRenderedFirstFrame(): called when the first frame of the video track gets rendered.
- onVideoDecoderInitialized(): called when the video decoder gets initialized and the video is ready to play.
- onVideoDisabled(): called when video track is disabled using a track selector.

To start getting callbacks for the above-mentioned events, you can implement the VideoRendererEventListener. You can set this listener to the ExoPlayer object using the setVideoDebugListener() method of the SimpleExoPlayer class.

Use of these events is optional. You are free to set the listeners if you need the callbacks. For example, if you want to perform any action when the video size gets changed then you can set the VideoRendererEventListener on SimpleExoPlayer via setVideoDebugListener() or if you want to perform any action when the audio decoder is initialized, you can set the AudioRendererEventListener on SimpleExoPlayer via setAudioDebugListener().

Now, let’s look at the ExoPlayer UI components.

UI Components

PlaybackControlView: It is a view for controlling and managing different actions on the ExoPlayer instance. PlaybackControlView displays standard controls like play/pause, seekbar (for displaying the total duration and current duration), fast-forward and rewind.
SimpleExoPlayerView: It is a high-level view for ExoPlayer to display video, subtitle, and other standard player controllers.

Use of these UI Components is also optional. Developers are free to customize the complete view by implementing their UI components from scratch as well if they want. ExoPlayer has provided the privilege for full customization of UI components. These UI components can be customized in three different ways.

By setting attributes (or calling corresponding methods) on the views.
By globally overriding the view layout files.
By specifying a custom layout file for a single view instance.

Full documentation of these three different ways to customize the attributes is available on the official website of ExoPlayer JavaDoc of PlaybackControllView & SimpleExoPlayerView.

5 attributes are used to customize the ExoPlayer UI.

use_controller: If you want to display the playback controller, set it to true else false.
show_timeout: Input can be any long value which accepts the value in milliseconds. This is the controller view timeout.
fastforward_increment: Input can be any long value which accepts the value in milliseconds. This is used to skip the video playback position forward with the input value. The default value is 15 sec.
rewind_increment: Input can be any long value which accepts the value in milliseconds. This is used for moving playback position backward with the input value. The default value is 5 sec.
controller_layout_id: If a developer wants to make the design of controller by themselves then they can design any layout XML file and can pass it to controller_layout_id.

That’s all for this blog. This blog was all about the different types of events and how to customize some basic UI components of ExoPlayer.

How to use Mockito in Android

Posted on 21/01/202114/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Unit testing is an important part of any product development lifecycle. The main purpose of unit testing is to test components in isolation from each other and that is how our code should be written as well. To achieve this task of writing test cases for a class in isolation from the others, there are times when we need to mock some objects or data while writing our JUnit test cases. As the name Mockito suggests, it is a framework that allows us to do just that.If the UI related part of our code is already tested by some testing framework like Espresso, then it need not be tested again. Also, we do not need to test code that relies on the Android OS. So, we can use Mockito to test our non-UI or functional code that is not dependent on the Android OS.

By default, when we run our local unit test cases, they run against a modified version of the android.jar file which does not contain any actual code because of which, when we try to invoke any method of an Android class from our test case, we get an exception. This is done to ensure that we test only our code and do not depend on some default behavior of the Android classes. We can also change this default behavior of throwing an exception to return zero or null values. However, we should avoid this as it could cause regressions in our test cases which are hard to debug.

We can substitute Android dependencies with mock objects. We can use Mockito for this to configure our mock objects to return some specific value when they are invoked.

Mockito Integration

To integrate Mockito in our Android apps, we first need to include the following dependencies in our app level build.gradle file.

Once we have added the required dependencies, we will create our test class in the directory module-name/src/test/java/, and add the @RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class) annotation at the beginning of this class. This annotation tells the Mockito test runner to validate if the usage of the framework is correct and it also simplifies the mock object initializations.

We have to add @Mock annotation before the field declaration of any object we want to mock.

We can use the when() and thenReturn() methods to return a value when a particular condition is met in order to stub the behavior of any dependency.

Now, let’s have a look at a sample test class. The sample below checks that the method getHelloWorldString() of the class ClassUnderTest matches a given string.

How to Mock

We have 2 methods, mock() and spy() that can be used to create mock methods or fields.

Using the mock() method, we create complete mock or fake objects. The default behavior of mock methods is to do nothing.

Using the spy() method, we just spy or stub specific methods of a real object. As we use real objects in this case, if we do not stub the method, then the actual method is called.

We generally use mock() when we need complete mock objects, and use spy() when we need partial mock objects for which we need to mock or stub only certain methods.

Mocking Behaviour

Let’s look at how we can use Mockito methods to mock behaviour of the mock or spy objects we create.

when() :
It is used to configure simple return behavior for a mock or spy object.

doReturn() :
It is used when we want to return a specific value when calling a method on a mock object. The mocked method is called in case of both mock and spy objects. doReturn() can also be used with methods that don’t return any value.

thenReturn() :
It is used when we want to return a specific value when calling a method on a mock object. The mocked method is called in case of mock objects, and real method in case of spy objects. thenReturn() always expects a return type.

Now, let’s look at the common assertions we can use to assert that some condition is true:

assertXYZ() :
A set of assertion methods.

assertEquals(Object expectedValue, Object actualValue) :
Asserts that two objects are equal.

assertTrue(boolean condition) :
Asserts that a condition is true.

assertFalse(boolean condition) :
Asserts that a condition is false.

With the combination of the above mentioned methods and assertions, we can write test cases using the Mockito mocking framework.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Let’s have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of Mockito:

Advantages

We can Mock any class or interface as per our need.
It supports Test Spies, not just Mocks, thus it can be used for partial mocking as well.

Disadvantages

Mockito cannot test static classes. So, if you’re using Mockito, it’s recommended to change static classes to Singletons.
Mockito cannot be used to test a private method.

There are a few alternative mocking libraries like PowerMock, Robolectric and EasyMock available as well which can be used.