UDK for iOS - Is this the future of iPhone app development?

Developers often find it a daunting challenge to rapidly build iPhone apps that meet the choices and expectations of users. They also look for advanced and innovative tools to build the applications on time and on schedule. Nowadays, Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is used widely by iOS developers across the world to build a huge variety of custom 3D games and applications.

The kit further uses a powerful object oriented language along with the UnrealScript programming language. Along with facilitating code development in UDK, these programming languages further offer special features required for building iPhone apps and games. Despite providing the features of Unreal Engine 3, UDK is still available as a free download for noncommercial usage.

What Makes UDK for iOS Essential for iPhone App Development?

Complements Development of a Huge Variety of Apps and Games
The nature and requirements of individual iPhone app varies. Many enterprises, nowadays, prefer building custom 3D applications and games to get higher ROI. The Unreal Development Kit provides the tools required to develop complex iOS applications. A user can simply have a look at the apps and games already developed using UDK to decide what makes it the perfect solution to build complex and robust applications for Apple devices.

Options to Create Executable for iOS and Windows PC
Most developers use Mac hardware to create the perfect environment to create iPhone apps. The UDK allows them to build the applications without investing the Mac hardware. However, Mac hardware is required to submit the applications to the Apple App Store. Also, the UDK development environment runs seamlessly on Windows PC. So the developers can use the kit to create executable for both iOS and Windows PC. The feature further contributes towards creating the development environment without investing in new hardware and tools.

Comes with Features of Unreal Engine 3
The UDK is the free version of Unreal Engine 3. So it supports all features of Unreal Engine 3. Epic has designed the innovative game engine technology to complement the development of next generation of mobile applications and games. In addition to operating across ten platforms, Unreal Engine 3 also comes with a set of advanced content creation tools and core technologies. The programmers can use these tools and technologies to create the environment and infrastructure build high quality iPhone apps and games.

Supports Multiple Apple Devices
Along with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, the tools provided by UDK can also be used to create applications for iPad and the 3rd and 4th generation of iPod touch. However, a developer must install iOS 3.2 or later to run Unreal Engine 3 smoothly. Also, the kit is not compatible with the older versions of iOS. So the programmers must upgrade to the latest version of iOS to build robust apps by targeting multiple Apple devices.

Free for Noncommercial Use
As noted earlier, the Unreal Development Kit is the free version of the Unreal Engine 3. Thus, developers can use UDK for noncommercial purposes without paying any charges. The features make UDK just like any other open source mobile application development framework. Epic further updates the UDK at frequent intervals to complement the latest trends in mobile application development. At the same time, the developers also have option to get a Commercial UDK License to build commercial applications for iPhone. Also, a single commercial license allows developers to build several commercial apps and games using the UDK.

In February 2014, UDK 2014-02 - version 12097 was released with a set of additional features and functionality. These features will make it easier for developers to build robust iPhone apps without writing lengthy and complex code. Also, the updated version of UDK will help them in meeting the ongoing trends in iOS application development.

You can hire developers from top iPhone development company who can help you build highly engaging and addictive iPhone apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide iPhone app development services. If you would like to hire iPhone developer from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.

Testing web applications with Selenium- Some major problems

The open source software known as Selenium is used as one of the tools for automation testing of web applications. It certainly provides the testers with a good option for their purpose but one thing that discourages a lot of people when they want to use this is the fact that selenium has quite a number of problems. Often, handling this may be a challenging experience due to multiple problems that may arise, making creation of functional tests an extremely difficult process. In fact, most people complain that the tests can be flaky, sometimes working and sometimes not working. However, the problems should not deter you from using the tool as the advantages are too many to ignore. It is not really unstable or flaky but the main challenge which must be solved to tackle the problem is information. Most of the problems can be sorted out with proper knowledge. Here are some of the problems along with their solutions.

