Software-Development Tools Belong in the Browser (via slashdot)
It is clear that the cloud is disrupting the way most software is deployed and consumed. Benefits such as elasticity, agility, and operational cost savings make it very compelling for companies to go with the cloud model, and the simplicity of the browser…
We recently updated Appery.io in a number of ways, adding up to a big step forward for the platform. At the same time, RESTXpress, an important part of the overall mobile solution provided by Appery.io, has been enhanced. We’ve discussed most of the improvements in Appery.io in a previous blog post, so I’ll just provide a summary of these before moving on to a discussion of the changes in RESTXpress.
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CIO Magazine recently wrote a thought-provoking article about the power shift in the enterprise between IT and the Lines of Business (LOB) when it comes to mobile and I’d like to provide our perspective. The editor used the news of our partnership with Salesforce.com (see page 2 of article) to show evidence that mobile development, traditionally an IT function, is moving to the LOBs. As you may have heard, Salesforce.com launched the “Mobile Pack for Appery.io” and positioned it as a way to reach out to a much broader base of developers, including business users, to innovate on the on the Salesforce Platform. We’re quite excited about this partnership and believe there is a very large opportunity to enable developers in the LOBs to innovate. Read the rest of this entry »
We are looking forward to our next webinar with Max Katz, Head of Product Management and Developer Relations for Appery.io. This time, he will be explaining how you can get the most out of Appery.io using its newest features, like advanced collaboration, Heroku integration (for publishing apps), and new UI components. You can see all of these new features demonstrated in this hands-on webinar. And, if there’s time, we might be able to squeeze in a little bit of the latest on RESTXpress, our secure web integration product … maybe.
What’s New in Appery.io
Wednesday, October 2nd, 10am Pacific time
Register now for the webinar.
Great News! A panel that included industry influencers such as Ovum, Strategy Analytics, Frost and Sullivan and IHS selected Appery.io as a finalist to win the 2013 MobITs award in the category of “Applications and Platforms for Enterprise Extensions to Mobile.” This is quite exciting for us, specially after also recently receiving the 2013 Mobile Merits Award for Best Enterprise Product or Service. This has only been possible because of the great support we get from our community, so thank you!
Help us WIN with your Vote Now!
The winners will be selected by a popular vote on the internet. Please vote for our entry NOW. To vote, simply click on the image below:
and then click on the “Sign Up/Sign In to vote” link on the upper right of that page. Please note the deadline!
The winners will be announced at the MobiCON 2013 on October 17, in San Jose, CA where in fact, we will be speaking at one of the thought leadership sessions.
Thank you for your support!
Coming on the heels of a very successful DevLab by AT&T in Seattle, and DevLab AT&T Palo Alto, we will be heading to Plano, TX for another 1-day mobile training.
You are invited to attend the AT&T DevLab in Plano, Texas. The event, to be held at the AT&T Foundry, will be a day of hands-on learning, coding, and education focused on AT&T’s messaging and speech APIs. You will get in-depth experience with app building: learning how to add speech and messaging APIs to your own apps and how to use the Appery.io cloud-based rapid development platform to build an HTML5/jQuery Mobile/PhoneGap mobile app.
Register for this free event here. Space is limited and is for app developers currently working independently or with app-based companies. You will receive confirmation of your registration one week prior to the event with full details and an agenda.
Here is what you can expect from the day:
EVENT DETAILS
Date: Sept. 26th
Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Place: AT&T Foundry – Plano, TX ( 2900 W. Plano Pkwy)
Register: https://attdevlabplano.eventbrite.com/
In case you missed our recent joint webinar with Salesforce.com, take a look at the recording on our YouTube channel. We had the pleasure to be joined by Dave Carroll, Director of Developer Evangelism at Salesforce.com who described the mobile strategy for Salesforce.com and how Appery.io fits into their strategy. Since we did not have time to answer all the questions that came up, we are posting them here for your review. Please feel free to comment if you have additional questions.
Q: Is there a step-by-step tutorial for the Salesforce integration?
A: Yes. There is a tutorial on the Salesforce.com blog. In addition, there is a full set of Appery.io tutorials here and here. We also have a full set of self training videos.
Q: Which Browsers are supported for development?
A: Appery.io supports the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as Internet Explorer 10
Q: Which mobile platforms does Appery.io support?
A: Appery.io supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Mobile Web
Q: Can you recommend books, websites or other resources to get up to speed quickly? Jquery, Java, Javascript, which would be the best approach for a beginner?
A: We like Code Academy. There are probably many good resources available on the internet.
Q: I am a beginner. What would be the first steps I take towards becoming a Salesforce apps developer?
A: Have a visit to http://developer.force.com and sign up for a free Developer Edition. Then take a look at http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Force.com_workbook to grab a workbook that walks you from beginning to advanced.
Q: Can you explain about using the Appery.io Proxy?
A: The Appery.io Proxy is used when using services that don’t support cross domain service calls. For more information, check out our documentation here.
Q: Is there a way to use the Force.com platform without using Oauth? This would be for a consumer based product that needs to access some data from custom objects but it is not necessarily a Platform user with login credentials
A: There is no way to use the Force.com platform without OAuth. We do support public facing apps and web sites through the use of our Communities product. Communities is an outgrowth of our Customer Portal and Partner Portal features. Using this you have external folks login with a much more affordable license and still gain the convenient features of the database. Another alternative is to use Site.com which provides the ability to put up a website for the public that uses data from the database.
