Blog

The Current State of the Mobile Landscape

If someone stepped forward a decade or two ago and claimed that, in the near future, we would all have pocket-sized touchscreen devices that acted as gateways to multiple technological feats such as browsing the internet at high speeds, playing graphics intensive games, hailing cabs, booking flights, scheduling restaurant reservations, and purchasing products, you probably would have thought it nothing more than a creative mind’s wishful thinking. And who would have blamed you? At a time when these devices existed only in the realm of science fiction, no one would have believed, much less predicted, that one day, these incredibly high tech, hand-held gadgets would have such a huge impact on our day to day lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Appery’s Max Katz and Charles Cowens will be hosting a twitter chat for discussion about the Appery.io mobile app platform. We’ll be there to answer your questions, and we’ll have some questions for you, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the Appery.io Mobile Tester App, (available for iOS or Android) anyone can test and run your mobile app as if it had been installed as a binary for their platform. The person you want to share with doesn’t even need an Appery.io account! Just ask the person you are going to share the app with to install the Appery.io Tester app (iOS or Android). Then, generate a code on the app page in Appery.io and send it to this person. When this code is entered into the tester app, your app gets loaded and launched on the device.

Tell me more.

For more tips…

User login/registration is one of the most common features in a mobile app. Permitting login with existing credentials that users have from social networks can significantly simplify the authentication process and improve the user experience.

User Login Registration Examples for all project types (jQuery Mobile, Ionic, and Bootstrap) has just been updated with social authentication functionality. You can use those examples to quickly set up your app with the social login feature or see how it’s built to implement your own.

To create an app from an example, click Create new app > From example and choose the example you want from the list of available examples.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most apps require a user to register and log in with credentials. Most often, the app requires that the user create a user/password that is specific to the app. This is a cumbersome process that requires the user to remember yet one more password. It’s also not very secure.

A much better approach is to enable the user to simply log in with existing credentials from another service that is trusted, like an LDAP directory in an enterprise or a social identity provider such as Facebook.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Barcode Scanner plugin, you can quickly add the functionality to scan bar codes from your app.  This can be helpful in many cases. For example, when building a warehouse mobile app: simply scan a product bar code, search the database with that code and retrieve the product information.

You can see how to build such app for jQuery Mobile here.

Adding a Barcode Scanner plugin to your Appery.io Angular app is very simple:

1. Go to Project > CREATE NEW > From Plug-in.
2. Select Apperyio Barcode Service and click Import selected plugins.

Then, in the Project view, a related service (Barcode_scan) and a JavaScript (Barcode) file will appear. After a native service has been added to the app, it can be called like any other REST service.

The Barcode Scanner plugin uses Cordova API. As the plugin uses native APIs, you should test it on the device or using the Appery.io Tester app.

Read the step-by-step tutorial we’ve prepared on Using the Barcode scanner service. And of course, feel free to contact us if you have any issues.

We just announced some great news for Appery. We’ve passed the 250,000-user mark, we’ve updated our tester app so users don’t need to have an Appery.io account, and we’ve rolled out a new release of  the platform that includes these key features (among others):

• Simplified implementation of social login and LDAP sign-on for apps
• Extended offline capability in apps to use the internal database or an external one
• New Bootstrap and Ionic components
• Outline page component view for enhanced developer productivity

Read the rest of this entry »

We told you about upcoming versioning changes in our July 2015 newsletter. We want to make sure everyone is aware of the upcoming changes so we are posting them on our blog as well. We want every plan to enjoy this feature, but, at the same time, we want to make sure platform resources are used optimally. To balance these two goals, we are introducing a limit to the number of versions for an app, a limit that will vary depending on your plan. This change will happen on September 7, 2015.

The following version limits will be used:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are developing a mobile app, you’re likely to need some kind of a menu to easily show when needed and to hide otherwise for conserving screen space. There is a really cool native-like Ionic component to do this that is available out-of-the-box in Appery.io. Simply turn it on by toggling the Is Enabled option and adjust for your needs. Then, in the app, swipe the content left or right to open this side menu.

Tell me more.

For more tips…

Like standard UI elements, such as buttons, input and text areas, the Appery.io App Builder also provides a convenient and ready-to-use Google Maps component for your AngularJS apps. This component contains a large set of visually configurable properties and entities like markers and windows.

There is a lot of help available for you to get the most out of this component. We’ve got detailed guides, a modularly organized tutorial, and our always helpful support team.

Read the rest of this entry »