Sooner or later, physical mobile devices will appear in the integration system of every relatively large Android project. The need to fix mistakes, perform non-standard test cases and simply test for the presence of certain features all inevitably require an actual device. Regression testing is one of the most time-consuming tasks when developing a mobile Android app. Using myMail as a case study, Alexey Perfilov would like to share his experience and advice on how to build a flexible and extensible automated testing system for Android smartphones — from scratch.
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To this day, a lot of companies still religiously follow the path to app store publishing. “Publish it and they will come,” “The web is dead,” they used to say! According to recent studies, just 26.4% of users who visit a page in an app store today will install an app. The other 73.6% are lost to the developer and don’t even try the app. Among the ones who install it, an average of 99% are lost in the following 90 days. As a consequence, the same people who declared the web dead years ago are now shouting, “Apps are dying”. So, Where is the mobile web heading? To answer this question, Ciprian Borodescu and his colleagues at Appticles have conducted a colossal study on 10,000 publishing and e-commerce websites from Alexa, scouting for signs of resurrection, and instead finding serious traces of diversification. Their findings are detailed in this article.
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Imagine an archaic, alien workflow, with ancient tooling, and none of those things you love about the web. How would your career be affected? As a web developer, not only do you already possess all of the skills to make great modern desktop apps, but thanks to powerful new APIs at your disposal, the desktop is actually where your skills can be leveraged the most. In this article, Adam Lynch will look at the development of desktop applications using NW.js and Electron, the ups and downs of building one and living with one, using one code base for the desktop and the web, and more.
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With dozens of responsive design frameworks available to download, many web developers appear to be unaware of any except for Bootstrap. Like most of web development, responsive design frameworks are not one-size-fits-all. Let’s compare the latest versions of Bootstrap, Foundation and UIkit for their similarities and differences. These are popular frameworks with piles of features out of the box, making them attractive to many development firms wanting to work with “Bootstrap or a close equivalent.”
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Today, most designers want to create prototypes with integrated pull-to-refresh animation, preferably a custom one. This tutorial explains how to build a prototype in Flinto, a tool that makes swipe-gesture animation possible, and obviously you cannot create a pull-to-refresh animation without a pull. In this article, Ellina Bereza & Simon Bronnikov will help you master Flinto, understand the logic of creating prototypes of this kind, and learn the process of coding these prototypes in your application. To follow the steps, you will need macOS, Sketch for Mac, Flinto for Mac to create the prototype, and Android Studio and JDK 7+ to write the code.
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The mobile developer population has boomed, and the number of mobile apps in the market has hit new heights. Most studies show that in-app advertising is set to be a key driver of mobile growth over the coming years. In this article, Stacy Golmack will shed some light on the questions like: Is the average revenue truly growing? What are the most popular monetization models in the market today? Which ones will be driving growth tomorrow? Which models have outlived their time? She’ll try to present comprehensive answers, backed by statistical reports and expert opinion.
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Sound UX principles apply to all user groups, regardless of their social status or preferences. Today, users anticipate a superior experience and have a strong understanding of the value delivered. They are focused on results and a one-button approach, expecting their orders to be addressed at the highest level of service and with maximum transparency. However, more so in the luxury field, human interaction within the digital experience is not an option, but rather an undeniably powerful tool that improves communication and increases loyalty. In this article, Yegor Tsynkevich & Vadim Slavin will present a case study and share observations on the peculiarities of the UX design of a luxury lifestyle service platform and its mobile apps.
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Even though gestural controls have been around since the early 1980s and have enjoyed a level of ubiquity since the early 2000s, designers are still in the beta-testing phase of making gestural controls intuitive for everyday use. In this article, Kyle Sanders will explore the benefits and drawbacks of gestural controls for mobile UIs, as well as offer advice on effective implementation that avoids the gap in user familiarity.
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While the concept of mobile-first began as a philosophy to help prioritize content and ensure positive, device-agnostic experiences, budgetary and scheduling constraints often result in mobile-first meaning mobile-only. According to the analytics data of Marli and Jasons’s healthcare clients, the majority of their users are still on desktop. They want to provide a positive experience for those users and for users on mobile and tablet apps and for those using mobile browsers — and even for users having an in-person experience! It is not accurate to assume that mobile is the primary experience.
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The human to computer interaction is heavily based on interacting with graphical UI elements, and color plays a critical role in this interaction. When designing a new app, it’s often difficult to decide on a color scheme that works well, as there are an infinite number of possible color combinations out there. In this article, Nick Babich will go over the most important points related to color in apps. He’ll cover traditional color scheme patterns, custom color combinations that aren’t based strictly on any one pattern, and he’ll also learn how to choose colors and contrasts for your app that support usability. If you’d like to hone your own color usage skills, you can download and test Adobe XD for free, and get started right away.
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