Q: Does Appery.io use PhoneGap for the native build?
A: Yes. Appery.io incorporates Apache Cordoba (aka PhoneGap) to support the native device APIs and binary builds.
Q: Can the Salesforce plug-in automatically read the objects that exist in that instance of salesforce.com (including custom objects), or does the list of objects have to be hard-coded into the plug-in ahead of time?
A: This is possible because Salesforce provides a Metadata API that enables the discovery of objects. Using this approach it is possible to define services to automatically access Salesforce objects during runtime.
Q: How can we change the UI elements of the app ?
A: There are multiple ways. Every component has properties so you can change in the properties panel. There is also a “more properties option” to add custom properties. Finally, you can use jQuery selector to change or add properties.
Q: I have tried to instal salesforce sample app, but the free account does not have enough room for all needed pages. Is there way to evaluate it without purchase?
A: Yes, please use the promo code given out during the webinar.
Q: Looks good, how about the look and feel? Can we provide custom branding as needed?
A: Yes. Appery.io has a set of prebuilt themes to change the look and feel of the apps you build. In addition, developers can create their own custom themes using ThemeRoller for jQuery Mobile. Finally, developers can modify the CSS directly or create their own CSS files.
Q: How could you implement the barcode scanner service into this Salesforce example?
A: Salesforce.com has a number of samples. You can take the code that implement the barcode sample, and import it right into Appery.io
Q: Can I use the Kendo UI Framework?
A: At this time we support jQuery Mobile and WinRT User Interface Frameworks. However you can import any JavaScript library that does not conflict with jQuery Mobile or WinRT.
Does you hack include a mobile app? Appery.io is the fastest way to create a complete app across iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Mobile Web. There is nothing to install. You develop in the browser and you can easily collaborate with your team members because the projects can be shared in the cloud. Also, because Appery.io has built in support for many of the APIs that are sponsoring the hackathon, it is super easy to integrate to those services and win more prices! Appery.io is the best way to complete your hack in time and still catch some sleep!
In fact, when we launched the Appery at TechCrunch Disrupt New York earlier this year, Appery.io was the most widely used product in the hackathon. Over 30 teams chose Appery.io to build their projects, including many of the winners! For more on this see:
Appery.io Steals the Show at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon!
The list of prebuilt API plugins includes:
Even if the API you want to use is not pre-built, it is super easy to integrate with it on the fly. Check out this and this (two minute videos) to learn how.
To get started:
Best of luck at the Hackathon! We can’t wait to see what you build, please send us an email link to your finished project!
We won! Mobile Merit Awards recognizes excellence achieved in the global mobile industry each year. This year our product was recognized as the winner of the best Enterprise Product or Service for our Appery.io mobile app platform. This year’s winners were judged based on industry impact, innovation, technologies, social importance, implementation and overall success factor.
For a while, we’ve noted the growing gap as the demand for mobile innovation in the enterprise outstrips the capabilities and capacity of IT organizations. Our Appery.io mobile app platform is just one example of how we are helping companies close this gap. We also offer services to help organizations use Appery.io and, of course, a full gamut of enterprise software development services in addition to Appery.io-specific services.
Congratulations to customers and our hard-working global product development team!
We recently updated Appery.io with a number of new features and update. We would like to tell you what’s new in this post.
Before we start, don’t forget to register for our joint webinar with Salesforce: Rapid Mobile Application Development using the Appery.io Mobile Pack and Salesforce.com
The moment you sign you, you will see a much simpler way to navigate between core platform components: apps, databases, push notifications, server code, and plugins:
Once you select an app, all app actions such as editing, versioning, sharing and hosting are now on the same page:
New and simplified database page. The built-in Users and Files collections together with custom collections are shown on the same page:
Inside the builder you will find simple and easy access to backend services:
Improved collaboration features now make it even simpler to work on an app with remote developers. A new panel inside the builder shows the current developers working on the app:
The Notifications panels display actions performed by developers currently editing the app:
You can also now easily know how is currently editing the app without opening it:
Appery.io supported HTML5 app hosting (on Appery.io domain or custom domain) for along time and now you get even more options. You can now instantly deploy your app HTML5 mobile app to Heroku. Simpley select Heroku hosting tab, sign in and publish the current Appery.io to any existing Heroku app. You can also create a new Heroku app right from Appery.io:
To simplify development, we now have only one app type. You can decide to publish the app as mobile web app or use native APIs and build for Android or iOS You no longer need switch app types.
To allow more robust access to native device APIs, we have upgraded to PhoneGap version 2.9.
We rebuilt the Carousel component from the ground up. It is now better and works faster.
The updated HTML component is the old Panel component. The new name makes it easier to understand that you can write any custom HTML/JavaScript/CSS. This gives you power and allows to customize the app as much as you need.
We didn’t like it either but once or twice things got really slow in the past month. We made a number of significant infrastructure updates, including database upgrade to make things run much faster. We are not done. We are working on other ways to make the platform run even faster.
As always, if you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hello email us at support@appery.io, post something on our forum or ping us on Twitter.