WSO2 ES has an elegant and attractive portal to browse the store. But it lacks the responsive design needed to adapt the layout to the device's size.
I know the code is fully customizable. But I think it needs more documentation about this.
Are you working on new designs for future versions?
At the moment ES only supports up to the tablet level, and smaller device support is already in our road-map and we are working on this.
You can find the ES source here[1], build and try improvements without waiting till the next release. You can report issues/features at[2] or [3].
[1] https://github.com/wso2/enterprise-store
[2] https://wso2.org/jira/browse/STORE
[3] https://github.com/wso2/enterprise-store/issues
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I have a Delphi 5 app that has too many 3rd party components to move to Delphi 10.1, so I am starting from scratch and need some advice from some Experts out there.
It basically is a database program that used DBISAM with a CSV importing and an I used Report Builder for building reports from the data. My goal is to create a multi-device application (Win64 and MacOS). I thought Fast Reports would work but I don't see it as an option for a multi-device program (even after downloading the Fast Reports FMX Install from Embarcadro for Berlin). I was going to use IBLite for a small database, but again don't see this installed. I was told by Embarcadero these components would work for the multi-device app I had in mind.
Any suggestions on where to start. Thanks.
I do not know for sure but you may not find a DBISAM driver for mobile platforms. You should also keep in mind that it is not good idea to load mobile device with CPU consuming tasks. I would suggest to use multi-tire approach. You should divide your application into several parts. In other words you should have a back-end server and a light-weight client implementing UI to your server.
I also think that you do not need to start from scratch. You may improve the existing application step-by-step. First of all you need to understand how to isolate your busyness logic from UI. You may do it even on Delphi 5.
Sorry my answer is too general, but your question does not have enough details too
Is there a good solution for A|B Testing in mobile apps like online? I know with iOS it's against the TOS to have different user experiences with identical actions, but what about Android? And what about firms like Apsalar which claim to offer A|B Testing in their analytics for apps? How would one implement that?
Artisan mobile makes an A/B testing solution for iOS and Android.
The basic idea is that you drop the SDK in your app and then put it out in the app store. You can use the service to create A/B tests and optimize your application without having to touch the code or go back through the app store for each test.
For mobile apps, A/B testing basically works by replacing static, hard-coded objects with dynamic objects that can be controlled from a remote server.
This methodology raises a potential performance issue: What if the end user's device is not connected to pull configuration data for an object being tested? We've built Splitforce (http://splitforce.com) to seamlessly setup and manage A/B testing in mobile apps while controlling for performance risk.
Los details
Once the SDK and experiment has been integrated, non-technical product or marketing folks can setup new tests or tweak existing tests on-the-fly - without having to resubmit to the app stores or hassle engineers.
On first app launch, the mobile app requests configuration data from the server and then caches that data locally on the device. This is to both ensure a consistent user experience on subsequent app launches, and prevent corrupt test results by guaranteeing accurate attribution of conversion events to variations.
If the end user's connection fails or is timed-out on first app launch, the library displays a hard-coded 'default' variation. And to make sure that everything is looking good before you go live, we've built a 'shake to preview' functionality in debug mode that does just that :-)
Once the app is deployed with Splitforce event data are stored locally and sent back to the website to be displayed for each variation alongside measurements of observed improvement and statistical confidence.
Instructions on integration of the SDKs and new tests can be found at https://splitforce.com/documentation.
And how is it used?
We've seen Splitforce used to A/B test:
UI elements + layouts (color, text, images, ad/menu placements)
UX workflows
Game dynamics + rules
Prices + promotions
We've also seen the tool used to control mobile apps remotely, by essentially setting one variation of a test subject to 100%.
Yes there is: E.g. the company Leanplum offers a Visual Interface Editor for iOS and Android: This requires no coding, and Leanplum will automatically detect the elements and allow you to change them. No engineers or app store resubmissions required.
Apple must have updated their TOS (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#user-interface) - At least I am not aware of anything that prohibits altering the UI in a way that the Leanplum Visual Editor is doing it.
Generally that is achieved by method swizzling (iOS) and reflection (Android).
To learn more about the Leanplum Visual Interface Editor, check out leanplum.com. They offer a free 30-day trial.
(Disclaimer: I am an Engineer at Leanplum.)
I wrote a small open source project called Switchboard.
It let's you A/B test, remote configure and stage rollout things in your native mobile app. It contains a server component that specifies what information the application should have and 2 native clients for android and iOS.
