How will Android app improve your business?

One of the most happening trends of the current time is the use of smartphones. With each passing day the market of mobile application continues in its popularity streak. In fact, gone are those days when the phone was just an over-powered toy; it has now transitioned to a productive business tool. Some stats can help you grasp the importance of smartphones in today's context. Out of the 4 billion mobile phones used in the world, 1 billion are smartphones. Within 2014 data usage in mobile will overtake the internet usage in desktop. In fact 50% of the local internet searches are conducted from these phones. Now proper applications will be able to solve many of your business problems and benefit both the end user as well as the clients.

Creating virtual office- No matter where you are, at restaurants or simply holidaying with your friends, your device will ensure the completion of your work. Our devices ensure that information can be easily and quickly accessed, making the work days more productive and simplifying interaction with the company. Virtual office space may consist of management software for client relationship, project management software, document sharing, invoicing, expenses, time tracking, etc.

Cost-effective sales marketing- You can use the various apps to let customers know about your recent launches, events, services, etc by taking advantage of the advertising opportunities given to corporate funders. The funders gain a lot through the advertising which reinforces their brand, gaining product exposure to user groups that are highly relevant.

Facilitating client relationships- Social networking strategies are greatly improved with mobile apps since they help in increase of exposure and accessibility, allowing you to connect with customers who are on-the-go. Your customer-base will be increased and you will be available all the time as apps can function offline. Moreover just a second is all you need to launch some app which is there on the home screen of a phone.

Software's new platform- With the progress of mobile technology, there is expansion of boundaries related to tablet and smartphone software. There are sector specific software for every industry and they cater to the respective market. The proprietary programs of sectors like navigational, educational along with agricultural among others have been redeveloped, thanks to the apps which has resulted in broadening of the product reach of the respective company.

Some Apps To Give You Better Business

Some apps which benefit you in your business in the long run are listed here.

Docs to go- Many of us do not like to drag our laptops wherever we go, so it is essential that Microsoft Office be accessed from mobile devices at all times. Looking at documents or editing spreadsheets becomes an easy job with the help of Docs To Go. The functionality of the application is top-notch and it also provides peace of mind when you know that you and your documents are inseparable.

Evernote- There are several times that you may have some brilliant idea for new products but lack of paper and pen for scribbling it down, which results in valuable loss. Evernote acts as a digital notebook; it can store everything like notes, web pages, photos, audio clips and PDF files. The app is easily accessible and searchable.

Expensify- Business travelers can benefit a lot with this app as it helps keep you consolidated as well as organized. It helps keep tabs on your business expenses as well as mileage through scanning of receipts with the help of the camera of your device and then importing data from bank or credit card. This relieves you of the pain of drafting expense reports.

There are lots of applications that can help make your business life simpler. In fact these days, we find it hard to function without Google Translate as well as Google Drive. This field has seen astounding growth and becoming a part of this world helps you efficiently conduct your businesses worldwide.

You can hire developers from top android development company in India who can help you build mobile apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide android application development services. If you would like to hire android app developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

6 Best Practices for Android App Development

According to a recent report published on KantarWorldPanel.com, “Android finished 2013 strongly, showing year-on-year share growth across 12 major global markets including Europe, USA, Latin America, China and Japan.” The constantly growing popularity and market share of the mobile operating system will encourage many enterprises to invest in Android app development. With more and more companies entering the app market, mobile app development on Android has become both challenging and competitive. So enterprises, nowadays, must implement several best practices to effectuate their mobile application development.

Best 6 Practices for Mobile Application Development on Android

1) Concentrate on Aesthetics

The aesthetic appeal of the application will have a huge impact on its popularity. Before checking the features and functionality of the app, many users consider its visual appeal. So the UI/UX design must complement several screens and mobile devices. As you cannot predict the mobile device of the user, the look and feel of the app must be checked across multiple mobile devices.

2) Make the Navigation Intuitive

The Android app can further keep the users engaged through efficient and intuitive navigation options. You can always deliver richer user experience by optimizing the screen hierarchy. For instance, you can optimize the lateral navigation feature of the app by including tabs. Also, you can opt for lean UX design to complement the needs of individual users in a realistic way.

3) Curtail Notification

You can always use the notification feature of the Android app to convey sensitive information or breaking news to the users. But you must remember that the excessive notifications can affect the user experience negatively. So you must curtail the user notification to prevent information overload. At the same time, the app must allow users to turn all notification off simply by clicking on a link or button. The reduced notification will further contribute towards making the UX design more efficient.

4) Save Memory

Often mobile device users carry out several tasks and processes at a time. Therefore, adequate memory must be available for each process to run smoothly. There are also chances that the device may hung or end up in a deadlock due to lack of required memory. So you have to consider several options to ensure that the app saves memory by consuming the least amount of RAM. You can always save memory by using local objects and variables, while avoiding global variables. Similarly, the variables must be assigned to null after their usage. The simple view hierarchy in the UI design will further contribute towards consuming lesser amount of RAM.

