Thursday 21 July 2016

App Update

Here are some updates from iReka Soft with apps we just published and updated.

Nota Magnet (Android / iOS)

This app is note took from IMKK courses and have some declaration and useful tool. For Android we have implemented push notification, to get latest news and updates. It is also integrated with back-end to get some news.

Muslim Phrases (Android)

Collection of phrases in Arabic for conversation that can be copy paste on messenging apps.

Amazing Places (Android)

Simple app that show amazing places around the world. Data get from our back-end. Integrated with Google Maps, so you can know exactly where is the amazing place that you are looking at.

Guess Emoji (iOS - updated)

This app is developed quite 2 years ago. But just updated because just found the solution for bugs, (critical but on iOS 8 onward) with objc_selection.

Alphabet Flash Card TV (Apple TV)

This is Apple TV app that show words from A to Z, mostly using animals. Also have voice over from synthesizer. It's good for baby to learns words.


Offshore Apps

I think that's it for now, we are also developing apps for physical businesses that are in progress. Stay tune.


21 July 2016
Hijazi


Learning Journey with Android

I cannot emphasize more on how much we should keep up to date with the latest knowledge as an technopreneur in mobile technology.

Last year, I started to learn Android more seriously, and really to start back with new tool Google provided, Android Studio. It's far more superior than Eclipse. I was attempted to develop on Eclipse but I couldn't bear with the sloppyness, contrasts to Xcode. Well, I am well verse in Xcode for about 5 years now. Xcode is still a mature and robust tool for developing apps for Apple platform.

So why Android? Well in mobile arena, Android is the most popular OS by numbers, we can see majority using Android. In short, when many people use it, it's important. And it's opportunity to solve problem for those who are using them.

So to cater this needs, I decided to learn Android, I took course on Udemy by instructor from Spain. He has soft tone that I can follow him throught. One memorable moment when while I learning the Android part, my wife is about to deliver our first baby. The course is seperated by short video so it's easy to digest and to look back which part you want to revise.

Besides taking course, I at first learnt from i-programmer website, which I follow all the tutorials. So after completed the tutorials I took the Udemy course.

Exprerience Learning Android

From my background of developing iOS apps, with MVC, modal view controller and I play a lot with VC (view controller), in android there is no VC. And the file organization is like web development, cannot be rearrange. And on Android we will have components like Activity, Fragment, Adapter, Modal and so on.

If you want to learn Android from iOS perspective, here is my take; Activity is like a modal of View Controller, and if you want to put View Controller's view inside the modal View Controller you have to use Fragment. Fragment is a smaller component that can resides inside Activity. Activity own your whole window, that's why I refer to modal View Controller.

Navigation style on Android is always like to open modally. When you back you close the modal window. So it might sound a bit easier.

When passing data between Activity we use Intent. Unlike iOS, we pass data by putting the value to the next properties we want to open but not in Android. We call an Intent to open desired Activity. And we also add extra information on the Intent (with a key) so that the opened Activity will have some information about the intent's extra string information.

Push Notification is much more less trickier than iOS, on server side because no certificate for sandbox and production. On Android it treat equally. Another workaround with push notification is using third party like OneSignal, make it easier to send push notification for promotion easily.

Submitting to Google Play

Submitting to Google Play is wonderful. Just after serveral hours the app you published will be avalaible on the store. It's more straight forward, you just need to sign the APK for Google Play.

Summary

Android is really important for mobile in the future, as it's become as good as iOS in term of functionality, and the fast adoption on devices, tablets, TV and many other things you can imagine is capable to running Android. So to understand and to learn this platform is crucial and will help more people in mobile industry.

** I hope can write more on Android progress so far **