I have been working quite sometime with Blackberry application development but customizing UI and components is something am not very familiar with. I understand that the sublayout, paint, getpreferredWidth, getpreferredHeight methods are to be overridden to customize layouts and components. But still the idea is very vague to me. I am still not able to confidently proceed with the development of UI using these concepts. Can someone explain to me the basics of this? I would like to have a clear understanding from the experts out there.
Best thing to do is look at the source code to the Advanced UI Components that RIM provides, in conjunction with the API documentation.
Related
I Have Created A Beautiful Design Of My App Using Adobe XD. But Now I Want To Convert That Design Into App That Looks Exact The Same. How do I go from an Adobe XD prototype to a working app?
Your question sounds a bit like your searching for a way to convert your design into an app without dealing with the code a lot (in a kind of WYSIWYG-fashion similar to what Adobe Muse does for websites). My answer assumes that that's what you're asking. If not, please feel free to ignore my answer...
Adobe XD is only a design app. This means, that it doesn't really have code generation features. Having said that, there are now a few plugins that can support you in writing this code (e.g. Lightning Storm CC – to my knowledge – supports Android UI export).
Also, as Ash Ryan Arnwine mentioned before, design specs support you when developing the UI (you'll need to code it yourself, though).
All in all, there is no way around either knowing how to code or hiring a developer when creating an Android app. Therefore, these tools can only support you in development, not replace the technical aspect of developing an app. The answer to your question, therefore, is that there, unfortunately (or fortunately – depending on how you look at it?) isn't any way to quickly "convert" a prototype (which really is nothing more than a prototype) into a real app other than coding it yourself (possibly with the assistance of the tools mentioned by Ash Ryan Arnwine and me).
Since there are many unique workflows out there for designers and developers, there's no single answer to your question.
Here are a few things worth looking into:
Adobe XD design specs: View design specs published from Adobe XD, which enable you to inspect and comment on the flows, measurements, and styles.
Adobe XD for Jira Cloud: Associate XD prototypes and design specs with Jira issues to keep projects organized and provide developers with everything they need to know right within Jira.
Adobe XD plugins: Plugins are coming soon to XD. A couple of common use cases for plugins is designer-developer and design-to-code workflows. If the plugin you want to see isn't when plugins launch, the APIs will be open for anyone to build it.
The answer depends on your response to this question: Are you ready to spend money to make this happen? if so, there are two Adobe plugins that try to convert your prototype(anyway, you'll need to code and make efforts in Android Studio). Those plugins are:
Lightning Storm
Yotako
I waste a lot development time on UI related tasks. General things like navigation and forms layout really bog me down.
I have been researching various JavaScript Frameworks that can be used to UI design. I've looked at jQuery UI, MochaUI, Sencha (formerly Ext JS) and few others but they all seem to be lacking.
I would love to find something that really simplifies UI development.
Any recommendations?
ExtJS,Dojotoolkit, jQuery UI really makes UI coding easier..
ExtJS even have their designer application to make UI development easy. What do you feel they are lacking?
I'm new to MVC but am working hard to find my way through it. I'm currently at the point where I know enough to be dangerous, but not quite enough to actually do anything useful.
I'm building a site which I'd like to be very flexibly "skinable". It could also end up quite large, so I really want to use areas.
I found this great article about skinning.
and this great thread on writing a custom view engine that is "area aware".
I'm thinking of throwing myself in the deep end and seeing if I can build a custom view engine that is both area aware and has theme support. I guess that it's kind of a hybrid of these two articles.
Before I start - and also, more to the point - "before I start, lose hair, finish, implement and build my massive app on it", can anyone comment if they think that this is a good idea?
I'm just wondering if there's a library out there that already does this, or a much easier way that I'm completely missing...
Any suggestions most welcome!!
Thanks in advance,
Z
If you're going to do something, it's generally a good idea to have a good reason to do it.
If you're objective is to enable themes, the easiest way to do this is to set the theme in viewData and have a custom HtmlHelper include the necessary .css and .js references based on the viewdata's theme key.
For a more robust solution, Telerik has an open source extension of ASP.NET MVC, which is very useful for developing your UI and enables theme-functionality : http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc . Using their starter kit would probably save you a good bit of time.
I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.
I would like to know which steps and which concepts do you follow when you're starting a web application from scratch.
When you're asked to develop a new web application and the only thing you're told is which features are wanted, how do you do ?
How and in which order do you conceive all the different layers in your application, from the database design to the UI design, without forgetting the back-end ...
Which tools do you use ? which rules do you follow ?
Thanks in advance.
I like to start with a story board. I use mock screens for the examples.
I find this article very resourceful.
Hope it helps :)
Structured process you must know to develope a web appplication
Any answer to this question is exceptionally subjective.
In regard to how and in what order, you can refer to these threads, which are clearly inconclusive:
Which is more important? DB design or coding?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/329160?sort=votes#sort-top
In regard to the tools, here is a thread:
What do you use for web development and why you think it rocks?
The rules you follow are partially tied to the tools you use, and partially tied to the design you choose. You should have a sense of the benefits and limitations of available frameworks and tools to do what you need done.
In designing the app, you can do as much pre-planning as you feel is necessary to understand the problem (i.e: story-boarding, ui mockups, entity relationship diagramming, functional specifications, etc.). The goal is to know what problems you are solving and what interactions you expect the user to enact on the application, and then use suitable technologies to achieve that goal - optimally in the most efficient and flexible manner possible.
Try to write a bit of a functional specification, just something simple to capture in writing the different functions that the app will have to handle. Once you have this done, you can sit down and work out what framework / language / platform / etc. best suits your needs. At this stage mockups will also help - try to find out exactly what screens you need and what information has to be on each screen - don't worry about the layout, just the necessary information. From there you can go on to coding up each of these screens - make sure that you only provide functionality that is in your design - there's no need to overcomplicate things just because you can.