Category Archives: Mobility

Android Development & How to Setup Mobile Device

The article presents quick tip on how to have your android app (developed using Android IDEs such as Eclipse or Titanium-based IDE) installed on your mobile device and have them tested right from your mobile device rather than from emulator.   While trying to get this done with both Samsung and Motorola mobile handset, I failed on following front when I was working with Titanium IDE:   Titanium IDE was unable to detect android device. All that I did was connect my mobile device and laptop with a cable and, expected magic to happen.   After doing a little research, I figured out what needs to be done on both …

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Posted in Android, Mobility. Tagged with .

Reason Why Titanium Studio Failed to Start

The article is a quick placeholder for those who downloaded titanium studio, installed the same but failed to get it started and got Java related error. After getting my hands dirty with Cordobva and Phonegap, I wanted to get setup with Titanium Studio. This is where I went ahead and downloaded the Titanium studio by getting myself signed up. After it got downloaded, I installed and tried to start it. However, it failed to start and throw following error: “Java was started but returned exit code=13” Well, after reading from some Stackoverflow pages, I went ahead and put the following code in TitaniumStudio.ini. But that failed to solve my problem. …

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Posted in Mobility.

Cordova Hello World with AngularJS & Bootstrap

The article presents a quick code sample to get started with Cordova or PhoneGap and AngularJS and Bootstrap CSS framework.Interesting thing to note is that the development can be be same as if you are developing an AngularJS & Bootstrap Web app. This is inline with PhoneGap or Cordova being used to create a Hybrid mobile app. Following are simple steps to get started: Create a HelloWorld app with Cordova or Phonegap. Take a look at our previous article on how to get started with Cordova Hello World app. Once setup, what you have got is www/index.html where you could put your Bootstrap CSS path and AngularJS path. As like …

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Posted in Android, Mobility. Tagged with , , .

Cordova Hello World with Android & Eclipse IDE

This article is aimed to get you started with Cordova, an open-source mobile development framework, with Eclipse IDE and write your first Android app, Hello World. Read about what is Cordova, how & who should use it on this page. Following will be detailed in this article: Why Cordova? Setup Cordova with Android Create Cordova Hello World App with command-line interface (CLI) Setup Cordova Hello World App into Eclipse Why Cordova? Following are some of the reasons why you would want to use Apache Cordova mobile app development framework. Well, following can be same for other Mobile development framework such as Titanium. If you are a web developer and want …

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Posted in Android, Mobility. Tagged with .

Top 15 Mobility Architect Interview Questions

The article lists down some of the questions I happen to discuss with candidates appearing for mobility architect/lead position. These are mostly architectural level questions and cut across most mobility platforms. Feel free to share questions you came across in your interviews. What are different types of mobile apps? Mention some of the platforms you worked with?Native vs Mobile Web vs Hybrid applications Native Apps, Web Apps, and Hybrid Apps Native, HTML5, or Hybrid: Understanding Your Mobile Application Development Options When develop for native apps and when mobile web? Mobile Website vs. Mobile App (Application): Which is Best for Your Organization? What are key differences in architecting/developing consumer apps and …

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Posted in Mobility. Tagged with , .

Mobile Testing Tools & Methodologies used @ Expedia

The article lists down tools & methodologies used for testing Expedia mobile apps (both mobile web & native). Test-driven Development (TDD) TestNG: TestNG is a unit testing framework similar to JUnit. Apart from unit tests, TestNG can also be used to cover other categories of tests such as functional, end-to-end, integration etc. EasyMock: It is, primarily, used for mocking and custom solution for stubbing. As a mocking framework, EasyMock provides mock objects for interfaces by generating them on the fly using Java’s proxy mechanism.   Automated Acceptance Testing Frank (iOS): Frank, primarily, allows you to write and execute automated acceptance tests (using Cucumber) against your iOS application to verify its functionality. Simply …

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Posted in Mobility, QA. Tagged with , , .

