Developers

Mobile web content adaptation techniques

ronan — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:20:17 +0000

Introduction

This article will help you pick from amongst the many techniques for building a mobile website. It doesn't describe how to do it, rather it instead tries to help you to pick the right approach. Before we begin it's worth clarifying exactly what the goal of the exercise is. Generally speaking, people who are looking to build a mobile site fall into two categories. They're either:

Displaying Status Bar Notifications in Android

weimenglee — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:59:05 +0000

Developers of Android are no doubt familiar with the Toast class, which displays a little pop-up containing whatever message you want to display to the user. However, the Toast pop-up will automatically dismiss itself after a while, making it useful as a tool to provide timely feedback to the user (such as informing the user that a file has been saved successfully), but not a really good tool to use for some asynchronous action (such as telling the user that an incoming SMS message has arrived).

Importing & Exporting Documents in iOS

weimenglee — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:13:57 +0000

One of the common tasks that an iOS developer has to do is to import or export documents from his iOS application. For example, suppose you are developing a document reader and you want to allow the user to import documents into your application so that it can be read offline. Also, your reader might also support the exporting of documents so that other applications can make use of the document.

In this article, I will walk you through the different techniques you can employ to allow documents to be imported or exported from your iOS application.

Creating the Project

Preserving User Preferences in Android Applications

weimenglee — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:32:04 +0000

Often you need to store personalized information for each user of your application. For example, your application may require users to logon to a secure server for authentication. In this case, the user needs to supply his credentials, such as a login name and a password. The first time the user uses your application this information will be entered by the user, but subsequently it would be useful for your application to “remember” this information somewhere so that it can save the user the trouble of entering the same information every time he uses your application.

Device Diversity

ronan — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:08:36 +0000

As dotMobi brings DeviceAtlas to the cloud Ronan Cremin, Director of Engineering at dotMobi, charts the increasing complexity of the device landscape for developers in the first of two pieces looking at device fragmentation.

In the beginning the web was a much simpler place. By the time the web was becoming a mainstream media in the late 1990’s there was only one device through which you accessed it: the humble desktop PC, running one of just a handful of browsers.

Responding To Inbound SMS Messages

mokil — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:50:52 +0000

In our last article, we created the basis of a messaging system, allowing us to receive inbound messages using keywords and shortcodes. We’ve also previously seen how we can send SMS messages. It’s time to bring everything together and create a simple messaging system that can process inbound SMS messages and send back responses to those messages.

The Current System

Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps

weimenglee — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:02:25 +0000

In previous articles, I have shown how easy it is to get started in Windows Phone 7 programming using Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows Phone Developer Tools. In this third installment of the series, I will continue the exploration of Windows Phone development. This time I will focus on one key development topic: Web access. Unless you are writing a Hello World application, chances are that your application will need to connect to the outside world.

Building Location Service Apps in Windows Phone 7

weimenglee — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:39:33 +0000

In my previous article on Windows Phone 7 development, I showed how you can quickly get started using Visual Studio 2010 together with the Windows Phone Developer Tools. In this second article in the series, I will discuss a topic that is garnering a lot of interest in recent years -location services. Location services usually involve two key components - getting your location data and displaying your location on a map. Hence in this article, I will first show you how to display a map in your Windows Phone 7 application and then use the Location Service APIs to obtain your current position.

Receiving SMS Messages via Shortcodes & Keywords

mokil — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:31:14 +0000

Back around 1998, more and more billboards started to display some odd messages, along the lines of "Visit us on the web at www.companyname.com". This was a major shift in advertising and gave marketers another avenue to explore. It was, of course, the beginning of the Internet's move from academia to the mainstream, and the proliferation of Web sites seemed to happen almost overnight.

Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development

weimenglee — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:49:50 +0000

By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. And while many developers are busy developing for Android and iPhone, Microsoft is hard at work, developing its killer mobile OS that could give the competitors a run for the money. Before you dismiss Microsoft as a serious contender in the mobile space, think again. The new OS is now a total rewrite of the older Windows Mobile platform, and sports many features that you have come to expect of a modern mobile operating system.