5) Optimize the Android Code

Android application developers write code using Java programming language. Also, they use third party java libraries and APIs optimize the performance and functionality of the app. But Java can be sluggish some times, despite being a simple, robust and widely used programming language. So you must select the UI carefully, along with avoiding poor coding tactics. You can enhance the code efficiency by replacing old libraries with the most recent and updated libraries. Further, the coding can be optimized by loop complexities. You can even consider writing native code of the application using the C language and NDK compiled.

6) Make the App Flawless

You must remember that each user has option to choose from several apps of similar nature. So its performance must be flawless to impress and engage the users. Similar to software applications, a mobile application also needs to be tested thoroughly. Before the app is launched, your team must carry out rigorous testing to identify and fix the bugs, errors and flaws that affect its performance. It is also important to evaluate the functionality and performance of the Android application based on adequate quality guidelines to deliver a flawless user experience.

Along with keeping in mind the best practices for mobile app development on Android, an organization also need to constantly monitor in the changing habits and preferences of users. At the same time, the app must avail the innovative features and functionality of the latest Android devices delivers richer user experience.

You can hire developers from top android app development company in India who can help you build mobile apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide android application development services. If you would like to hire android app developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

What you should know about Hypernext Android Creator (HAC)?

Android is the buzz word in the Mobile sector with the share of 42% across various devices globally. With the growing usage of Android Smartphones new development tools are made available for users to create smart Android applications using Windows PC and Mac. There are various Android tools that can be used to develop amazing android applications. These customized tools make it easier for android mobile app development even without the knowledge of Java or the Android SDK and is called HyperNext Android Creator (HAC).

This tool is available in english format syntax which is made easier to read for beginners who are new to the development world. And provides a visual designer for laying out screens. It can run most of the programs within its graphical user interface and upload them onto an Android Emulator or Android device via wireless. In order to develop with HAC, Java JDK, Android SDK and Apple Quicktime must be installed. These are free to download and use. Applications that are developed on HAC gives support on different devices amazingly. HyperNext is major programming language and easy-to-use, learn and implement. It operates based on HyperCard that takes software as a heap of cards.

It is worth mentioning that the app developers always face challenges associated with Java standards since no set standard is used for developing them. For this issue, many tools have been developed which has help in Android conversion activities. The HyperNext interface has just one design window and simple toolbar and creates highly interactive apps. There are three modes: Design, Preview and Run. Controls such as buttons can be rapidly placed and their English-like scripts edited with its easy to use Script Editor.

Eclipse and Netbeans are east to use in HAC. It is a self contained software application basically designs flawless android applications with much ease. It shares many general features such as it can save, load, and create new projects. HAC has loaded it will display two main windows, the Design window and the Tool Bar which together allow cards to be created and controls placed upon them. A third global window called the Mode Switcher will also appear and shows three buttons that allow quick movement between the Design, Preview and Run modes. When switching from Design to Run mode the project is automatically saved and when switching back the saved project is reloaded.

Android emulators are virtual android devices check the applications developed in HAC. HyperNext is a programming language. Its out-of-the features are unique and easy to understand. They are as follows: 

• English-like statements.
• Software generally has a card based organization.
• Variables are type-less and are all stored as strings(text).
• Variables are either Global or Local.
• Global procedures are declared in the MainCode section.
• Control handlers and their procedures are local and hence protected.
• Created with the Standard Edition of HelpNDoc:
• Easily create HTML Help documents
• Each control can have many local procedures.
• Specific commands for numeric and string processing.
• Variables can be single line, multi-line or array-like.
• Runtime error reporting can be dynamically switched on or off

The Android OS is especially designed to run on Mobile phones and to take care of the life-cycle of an app so that several apps could simultaneously co-exist in memory together, with only the front app being fully active. Furthermore the Android OS is supposed to be responsible for quitting apps when it feels they are no longer needed so the Android app guidelines. However many users want a Quit button and so HAC apps have one by default.

A HAC application runs in memory all the time and even if the user presses the Back Button or another app takes control, the HAC app will remain in the background and active, so it can play music, communicate with the web or number crunch etc. All HAC apps show an icon in the Status Bar so users know their HAC built app is still running.

Although background apps are not supposed to take resources it’s clear that they do and having several apps in the background can noticeably slow down the system response to such an extent that the user must restart their device. As many apps have no way to quit them "App Killer" programs have become some of the most popular downloads.

With HAC apps the background task is set to idle unless the code is actually doing something so a typical HAC app should have little resource overhead. If sent to the background it can easily be made foreground again by pressing and holding the Home button down, then choosing the HAC app icon.

HAC currently only works reliably with English keyboards as at this time the Android OS is still not fully compatible with other character sets. It supports GPS location functionality that can run in the background and continuously log readings. In the near future this will be enabled as it is especially useful on tablet devices that have much larger screen sizes than Smartphones.

HAC currently just supports the following 5 permissions but there are literally hundreds available within the Android OS.