You can find the codebase at github.com/keepsafe/switchboard and a blog post about how you can use it HERE
The new kid around the block is Arise.io. They provide an A/B testing service for iOS and Android.
I wrote MSActiveConfig, an extremely flexible framework to do remote configuration + A/B testing on iOS, with a portable format to be able to implement clients on other platforms: https://github.com/mindsnacks/MSActiveConfig.
This framework is being used in applications with more than 5 million users.
There have been a spate of new entrants in this field...you could check out Swerve, Appiterate, leanplum...all of them seem to be having SDKs for iOS as well, not really sure whether and how Apple TOS allows for that, but since there are some many of them doing it, there must be a way.
Yes, new entrants are showing up in app A/B testing practically every week! But, I think Appiterate has gone two steps ahead of other competitors by creating a visual interface, without any need to re-write code. I have seen their platform (you can ask for an invite. I got a demo within 12 hours) and believe me, it is actual WYSIWYG that they are providing.
I just heard that a company I do work for may be bringing in the Pyxis Mobile application development system. When I google it most of what I find is from the company's web site and that is not very informative from a geek perspective. Can any one shed some light on what sort of programming environment it is and what programing language is involved (please let there be a text based language). Any additional information would be great.
Note: the company/product changed their name to Verivo in January.
Full Disclosure - I work as an engineer at Pyxis Mobile. However, I have been in the mobile space for 7+ years and have evaluated several approaches to mobile so hopefully this is helpful.
Pyxis Mobile provides a set of tools and components to build cross platform mobile applications. Let me outline them first.
1. Application Studio - All application development, backend integration, user provisioning and application maintenance/debugging is done w/in this tool. Application Studio (for now) is a Windows based desktop app.
2. Application Clients - Pyxis Mobile provides native client runtimes for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Android devices. These runtimes get branded for the customer through a build service and are primed to point to a specific Application Server URL.
3. Application Server - Pyxis Mobile App Server runs on the .NET stack (on IIS). All client communication is proxied via this server. This server is able to connect to varied of backend systems (via the Plugin Framework listed below) and respond to the client in a mobile optimized manner. This server needs a SQL Server (2005 or newer) for configuration access, session management, logging and more.
4. Plugin Framework - The Plugin Framework is a backend component that provides system specific pre-built access to several of the enterprise and cloud based systems (Oracle, Siebel, SAP, Salesforce.com, social feeds, REST/SOAP web services, etc.) and also offers an API layer in .NET and Python (using IronPython) to allow even further customization. A plugin is essentially comprised of one or more DLLs or a Python file. These assets are then dynamically loaded to normalize communication between Pyxis Mobile and the customers' backend systems.
5. Push Services - This provides a cross-platform push layer that can poll a backend system for change and alert a mobile device via BlackBerry Push, Apple Push Notification Services (APNS) or Android's Cloud to Deice Messaging (C2DM).
6. OverWatch Analytics - This is an optional (but included) component to track users/devices and provide integrated analytics on what the users are using and what kind of devices and locales makes up your users.
The application itself is "coded" via configuration that is build in App Studio. Pyxis Mobile abstracts away from the code so that you can work at a higher level without having to worry about the wide array of device variances (GPS, touch screens, camera, accelerometer, push, screen resolution, etc.). You can drag fields onto a from, connect screens via menus or buttons, set up caching rules and more in this graphical utility. This configuration (essentially think of an XML like document) is interpreted by the native client layer to produce a rich application. There is also a scripting layer in Lua that allows to really customize behavior via code.
The real value of Pyxis Mobile comes up when you have change to make. The clients check for new configuration at app startup or if the server forces the client to get new configuration. This gives you great agility. Lets say once your application is deployed you want start using the swipe gesture to go next/prev through a set of records. This change on other platforms would mean writing some platform specific code to trap and interpret the swipe to perform a navigation (you couldn't trap a swipe on a non-touch screen). However, in Pyxis Mobile this is a simple configuration change that can be quickly deployed to the App Server and the clients automatically download and use the new configuration. No compilation, no redeployment or re-download for the end users.
I could keep going, but hope this provides some level of guidance.
Beware of Pyxis Mobile. While many of the things they say do work, there are some serious platform issues (as a geek) which I've experienced.
1) No version control system process. The Application studio can basically only be developed on by one person at a time or you risk having your changes overwritten by a fellow developer. The "principle of last save" is very much in play.
