Mobile app creation should expand beyond your native developer kit. Often, branching out, expanding opportunities and implementing innovative features requires a unique approach. SDK communication and interaction are important, as are powerful third-party tools.
TNW’s article focusing on startup app platforms dives into the benefits of creating content from scratch. The article focuses on development kit intuitiveness, API and HTML5 accessibility, all of which make “building content from scratch easier and less time consuming.” In short: Mobile apps are becoming increasingly diversified, and customization is the industry’s new king.
The following tools work well with most app development projects, and they offer great utility for anyone seeking high-end design, accessibility and functionality. If you’re in need of expansive tools for endless options, flexibility and high-end design, the following resources will likely help.
Tool One: Appery.io
Within the realm of mobile apps, not every cloud-based program is created equal. Formatting options aside, having a streamlined development tool is incredibly useful for enriching your newest creation via back-end services.
Spanning iOS, Android and Windows Phone accessibility, Appery.io is a great option for gurus creating hybrid applications from nothing but binary files. Chances are, if you’ve run into storage problems when laying out resources, you’ve sought an external database capable of storing soon-to-be-implemented features.
Appery.io utilizes a cloud database capable of offering built-in user options, scalability and a non-intrusive background for your user interface needs. Additionally, the tool’s plug-ins are already packaged within Appery.io’s REST API services, so you can publish plug-ins as project templates for ongoing projects and new versions.
Some Appery.io features include:
- Enterprise MobileSafe Security
- Integrated MbaaS support
- Supported connectivity with any REST API
- Project history for previous version accessibility
Additionally, extending your app has never been easier with Appery.io’s featured plug-ins, ranging from AT&T, Salesforce Oauth API and Edmunds API.
Tool Two: Bizness Apps
Every app is different, and each creator requires specialized resources to complete various goals. Modern apps have been centered on real-time business updates, and many industries have become contingent upon such innovations.
When business apps are considered, having access to the world’s leading information providers is vital. App development aside, content is important, and you’d be stuck up the proverbial river without viable, informative tools with which to paddle. Nongovernmental organizations, bands, sports teams and restaurants have begun utilizing Bizness Apps for native applications, and its information updated via social media, RSS feeds and online content guarantee relevancy.
With little programming needed, Bizness Apps is an app-building “fuel source” rather than a technical tool. Additionally, its easy-to-control platform grants builders the ability to become designers, publishers and owners of their own apps with respect to accumulated data.
Features include:
- Contact information integration
- Geo locations for ease of targeting
- Mobile shopping cart, including tax rates and delivery fees
- Scannable QR code accessibility
If you’re looking for a free tutorial guide complete with comprehensive walkthroughs, Bizness Apps offers a free reseller guide here.
Tool Three: DHTMLX Touch
Another rising app development tool, DHTMLX Touch, provides an open source JavaScript resource library for creating HTML5-based mobile apps. Make no mistake: DHTMLX isn’t just a collection of UI widgets. It’s a comprehensive framework capable of boosting your Web applications’ relevancy, appearance and overall effectiveness.
DHTMLX Touch’s primary benefits stem from its intuitive object inheritance. Your apps units are defined with properties, expanding to options capable of defining units as “arrays” of objects — further defining your UI’s complexities. Your app’s data is passed into components, and other strings may be gathered into nearby resources.
The tool’s global data storage is both useful and advanced, and its relations between different data elements make development easy. It’s client-side-based, so automatic updates across UI elements are always controlled.
DHTMLX Touch key features include:
- Full touch support
- Cross-browser accessibility
- Full-featured data grid
- Server-side integration
For a comprehensive scheduler API doc list, check out DHTMLX’s documentation section.
Tool Four: Tabris
A nifty mobile app tool developed upon a Java framework, Tabris delivers standardized JavaEE technology to seamlessly create server-based applications. Throughout creation, native clients are considered the application’s UI players. These clients are granted access via the URL’s services, making it a stable, updatable tool for business-minded app developers.
