In programming, modularization is the practice of dividing functionality into separate, independent modules. Modularization in app development is an efficient way of organizing app components and enabling collaboration within development teams. A modular approach also helps make testing, debugging, and maintenance of the app easier and more straightforward.
MobileTogether offers some classic – and some unique – approaches to modularization.
The best ideas for new features and other improvements to existing software apps often come from enthusiastic users. Implementing new features creates opportunities for refactoring mobile apps. After several years using the MobileTogether Solar Data Tracking app to monitor the performance of a rooftop solar system, my friend Casey had a suggestion.
The app displayed one page of charts and tables to report production by month over a year and another page to report daily production for the last 30 days. Navigation buttons on each page enabled easy switching between views. Casey’s suggestion was to revise the app to place all the charts and tables on a single page. Over time mobile users have become accustomed to mobile apps that present data in long pages that scroll with a quick one-finger swipe motion. A one-page app would feel smooth and more up-to-date.
Data-driven solutions like database and enterprise apps rely on connection to, and interaction with, backend databases. Backend relational databases, however, store data in tables that reflect complex data relationships. This provides numerous advantages for effective data management and data integrity but can make it difficult to access and work with the data stored therein in new ways. App developers need to have a comprehensive understanding of database design principles and the SQL query language just to get started.
In contrast, real world data relationships most often represent parent-child relationships or even deeper hierarchical structure. As such, working with hierarchical data where relationships can be visualized in a tree structure can be much simpler and more flexible, leading to faster development. This approach is also more accessible to developers without extensive SQL expertise.
To make building apps that connect to the backend relational databases that are ubiquitous in today’s enterprise easier, faster, and available to a wider range of developers, Altova MobileTogether takes an entirely unique approach. Its visual Database Wizard lets developers easily build a query that returns hierarchical data, work with that data in the app, and then easily save the data back in hierarchical form, letting MobileTogether take care of normalizing the data and writing it back to the corresponding linked tables. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Altova releases new versions of its app development framework multiple times a year to introduce new features added in response to customer requests and feedback, as well as to add support for newer OS and database versions as they become available.
The latest release of MobileTogether and RecordsManager introduces important new functionality for building low-code and no-code apps.
Data entry is a vital activity for businesses and organizations across every vertical. While much data entry has been automated thanks to advances in technology, there are circumstances where manual input is still required. Whether entered data is for reporting financials, tracking research, documenting health data, or managing inventory, end users need easy-to-use tools that help them quickly enter valid information.
As apps have evolved, so has data entry software, offering users new options for getting the job done in the field, in the lab, or at a desk – on the user’s device of choice. App developers are challenged to quickly customize data entry apps with advanced features for automatic field population, validation checks, and reporting tools.
No-code app development frameworks offer a viable solution for building data entry apps for all platforms quickly and without a huge investment. Let’s take a look at some best practices and how no-code solutions can help tick the boxes.
RecordsManager is a new tool from Altova to build business database solutions in record time using a powerful visual design interface. RecordsManager is a free, pre-built MobileTogether solution that is automatically available when you install MobileTogether Designer. The pre-built solution includes sample data sets, and the MobileTogether Simulator previews execution of the database solution right inside the free to use MobileTogether Designer. Getting started with Altova RecordsManager is just one click away when you launch the Designer. Soon you will be building your own custom database apps without needing backend development or manual coding.
We are excited to announce availability of a new product in the Altova app development framework: RecordsManager.
Altova RecordsManager offers a completely visual, no-code interface for quickly creating custom database apps. RecordsManager is perfect for any app that handles data in records: think contract management, a customer database, an invoicing system, a database of local attractions or collections – the sky is the limit.
Your RecordsManager app will automatically be available on desktop devices as well as on mobile using native iOS and Android apps and provides tons of features that make it easy for end-users. Let’s see how it works.
Version 8.0 of MobileTogether adds several exciting new features to the innovative platform for building enterprise and mobile apps, giving existing customers a major upgrade and paving the way for new customers to create full-featured apps even faster than before.