2) No unit test coverage. This isn't the biggest issue for a lot of people, but it's a concern for anyone who wants to work in the Enterprise world.
3) The middleware server gets you some value, but it's also a PITA to work with. There is no concept of "client side storage" unless you consider the middleware server the client side. If your phone goes out of coverage, your app won't work. Again, this might not be an issue for you.
4) The application has no true scripting language to work with. The middleware server allows you to intercept requests and responses and modify what you're doing there, but it's not the most elegant solution considering that a native application can have something as simple as "if this then X else Y." This can be accomplished with Pyxis, but the whole process is convoluted and more complicated than one would think it needs to be.
5) Lack of documentation. There's some training guides and the GUI is easy enough to get around for simple apps; however, when you need to do something with guts, you're left relying on Pyxis professional services. There's really no developer community to pose questions to.
I have more complaints, but they are more opinion oriented than Q/A oriented.
I just got note about the most recent comments. I don't want to turn this into a thread of back and forth, but did want to throw a couple of quick notes.
Regarding the points on version control and documentation/developer community - no big contest there. We are definitely working on these shortcommings. We have some basic pieces in place, but we have big plans to focus on this.
Regarding unit testing - we provide a very open interface to our middleware and backend components and they can be very easily unit tested with a bit of instrumentation. We run a ton of unit and integration tests internally. However, mobile unit testing is extremely difficult to get right. We'll investigate this further.
Regarding #4 around middleware and offline capabilities - things are a lot different now. With version 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 our products have increasing become more capabale offline and now features a secure local database if necessary. I can provide more details as necessary, but you can certainly login and operate the app even if you are out of coverage for weeks at a time!
Regarding #5, we've had a scripting engine for over 2 years. Its Lua based and its actually quite powerful and fast. It was BlackBerry only till the most recent release. Given Apple's change of stance on allowing scripting we now allow scripting on BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone and Android as well now!
#RockMeetHardplace - feel free to reach out to me directly and I'll be happy to give you more detailed live demos of our latest platform. I am at - arunSPAMNOTatpyxismobiledotcom (drop the "SPAMNOT" and replace the at and dot). I happen to be the Director of Software and interested in knowing more about the issues you had.
I am developing an ASP.NET intranet application that needs to have an interactive map interface.
There are some pretty neat Silverlight mapping plugins that I think could work well, specifically:
ArcGIS Silverlight API: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/silverlight/
DeepEarth mapping framework: http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
There are no doubt many more plugins out there that will allow easy interaction between ASP.NET and the mapping interface (please suggest some if I've missed the major players).
My major concern however is using these tools with local data sources. What is the best option here? All I need is some basic satellite imagery of moderate resolution and some overlays of cities and country borders. Can I download a dataset of these images? I dont really care if they are up to date or not, so long as the photos were taken in the last 20 years.
I want to be able to use local data sources because external internet connections could be very slow due to the nature of the organisation's work, Intranet communication will always be much faster.
To summarise:
1.) where can I find a dataset of moderate quality global satellite imagery?
2.) Which web based mapping plugin will allow me to plug into such a data source?
If I can get something like the DeepEarth demo (http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth) but grabbing the data from internal company servers I would be very happy.
You can check out the free geodata listing at:
- http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=1
Or have a look at:
http://downloads.cloudmade.com/
where cloudmade provides downloadable openstreetmap data converted to shape files.
Is there a simple and automatic way of checking if a visitor to my website (written in asp.net) is using the latest version of his browser? This would allow me to display a message to inform them that they're running an old version and that they might want to upgrade.
My website is tested on most broswers but I don't test old versions (such as Internet Explorer 6 etc). When one of my visitors is using such an old version, basically, I would like to encourage (not force) them to upgrade.
Of course I could do this myself by getting the version of the browser and look it up in my database but I don't want to have to maintain a 'browser version' database myself.
Any ideas?
Speaking as a user of websites, if I come across a site that advised me to upgrade my browser then that would be an immediate black mark against that site.
I might not be able to upgrade (if I'm accessing from a corporate network for example); I might have a specific reason for using a particular version (if I'm a web developer wanting to ensure compatibility with my user community for example).
So personally, I would say that a blanket disclaimer that you don't test this site on earlier versions would be the way to go. That's quite apart from the technical challenge of what you want to do.
Edit: as Yeti points out, however valid my concerns, I don't answer the question directly. This is done in Pace's answer, and the w3schools resource he points to gives you what you need to do this on the client side.