Tabris excels in safety standards, and its Open Source Server Parts utilize standardized servlet technology while running on JEE servlet containers. Well-integrated with OSGi and Eclipse technologies — such as EMF, CDO and Birt — Tabris-created user interfaces are streamlined via natively rendered iOS and Android widgets. Gaining access to complex data models has never been easier, and Tabris’s own Tables and Virtual Trees offer full push access for clients in need.
Some features include:
- Pop-up, grouplist and template UI components
- Default and extended component view for efficiency and accuracy
- Simplified CSS editing scheme
- Skin Builder tool for quick customization
With Tabris, accessing extensive tutorials is important for utilizing Eclipse Rap, Eclipse 4 and Eclipse SDK platforms. Different application models, views and software development tutorials are available here.
Tool Five: Flight
Another “external” development tool, Flight by Canto combines powerful, cloud-based resources and software-as-a-service advertisement platform options to give your mobile apps excellent outreach. App development isn’t complete without scale and marketability, and Flight offers its self-service platform to reduce the rollout process’s cost and complexity.
Mobile app developers focusing on marketing solutions can utilize Flight’s intuitive design to build ads, traffic information via live updates, extend ads with created apps, and measure, optimize and increase performance via real-time measures and the platform’s comprehensive, online analytics.
Some Flight features include:
- Secure link sending to avoid bulky attachments
- Full-length audio streaming previews
- Custom application formats, fonts, catalogs and presentations
Flight by Canto’s regular webinars facilitate developer growth while maintaining its attentive approach to brand management.
Tool Six: Droid Draw
An online tool capable of crafting great graphical user interfaces, Droid Draw is a vital component of any Android app developer’s utility belt. Although it is primarily utilized by Android developers, stand-alone executable versions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Well-crafted to make Java programming life easier, Droid Draw excels in a variety of areas. Complex shapes, patterns and the LOGO programming language define the tool’s feasibility. Make no mistake, though; Droid Draw’s incredible simplicity hasn’t sacrificed power, as its powerful graphical programming abilities offer time-tested and true approaches to mobile app UI creation.
Droid Draw’s provisions expand to animation, image sharing, dragging, zooming, quick command entry, importability and exportability. Droid Draw’s Wakelock delivers an innovative approach to demo views, so your app is always streamlined for functionality and visibility.
Notable features include:
- In-app tutorials
- Wakelock during animation for continuous testing
- Quick command entry
- Xatik accessibility for quick sharing
Droid Draw’s GUI builder’s tutorial is available here, including needed xml directories and complete codes.
Tool Seven: Sensor Simulator
A Java application capable of simulating input sensor data, Sensor Simulator grants app developers the ability to transmit signals to Android emulators. This app is incredibly useful for streamlining multifaceted mobile apps, and its system emulators span orientation sensors, accelerometers, compasses and temperature sensors.
In essence, Sensor Simulator is the app developer’s Swiss army knife for sensor testing where hardware connectivity isn’t an option. The tool grants users options for moving, rotating, sliding and mouse accessibility, and its functionality is only limited by Android’s physical limitations — making its future uses incredibly adaptable to new hardware.
Other Simulator features include:
- Yaw, pitch and roll orientation
- Wide-ranging degree control for accuracy
- Enabling and disabling of local sensors for isolated testing
If you’re seeking Sensor Simulator via Android’s SDK, this link contains the needed files.
App Development and the Future
User interaction, social graphing and removal of time-consuming processes outline powerful app tools, and maintaining a comprehensive toolbox of the world’s newest app needs guarantees a flexible reaction to industry trends and evolving technology.
Increasingly, software development kits are supporting innovative creations, and the future will rely upon ease-of-accessibility and wide industry reach. Business apps, sensor emulators and UI creation have become the norm, and many great apps are experiencing constant upgrades, enhanced features and incredible features.
Within the app world, few golden rules hold truer in terms of software application development, intuitive kit functionality and flexibility:
“Content is king.”