Major additions to the platform include a brand new way of interacting with relational databases, support for modularization, and much more.
Version 8.0 also coincides with the launch of Altova RecordsManager, a new offering that gives system administrators a completely no-code option for creating business database apps in MobileTogether Designer.
Let’s take a look at the highlights.
My friend Casey used the Solar Tool mobile app created with Altova MobileTogether to track rooftop solar production for a full year now and reports some surprising results. We first wrote about Casey’s user story in the spring, when she anticipated higher solar power production as hours of sunlight increased. Casey expected the billing cycle that included June 21, the summer solstice, to be her best generation month. Her actual results were very different and worth investigating.
Ahh spring! Birds singing, flowers blooming, and the sun rises earlier and sets later. All that extra daylight gives solar power generation systems more hours to make electricity. As the summer solstice approaches, solar generation systems enter their most productive time of year.
Owners of rooftop solar systems can be passionate about tracking their productivity. The actor and comedian John Hodgman even moderated a disagreement over obsessive monitoring of solar production. My friend Kasey is also enthusiastic about solar power. Whenever I see Kasey, she reports her latest kilowatt-hours stats. Kasey’s home is in a warm, sunny climate where air conditioning is her biggest electricity demand. She installed solar panels on the roof of her house at the end of last June and her system raced to generate enough power during long summer days to offset her air conditioning.
After receiving the electric bill for August, Kasey called her solar installer to report success – her home’s electricity consumption for the month was zero. “I have to confess, I read my meters every single day to see how the system is doing,” Kasey told the installer.
“Everybody does it,” the installer replied. “Some users even tell me they check the meters three times a day!”
Kasey asked me if a mobile phone application built with MobileTogether might make a good reporting tool for her solar power system. “I could enter the meter readings into my phone,” she said. “I can do it every day when I take the dog out before breakfast.”
That’s how our mobile app development collaboration began. The result is the MobileTogether app we call Solar Power Tool.
Recently I came across this note in a senior developer’s code review of a colleague’s work: “Slightly revised the user function to work correctly when languages other than English are used.” This was a surprising comment–the code is the code and it shouldn’t make a difference what language the developer or the end user speaks! A user function is simply an expression that may accept input parameters and returns a result.
Altova MobileTogether supports user functions in a cross-platform mobile development framework that combines drag-and-drop UI design and standardized functional programming for data selection and processing. Several MobileTogether demo applications are highly dependent on user functions and the MobileTogether Designer includes features that greatly assist creating and validating user functions.
Let’s take a look at user functions in mobile apps by examining one of these demo apps.
Android and Apple mobile devices support a display option called Dark Theme, which you can think of as almost a negative image of the normal screen display. In Dark Theme white is black, black is white, and color intensity in general is adjusted. Dark Theme reduces power requirements, which can extend runtime for a battery charge, and can be easier to view in low light.
Altova MobileTogether includes features to let developers create mobile apps that automatically support Dark Theme by detecting the user setting when the app is launched.
Let’s look at an example:
The latest release of Altova’s rapid application development (RAD) framework introduces several new features that make it easier to customize and refine the UI of your app, with new features for styling controls, flexible options for users, and new logging tools.
Let’s take a look at what’s new in MobileTogether 7.2.
MobileTogether is a tool for building highly complex, elegant, cross-platform solutions. Developers need mobile app debugging tools to troubleshoot during development and understand app behavior. The MobileTogether Designer offers full-featured debugging of app execution flow inside action trees and debugging of XPath/XQuery functions. These features are provided in two mobile app debugging views integrated into a single tool.
The Actions Debugger view allows developers to debug the Actions of a Control event or a Page event. This view is available when an Action that has been selected for debugging is encountered during processing. The XPath Debugger view opens the XPath/XQuery evaluator window for in-depth tracing and debugging of expressions.