Flaky external services- Relying on such services often lead to failure of all tests. This happens especially when you use production backends or rely on infrastructure that is outside the control of your team. The best way to solve this is not to rely on such services which cannot be controlled by your team. You can start in-process servers by the use of something such as webrick in Ruby or Jetty in Java world. The external services can be spotted by watching the running of tests which will show the actual problem underlying. The flakiness can also be minimized through performing of health check before you run tests. Check if all relying services are running properly or not.

Poor test isolation- This may happen and you may see that the tests are working fine when they are being run alone but during build they fail randomly. To solve this, resources should be isolated as much as possible. Data should be set up within tests so that you do not have to rely on the 'set up datastores' step in the build. Try to set up database for each developer or use something such as SQLite or Hypersonic as an in-memory, light-weight and private database. If users are required to log-in for the applications then several user accounts should be created which are reserved just for the tests; provide a locking mechanism as well so that you can ensure that just a single test is carried out with the use of a specific user account.

Identifying elements- Another very common problem in this is the way of identifying XML/HTML elements that must be observed as well as manipulated. While designing, the application should be made for easy identifying of elements through adding of 'id' which is well-named and attributes to unique elements; along with class attributes that are well-named for repeated structures such as tables or lists. By virtue of attributes you can refer directly to the interested elements easily. You can also start simplifying the locators by creating locators that rely on the essential parts.

Problems in timeouts- This is a very common problem. There are times when the timeout is not long enough, thus the tests fail under load. For that, the best thing that you should do is not use timeouts at all. When using, they should be used by generous setting or using them together with notification from the UI being tested.

During problems with selenium testing, it is best to do some research as well as analysis to find out the main cause so that you can understand the reason for such behavior. Most often the problem is minor and can be solved through the proper resources. No matter what the problem, these days there are plenty of resources to take advantage of. There are several videos, blogs, documentations, user groups, chat rooms, conferences, forums, books, etc which can aid you so that you can use the tool successfully.

You can hire testers from top custom selenium testing company in India who can help you accomplish testing with the selenium tools within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide selenium automation testing services. If you would like to discuss with an expert selenium tester from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Top 3 Ruby On Rails Based CMS For Commercial Use

Ruby on Rails, which is at times simply referred to as Rails, is actually an open source WAF or Web Application Framework, that runs through Ruby – a premium programming language. Rail is a full-stack framework, that facilitates creation of pages as well as applications that collate information from web servers, query databases, and most importantly, create innovative, creative templates. The framework comes up with a unique routing system that does not depend upon the functionality of the server.

CMS, frankly speaking is one of the most adorable computer systems, that helps in seamless publication, editing, as well as modification of contents from a particular central interface. CMS is highly user-friendly. Besides, it also allows the end users in seamless management of contents. PHP based Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal, WorkPress are playing pivotal roles at present in the web world.

Ruby on Rail has also impacted the world of CMS or Content Management System in a great way as well. The CM System based Rails are getting more and more popular, as these tools are extremely durable as well as robust, with a wide range of functionality in the world of Content Management System.

Let us deal with three most popular Ruby On Rails based CMS, that are specifically designed for commercial use.

Refinery CMS

Top in the list of Rail based CMS, is the Refinery CMS. Truly, it is the most popular CMS that is based on version 3.2 of ROR. It is free of cost and is an open source software. That means, it can be downloaded for free and the users do not need any license for downloading.

It helps the users to have a complete control over designing, making the layout, and JavaScript through core extensions. This CMS architecture helps the user with an array of highly advanced as well as state of the art tools that help the users to add or change the functionality or getup of the front-end in a perfect and effortless way.

By default, this particular Rail based CM System comes with a wide array of views to the site front-end. It also gives the users the option of customizing designs as well as layouts with the simple process of overriding. The architecture of Refinery CMS offers a string of extremely easy ways when it comes to adding extensions for managing a variety of sections in a website.

