I am working on an application that needs to detect and switch languages.
I have been looking for some best practices on how to properly do this on mobile devices.
If there wa way to access the phone (iphone, android, windows) and determine the language it is using? or should I be detecting the language based on mobile browser settings?
Any references y'all have would be greatly appreciated :)
In general you can take a look at the Accept-Language HTTP header. For facebook applications, I believe the facebook SDK will provide the user's language preference as "locale" or similar in the user object.
Related
I understand that different layouts can be designed for Mobile Phones and Desktop Websites. But is it possible to implement two different approach implementations for Mobile Phones and Desktop.
For instance, is it possible to have one page designed as drag and drop for websites
and the same can be designed as,
select stepwise for mobile phones.
Any clue or library or implementational approaches will be greatly appreciated. At the last, i am trying to implement the same website page in ReactJs.
You can have Platform specific code with different file extensions as follows
dragndrop.native.js//mobile platform
dragndrop.js//web platform
More info here Platform React-Native Docs
I'm currently investigating the alternatives for crossplatform development for Android and iPhone (Windows 8 could be a nice addition). The app is basically a "map with an asociated app", and certainly not a game.
Searching here I see many outdated advice and tools from 2010/2011, but since then Apple has changed their policies and surely new things have appeared.
My current list and light research (might have facts wrong) is:
Monotouch/Monodroid: .NET (Mono) framework. Create "native" apps on both platforms. Requires rebuilding UI code (or similar things).
Appcelerator: Javascript framework to compile native apps.
Corona: Similar to Appcelerator.
Phonegap: Similar idea, but looks like it uses a wrapper to appify HTML5 content
SenchaTouch: Another HTML5 based platform.
Wink: Yet another HTML5 toolkit.
XVLM: Android to ObjC compiler, probably creating ugly iOS apps.
Unity3D: For games only.
Moai: For games only.
So, there are three main ideas, with some frameworks implementing each, it seems to me:
Have an abstraction layer over native iOS/Android code and build for each platform using the provided layer. (Monotouch, Unity3D)
Use HTML5 (coding in Javascript) and some kind of wrapper to "appify" the web content. (PhoneGap,Sencha,Wink)
Code using a framework that will output as a compilation pass (or similar) a native app for each supported platform (Moai, XVLM,Appcelerator,Corona)
The questions:
Is there a fourth idea I haven't yet found?
Is there any blatant mistake in my research for any of the specified frameworks?
Is there any known problem for map integration with any of these ideas or specific frameworks?
Only a partial answer:
Ad 2. Appcelerator / Titanium is more than just HTML5. I read this pretty extensive comparison between PhoneGap and Titanium the other day on Hackers News. I found it very informative. The link points to the HN comments, the link to the actual article is at the top.
My main experience is with Mono for Android and MonoTouch, so I can't personally speak much to the other options. I personally find it to be the best option there is, as it allows you to share a large amount of your code across the platforms (even extending to non-mobile platforms if you stick with .NET), while still allowing for a 100% native UI, which is extremely important. If you're looking for resources on getting started, I have this video which discusses approaches and libraries for sharing a lot of code across platforms, and also this book which covers the same thing, but also expands to talk about how to do things like store data, use maps, access the network, etc.
I also want to mention MonoGame, which is absent from your list. MonoGame is an open source XNA implementation that sits on top of Mono to allow you to target iOS/Android/Max OS X.
From what I have experienced, if you want to have a native app go Mono, if you don't need native go PhoneGap. Native is best of the UI is very important, ie games or fairly graphical apps. But from business type app, CRUD, Phone gap works well.
i need some help!, i am planning to develop such LBS Mobile Application which find nearest things based on gps data from mobile.
1.what are the best free and (preferably) open source technologies for development?.
2.What programming language to use for development of such application?.
3.what are the points to be considered?
I need the general overview of the requirements for planning, I was interested in having a general understanding of the data, tools, and frameworks required to accomplish the job.
The future proof way to write your application is using Web technologies.
Iphone and Android devices already support the W3C Geolocation API, with more on the way.
I recommend you take a look at a sample http://geo.webvm.net/ to get you started.
On Symbian phones, you can access location information via C++, java (when JSR-256 is implemented) and probably python.
You might also want to look into the Qt runtime as that is the new technology to use for Symbian development.
To start with Symbian application development, start with the Fundation's developer wiki
Both StackOverflow and Forum Nokia contain information about how to use JSR-256.
Relevant plug: There is whole chapter on LBS in Quick Recipes on Symbian OS.
With all the different mobile phone browsers and the mobile market being so diverse I'm having a hard time deciding on a way to create a text based online game for mobile phones.
I was thinking about using HTML / CSS / Javascript for front-end and Python CGI for server-side (with a DB).
Now this seems like a very obvious choice... BUT I'm having a hard time finding the "limits" to each one... by that I mean at what point will a popular web browser stop 'supporting' a technology. Like when it comes to HTML I assume you cant use HTML5 features in all popular mobile browsers... or maybe some allow JS but not jQuery... or maybe some don't allow some common CGI features or DOM is weird... I do not know.
I have read a few different tutorials on various mobile web browser development but nothing really helps to answer my question.
So what I'm asking is basically:
What languages/technologies do you recommend for a Text based mobile online multiplayer turn based browser game that will need to dynamically load a lot of info?(front front end to back end)
What are some common limitations between popular mobile web browsers I should look out for? I want to be compatible with all popular mobile web browsers.
One of the things to keep in mind is that there is a plethora of mobile browsers out there (Look here for details). So you are probably better off starting with iphone, android and blackberry and maaaybe opera mini browser support. These browsers have sophisticated java script support and you would be able to provide a good user experience. Later on you can work on supporting other mobile browsers.
Regarding your questions, if you look at these browser specs (and they are readily available on Internet) you will see that you will be able to use quite a bit of web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc). That wont be a showstopper for you. Designing for a small screen, and a great user experience on small screens, that will make or break your game.
Basically i would like to know which platform is currently used to develop mobile applications i.e. J2ME etc etc...
Also any new ideas on mobile applications would be quite helpful.
Generally, the approach is to go for a website, if possible, and adapt it to each phone using a 'device detection layer'. We use DeviceAtlas.
If you want to write native applications for each phone, then you need to do it in each of the native languages (and there are a lot).
Symbian/Java: Greatest 'penetration'
iPhone/iPod Touch: Latest trend, objective-c for this.
Android: I think this is a variant of Java, and will be a very marginal component of the market for a long time, though maybe high among a certain type of techies.
Basically, you are going to need to profile your market, and determine the best approach. But as I said, in general, you'd prefer a website, and mostly, a website is all you need.
There is a framework called Rhodes by Rhomobile that allows development of native applications for all major smartphones. See my answer to a similar question earlier this year.
We are primarily targeting the iPhone, but don't always make an iPhone-specific application. The web browser on the iPhone is good enough that a lot of our web apps just run there ok. So many of the apps we're writing continue to be done using the same platforms we've always used. We're a big institution so this runs the gamut from J2EE and .NET to Php and Ruby.
Mobile-only apps are developed in XCode (or web versions in DashCode).
If you need to cover multiple mobile (esp. smartphone) platforms, Javascript (with HTML and CSS) may be the only way to go, despite all its limitations. You get under the radar of Apple's iPhone app vetting, it's the only way to target Pre, you can also cover Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, AND Nokia on a single codebase... unless the limitations are just TOO stifling for your specific purposes, it sure seems like the way to go!