Developers can set breakpoints at various locations and the app, then execute one step at a time, pausing in either view to allow examination of the complete execution environment.
Let’s see mobile app debugging in action:
Software design templates streamline mobile app development by eliminating implementation of repetitive components. Creating a design template also simplifies revisions and upgrades when a change to the template can roll through an entire project.
MobileTogether supports software design templates for user controls in cross-platform mobile apps to facilitate design reuse and make it easy to build efficient, flexible options for various app requirements.
A Control Template in MobileTogether is a design component that allows developers to specify and group user controls in a way that makes them easily reusable. Control Templates support parameters, and each template can be customized based on parameter values at runtime.
Let’s look at an example.
With the right tools, a low code approach to development doesn’t mean a sacrifice of functionality or sophistication of the end result. On the contrary, low code app development frameworks like MobileTogether make advanced programming functionality more accessible and faster to implement.
Whether you’re building apps for iOS, Android, Windows, the web – or all of the above – the latest release of MobileTogether adds a mix of features that elevate programming on the platform to the next level and give developers easy access to the latest mobile device trends.
In an earlier post we described how to integrate maps into cross-platform mobile apps with each end-user device’s native map application. Our example app generated a map with pins locating major airports in the United States. Illustrations showed maps generated by the same app on an Android phone, an iPhone, and Windows desktop.
What if a list of locations to be mapped is not known in advance, but generated based on user activity at run-time? MobileTogether, the low-code cross-platform mobile development tool from Altova, also empowers developers to build custom maps in mobile apps on the fly based on a list of geolocations generated at run time.
Developers can create highly-customized location-based apps by leveraging geolocation functionality in mobile devices. Now MobileTogether, the cross-platform, low-code mobile development tool from Altova, supports deep integration of maps into applications for all popular mobile platforms.
Developers can integrate maps into mobile apps, add dedicated markers, and define custom actions based on user clicks on the map. For instance, an enterprise might want an app to include a map of all branch office locations, then display the current inventory when an office is clicked.
In a previous post we described a mobile app designed to let users check the status of major US airports by selecting an airport code from a combo box. An alternate technique would be to replace the 47 combo-box entries with pins on a map.
Let’s look at this example.
The latest release of the MobileTogether app development framework adds additional support for defining geolocation and video integration in your apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and other platforms.
Let’s take a look at how these new features enhance existing map and video tools in MobileTogether.
Integration between a mobile app and the vast information resources of world wide web makes the user experience more convenient and responsive, especially when targeted web content may be frequently updated.
The latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s low-code, cross-platform mobile development framework, includes support for automatic link detection of URLs and email addresses in labels. Clicking or tapping the link opens the targeted website page in a browser window or as a new draft message in the device’s email app in a new window without quitting the mobile app. No further special coding required by the developer.
Let’s see how it works.
Read more…The latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s low-code, cross platform mobile app development framework, offers a simplified method for requesting and implementing SSL certificates by utilizing Let’s Encrypt integration. Now, developers can secure communications between the backend server and user devices quickly, seamlessly, and for free.
Other updates include support for the latest versions of Android and multiple new options for flexible app development. Let’s take a look.
The shortage of software developers in recent years is hardly news – and it’s not getting any better. A recent study arrived at a stunning revelation: software developers are now more valuable to companies than money.
Let’s take a look at some of the factors contributing to the problem – as well as how the emergence of low code tools is helping to solve it in a few surprising ways.
In its latest release, the MobileTogether app development framework adds several new features for building native mobile apps and enterprise solutions, including a totally rewritten web client, numerous new UI design options, powerful new Actions and functions, and much more.
Whether it’s refining the look and feel of your app’s UI or designing sophisticated app behavior, MobileTogether 5.0 adds numerous tools that make it easy.
Let’s take a look.
During mobile app development there’s often a quick action the developer wishes to let the user to complete or a message that can be delivered on top of the current app view – otherwise known as a pop-up window. These are useful for letting the end user complete a process or view a message payload without interrupting his or her progress in the app.