This particular CMS is highly easy to install and the users can start posting in hardly any time. This user interface is extremely attractive as well as bright and catchy. It can easily attract the attention of the users.

Browser CMS

It is based on ROR version 3.2 framework and is the second best in terms of popularity. This ROR Content Management System offers a string of features that can only be detected in the commercial Content Management System. This ROR based Content Management System comes up with an architecture that provides a free hand to the users in terms of designing pages. The UI is extremely user-friendly, so much so that even someone who is technically not that sound, can manage it without any difficulty whatsoever.

The CM System comes up with a string of developer-friendly features that include templates that contain more than one editable area along with a standard CRUD interface for managing different types of contents as well as core modules. The section based safety or security feature in the Browser CMS would allow 2 secured access levels – CMS users and the public users.

The Browser CM System would support the functionality of page caching, that would decrease the load on the server. The Direct in Context Editing feature will allow the users to browse contents and make modifications to the pages.

Locomotive CMS

This is the third most popular ROR based commercial CM System. It comes up with Wagon, which is an extremely powerful command line tool, that helps to develop the site in a seamless way. This system offers a wide range of developer-friendly attributes like in-line editing, perfect multi-site management, Liquid templates along with customized content types.

It also helps in effortless multi-site handling and all the user needs to do is to point the name of the domain to the server of the Locomotive CM System. Copying files or setting up new database is not needed. The UI of this system is extremely user-friendly. It also gives the liberty of adding as well as editing the contents without even interfering into the design or the getup of the site.

You can hire developers from top ruby on rails development company in India who can help you build Ruby applications within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide rails development services. If you would like to hire ruby on rails developers from our team, please get in touch with us.

Automated Testing with Selenium and Cucumber

The choice of web browser varies from one user to another. So an internet application must be accessible on several web browsers to become popular. As a key part of the development lifecycle, programmers have tone ensure that the app will work flawlessly across a set of widely used web browsers. The cross-browser compatibility of an internet application can be checked through extensive regression testing. But regression testing requires additional time and resources.

Therefore, organizations prefer using effective test automation tools like Selenium and Cucumber to avoid expensive and time-consuming regression tests. The tools enable developers to create several fully automated test suites that will run against a set of web browsers. Also, they have option to run the automated test suits as part of the build pipeline or schedules build process. Regardless of the approach, the tools are effective in detecting bugs quickly and along with providing rapid feedback.

Web Application Testing with Cucumber
As a widely used test automation tool Cucumber facilitates behavior driven development. The developers can use Cucumber to describe the expected behavior of the internet application in plain text. Despite being written in Ruby, the tool supports several programming languages including Java, Ruby, C#.NET, Python and FLEX. So it becomes easier for developers to test applications written using any of these supported programming languages.

The entire Cucumber testing process can be divided into six broad steps. But the programmers are not required to write any code while fixing a bug in, or adding a new feature to the application. They can simply describe the expected behavior in plain text. When the feature or bug is tested through Cucumber, the tool will highlight the successes and failures. Based on the failures, programmers can write code to fix the bugs. As Cucumber requires test cases to be written in advance, it helps managers and business analysts to verify if the key requirements are met.

Web Application Testing with Selenium
Selenium provides developers with a set of tools required for testing different aspects of an internet application. The tool is further used widely by developers for browser testing automation. So Selenium is effective in evaluating the performance and behavior of an application across a set of supported web browsers. Selenium also comes with a suite of tools that run seamlessly across widely used operating systems and web browsers. The testers can further control these tools through a number of frameworks and programming languages.

Along with web browser automation, Selenium can also be used to web-based administration tasks. As the tool supports most web browsers, it becomes easier for developers to include the tool as part of the browser’s native components. An organization also has option to choose Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver or Selenium Remote Control according to the nature and requirements of each web application development project.