Mobile Apps Testing Frameworks Used at LinkedIn

The article lists down tools & frameworks that are used for mobile app testing at LinkedIn. Vows: Vows is a behavior driven development framework for Node.js. It is used to do asynchronous testing with Node.js. The primary feature of the framework is its support for asynchronous testing with Node and, the ability to run concurrent tests. Vows also supports code coverage reporting. Robotium: Robotium is an Android test automation framework that has full support for native and hybrid applications. It supports black-box UI tests for android applications. It is used to test native LinkedIn android app. Selenium: Selenium is used to automate end-to-end testing with mobile web browsers. FoneMonkey: FoneMonkey …

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Posted in Mobility, QA. Tagged with , , .

3 Simple Steps to Decompile Android Mobile Apps (APK)

  The article represents 3 simple steps to decompile an Android mobile app. Following are different tools that will be needed to decompile the android downloadable apk file to Java files: Dex2Jar: The tools reads .dex files and convert the same to smali files. JD-GUI: A standalone graphical utility that displays Java source codes of *.class files Following are set of things I did to decompile android mobile application (apk files). Download the android version of mobile application. The android version comes with apk extension. Execute following command with dex2jar application to extract mobile apps files with apk extension in form of *smali files: d2j-dex2jar.bat <appname>.apk Execute following command with JD-GUI application: jd-gui.exe …

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Posted in Mobility.

Tools & Frameworks that were used to Build Instagram (Android)

The article represents different tools and framework that were found to be used in the android version of Instagram mobile app. Please give a shout if you disagree with one or more entries listed below. Tools & Frameworks Following represents a list of tools & frameworks, mostly, open-source that have been used to build android version of Instagram app: OAuth-Signpost (Authentication) Oauth signpost library is used to handle oAuth communication. Signpost is the easy and intuitive solution for signing HTTP messages on the Java platform such as Android in conformance with the OAuth Core 1.0a standard.  Signpost exposes a minimalistic API designed for two purposes: Signing HTTP messages and requesting tokens from an OAuth service provider. The article on this page explains on …

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Posted in Mobility, Tools. Tagged with , .

Google PACO for Tracking Trends on Personal Stuff

The article talks about features & benefits of Google PACO mobile app that one could use for tracking analytics data in relation with personal stuff. Thanks for reading it further. Ever wanted to check on how are you doing in relation with some of the following habits on the personal front: Software Developer: How much time are you devoting on some of the following: Learning new technologies by reading one or more webpages/books Trying out/evaluating new tools & frameworks (this could be tracked on weekly basis rather than daily basis) Physical Training (PT): How much time are you spending daily on doing one or more PT exercises such as running? In …

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Posted in Mobility. Tagged with , .

Tips to Quickly Get Started with Android Hello World!

android hello world

The article is written for those curious ones (Java developers at all level) who want to quickly get started with Android programming. This is what I did and got started with few hiccups (in relation with starting ADB server) to get the hello world done. Download right set of tool: Visited the android SDK download page where I got option to download appropriate libraries/tools based on whether I am using one of the existing supported IDE such as eclipse. Although, I am an experienced Java developer and use Eclipse, I rather went with downloading entire ADT bundle consisting of eclipse and SDK platform/tools. Choosing System Type: While I downloading I …

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Posted in Android, Mobility. Tagged with .

Tools & Frameworks That Were Used to Build WhatsApp (Android)

  The article talks about the tools & frameworks that got used to build WhatsApp mobile application for Android platform. The reason why I decided to write this article is the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook in $19 billion and, my curiosity on what could have gone in building such application from technology perspective. The objective is to let Android developers take a peek into WhatsApp Android application and, get appropriate information on tools & frameworks that could be used to build a messaging application such as WhatsApp. Thanks for reading it further. Tools & Frameworks Used in WhatsApp Following is a list of tools & frameworks that were found to …

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Posted in Mobility. Tagged with , .