MobileTogether makes it easy to configure pop-up windows of any size. Let’s take a look at how it works.
The newest version of Altova’s cross-platform framework for mobile app development includes comprehensive calendar integration for building apps with scheduling functionality. You’ll also find support for building and triggering services, easy to configure pop-up windows, and much more.
Whether you’re building enterprise apps or native apps for the major platforms, this release has the tools you need to add even more great functionality — without increasing development time.
Let’s take a look at what’s new.
The latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s framework for cross platform mobile app development, adds easy-to-use tools for defining push notifications, the ability to embed apps inside web applications, and more.
Let’s take a look at these new features, which only add to the long list of functionality available for building today’s sophisticated, data-centric mobile apps.
The MyCollections app from Altova has become a popular tool for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows users to catalog and keep track of their collections of books, watches, recipes, vacation destinations – you name it.
It’s easy to share portions of or entire collections with your friends who have the MyCollections app, and now you can even publish your carefully curated creations to the web – and then share them via email or on your social media accounts.
Publishing collections is just one of the new features in MyCollections 2 – let’s check out the full list of improvements.
Using a cross-platform mobile development framework like MobileTogether is a great choice for building native apps, because the design environment takes care of rendering the app UI properly using the native look and feel of each operating system. You just have to build one design.
This gives app developers the ability to build sophisticated, data-centric apps for all users very quickly. To help this work, MobileTogether employs an RMAD approach along with flexible options for designing a beautiful UX. To help specifically with this last point are multi-level style sheets that let you customize and apply styles – either statically or dynamically – at various levels of the app UI design with just a few clicks.
Barcodes are used in various industries to provide an optical, machine readable representation of data, usually related to an object they are placed on, such as a book, retail product, shipping package, or even the wrist of a patient in a hospital.
Recent developments in barcode technology include 2D codes that use shapes beyond the original bars (think of those QR codes you see on everything from magazine ads to cereal boxes). More significant, though, is the ability of smartphones and other mobile devices to scan barcodes using their built-in camera. Where in the past a specialized barcode scanner was required to read the coded information, now anyone can scan a code, greatly expanding the usefulness of barcodes for communicating data that can then be used a variety of ways.
Apps that can process barcode information are useful in a number of industries, and they can be used in apps that target workers as well as consumers. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to build an app that scans and processes barcodes in MobileTogether.
It’s time for the latest release of MobileTogether, Altova’s cross-platform framework for building native, data-centric apps.
Coming a short five months after MobileTogether 2.2, version 3.0 ships with an impressive array of new functionality, from developer-requested features such as barcode scanning and automated testing support, to flexibility improvements in the form of multi-level stylesheets and print-to-file functionality, all of which are sure to set your apps apart from the crowd.
Let’s take a look at the new features in detail.
Thanks to invaluable feedback from developers building apps in MobileTogether, we’re constantly adding new functionality to the product. Close on the heels of MobileTogether 2.1, which added over 30 new features, is the latest release: Version 2.2.
Additions to MobileTogether 2.2 are focused on integrating multimedia assets in your mobile apps, with new tools for using audio and video functionality to enable seamless interactivity that your end users will love.
As the saying goes, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” This age-old advice still rings true today in myriad contexts – even when thinking about mobile apps. A successful app is an extension of the user’s hand, and a beautiful, functional UI is what makes that connection seamless.
MobileTogether makes it easier than ever to build sophisticated UIs to front-end complex programming logic. In its latest release, we’ve added even more options for developing intuitive interfaces for native iOS, Android, and Windows apps.
“We need an app for that.”
This simple declaration carries with it underlying implications that can be anything but simple to implement: an app must be available for all devices, it must delight end users – and it must be ready yesterday.
As the need for mobility in data centric apps has increased, so has the number of products claiming to provide the best in cross-platform mobile development. But how can you cut through the flowery marketing claims? We’ve put together a list of the top 10 criteria for choosing a mobile development framework.