1. Write External Storage: This is always enabled as application has to be installed to the SD card or external storage.

2. Internet: Used when app needs to access the internet such as when sending an email or requesting a web page.

3. Camera: Used when app needs to access the camera.

4. Location - Used to access the coarse location such as determining the cell on which device is connected.

5. Used to access GPS to return position coordinates etc.

HAC gives the exact blend of customized, highly interactive, user-friendly and efficient technologies integrated in Android app that is sure to deliver flexible, richer and greater operational control over the system. And needless to say, it does produce some of the most amazing applications that mobile users love to avail.

We provide android widget development services. If you would like to hire android app developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Guidelines for Android Mobile Design

Android offers an outstanding platform for mobile design and goes a long way in creating an effective app that offers a brilliant experience across numerous devices of diverse combinations of aspect ratio, pixel density and screen size. The diversity of Android throws a number of challenges to the designer and here we bring to you some crucial guidelines in terms of pixels, user experience, layouts, styles and themes that need to be considered for creation of successful Android apps.

Pixels

An app’s perceived quality is largely dependent on the visual design, which also enhances the usability. Most of the developers are well-versed with the UI patterns, but only a handful has the requisite visual design skills. You need to concentrate on the following in order to deliver an experience that is aesthetically pleasing.

• Nice Scaling: The Android platform comes with diverse screen densities, with no definite resolutions for targeting but a measurement format for layouts widgets and graphics that is somewhat density independent. So, it is always advisable to optimize the graphics for a varying range of screen densities. Make sure to test the designs across low-end devices and optimize resources that do not scale well.
• State Friendly: Significant confirmations of selections and clicks are provided by the touch states. During customization of the widgets like buttons, the creation of drawables with respect to all required states such as disabled, pressed, focused and default is crucial. The size is also a significant factor. Touch targets should usually be minimum 45 density pixels in height and width.
• Use Fonts: Roboto and Droid Sans are the two major fonts of Android. However, any fonts can be roped in for an application in TTF format.
• Utilize 9-patch Drawables: These facilitate stretching and scaling of PNGs in a pre-defined manner. Markings alongside the top-left edge outline the stretchable regions. Optionally, the padded content region can be defined through markings alongside the bottom-right edgings. 9-patches are crucial for creation and customization of UI widgets.

User Experience

As is the case with any other platform, Android app development has conventions and patterns. These help in formation of expectations regarding the behavior of an unfamiliar app.

• Design of User Flows: Android apps contain a set of screens, at the basic level. Navigation within the stacks is possible with the help of buttons, list items and action bar icons. There is also the up affordance which facilitates the navigation along the information hierarchy. It is good to try user flows with prospective users through mock-ups or wireframes and iterate. Ideally, prototypes on real devices should be leveraged because the same facilitates testing within realistic mobile environments.
• Use of UI patterns: UI patterns should be considered as tools rather than constraints, because they provide recognizable hints regarding interaction and navigation, maintaining platform consistency. Some of the common Android patterns are the action bar, the dashboard pattern, the workspaces pattern and the ribbon menu. These are the most effective tools for carving out app navigation and layouts.
• Design Responsively: With varying screen areas, Android is somewhat similar to responsive web design, wherein rendering support to each screen is the target. You can avoid premature optimization through focusing on popular devices and target users. The ideal option is to target middle sized popular phones and then go for requisite optimization with user flows and alternate layouts for specifically small tablets and devices.
• Comprehension of Mobile Interactions: Users interact with mobile apps in a different manner than with websites or PC software. In case of mobile apps, most interactions utilize touch input and are often capable of measuring in seconds.
• Optimization of First Use: Installation of apps often is a response to real world problems. So, it is always wise to render a feel of the experience. You can also think of launching a tutorial with the app.

Layouts, Themes and Styles

Let us now discuss some of the best practices for crafting performance-oriented and maintainable layouts. The commonly used layouts are Linear Layout and Relative Layout, and sometimes Grid Layout.

• Automation with framework: The Android framework makes room for automated resource switching revolving around the folder structure. This implies that there is the possibility of having distinct graphic layouts and assets for diverse screen sizes as well as densities.
• Extraction of values: Keeping the layout XML free from dimensions and colors is a good practice. You can separately define them and reference in the layouts, thereby enhancing the visual consistency and ensuring that things are easy to change at a later stage. Extraction of these values facilitates dimension switching across diverse platform versions, orientations and screen sizes.
• Use of themes and styles: An effective means to ensure a maintainable XML layout is to segregate the positioning concern from the styling concern. Every Layout View is required to possess a height and a width attribute. Sets of attributes that recur can be moved to styles whereas widget styles that universally occur across the app may be moved to the theme.
• Optimization: The merge and include XML tags facilitate the dropping of reusable sections of UI into the layouts, thereby minimizing duplicate XML as identical set of views appear in manifold layout configurations. Lint is a comparatively new addition for Android Developer Tools, which creates warnings regarding potential performance optimizations after scanning the project resources.
• Debugging: The Hierarchy Viewer tool makes it convenient to spot bugs through inspection of an app’s layout tree.

Hope you are now acquainted with the major tools and techniques pertaining to Android mobile design. Remember that the most effective apps rely a lot on clean visual design and platform consistency.

We provide android widget development services. If you would like to hire mobile app developers from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.