The IDE can be used as a simple Firefox add-on to perform simple record and playback with the web browser. In addition to creating bug reproduction scripts rapidly, the IDE also creates script for automation-aided exploratory testing. On the other hand, the Selenium WebDriver and Selenium Remote Control are used to optimize browser-based regression automation. These suites further help developers in distributing and scaling test scripts across different environments.

A constant increase is noted in the number of organization adopting behavior based development approach. The agile methodology further helps developers in rapidly test how an internet application works across multiple browsers. Both Cucumber and Selenium must be used together to effectively check the application’s cross-browser compatibility. These tools must be used together for automated behavior driven development testing to curtail the overall development cost and time.

You can hire testers from top selenium web testing companies in India who can help you accomplish testing with the selenium tools within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide selenium automation testing services. If you would like to discuss with certified selenium testers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Moving from Python 2.7 to 3- Some pros & cons

It has been quite some time that Python 3 has been introduced in the software community, but due to some technical glitches, it was not widely accepted. Earlier, it did not have the basic Python libraries like SciPy and NumPy but now they have been imported. In fact, it is an incremental release and that is why the casual programmers may not have many new features to use. But it has now ironed out the glitches as well as quirks which were there in the earlier versions, making the syntax consistent. So before moving to version 3, here are some pros and cons to know about.

Pros

Using compatible syntax- There are many common features between versions 2.7 and 3 due to backporting which essentially allows you to use them in the old scripts, subsequently making the transition very easy. Like % operator that works in version 3; only the format method is different, and that gives increased flexibility.

Unicode support- The version’s text model has been revised which makes the primary string type totally Unicode-capable. Thus the models used in Unicode-capable Windows APIs, JVM, .NET CLR, etc. and Python 3 are brought closer. Its interpreter core is more tolerant to paths containing Unicode characters, which leads to less chances of problems when running scripts on Windows from home directory if, for example, the user name has non-ASCII characters. In fact, the support is more deeply embedded in the language itself. Since a huge variety of Unicode characters are now allowed, developers can use other languages, apart from English when naming; they do not have to use names which suit the fixed character set.

Set literals- Sets in the version have new literal syntax. {1, 2, 3} can be written instead of the set([1, 2, 3)]; the former is quite clean. In fact, both work perfectly, but using the new one gives less problems.

Abstract base classes- Support to make abstract base classes is contained by abc module; in it a property or method may be marked as “abstract” on base classes and implemented in subclasses. This is for definition of interfaces with the creation of classes which has no concrete method(s). One example of the concept is the mathematical class hierarchy.

Cons

Using ported libraries- The pure libraries may be converted semi-automatically to Python 3 but those depending on C extensions are really hard to port. Many libraries have been already ported, but there are some which have not been ported yet. However, this may not be of much problem if the project is small.However, in case of large scale projects this might pose a problem.

Differences in builtin functions- All functions of the previous version are not compatible or rather related to the Python 3 counterparts. Like when you use filter function, an iterator is returned in version 3 but the previous versions return a list. The same is applicable for .keys method.

Filesystem access- It is assumed by the software that all the filesystems have encoding, but then as a matter of fact, there is no encoding in many Linux systems as well as OS X. In fact, different rules for Unicode normalization are applied for filesystem on OS X than for applications. So the filename has to be normalized manually to separate encoding when filenames have to be compared in file system.

Beginners in the world of programming can benefit if they learn Python 3, especially if they do not know C. All in all, there is no huge difference between the implementation of Python 2.7 and 3. In fact, the usage of version 3 seems to be a complicated procedure for many, especially if the project is a big one and there is less time for unit testing. When unit testing is conducted the ultimate code turns out to be well tested as well as reproducable. Porting to Python 3 will yield in plenty of minor and innocent changes, but this will make it more dangerous, making it necessary to test particular and individual functions in the scripts. This will ultimately lead to profit in the long run, but you will have to waste some of your precious time which could have been devoted in bettering the application and other such things.

You can hire programmers from top custom python development company who can help you build products within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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