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EZAPP, a company from Israel, uses Appery.io to quickly build mobile apps for their customers.

“With Appery.io, we reduced the time to build an app to a minimum, we can easily integrate new services into our system, and we provide our customers with more value,” said Elad Welner, CEO of EZAPP.

About EZAP

EZAPP, located in Kfar-Sava, Israel, provides applications as a service to SOHO and SMB enterprises. They provide their customers with a sales app that allows them to increase their revenue,  manage their customers, publish coupons and promotions, and create an online store.

Situation:

With their demand for applications increasing exponentially, EZAPP needed an up-to-date development environment with integrated backend services, and a rich catalog of API plug-ins that would simplify integration with cloud services. Perhaps most importantly, they needed a platform that would allow them to create cross-platform apps easily and rapidly. EZAPP’s monetization strategy is subscription-based, centered on a monthly fee for their service.

Solution:

EZAPP evaluated several platforms, focusing most on Appery.io and Conduit. In the end, EZAPP chose Appery.io because of the following features:

• Simple-to-create templates and access to the source code. With Appery.io’s visual builder, it’s easy and efficient to create app templates that can be saved and reused. You also have immediate access to, and ability to edit the application source code.
• Excellent support. With multiple channels of support available, Appery.io’s support policies are top-notch. The EZAPP team evaluated Appery.io over a two-month period, and was so impressed by Appery.io’s excellent support and great overall results that, “from there it [Appery.io] was an easy choice.”
• Awesome Plug-ins. You can quickly add powerful functionality to your app with the numerous plug-ins available with the Appery.io platform, and you can easily create and add your own.

Results:

Thanks to Appery.io, EZAPP significantly reduced their build time, and gained access to a huge catalog of useful and easy-to-use plug-ins and services.

“Had we not used Appery.io, we had to develop and maintain all the platform aspects ourselves, and write all the add-ons instead of using existing ones, a process that would have cost us a lot of money and time,” continued Elad Welner, CEO of EZAPP.

Using Appery.io’s Database Hosting and Push Notification services, EZAPP expect to reach over 100,000 users in the coming year, and created more than 1,000 apps.

Read the complete case study.

As many of you know, we attempted to upgrade our platform this past weekend and had to roll the update back because of technical issues we encountered.  We made the tough decision to roll back the upgrade because, although painful, it would be least disruptive to our customers.   What happened is not acceptable to us.  We are growing fast and many of you rely on our platform for your business.  We are conducting a review of our process to ensure we deliver with quality each time.

Is my account impacted and if so what should I do?

Fortunately, for most of you, there was no impact.  However, if you opened and modified one of your projects between the times of Sunday at 4 AM Pacific and Monday 5 PM Pacific, some of your updates may have been lost as we rolled back to the earlier release.   If you believe you may have lost some of your changes, there is a good chance we can help you recover them.   Please contact our support channels so we can help you.

I will say this again, what happened over the weekend is unacceptable. We are already looking at ways to improve new features roll out.  In addition to improving our internal process, we are also considering deploying a beta system to both get early feedback on new features and also improve the quality of our new releases.  Another idea we’re considering is enabling users to manually upgrade their apps to new versions of our App Builder, rather than automatically updating them.  This would give you more control over your projects.  I’d love to hear from you about these and other ideas you may have.  Please feel free to write to me directly at max@appery.io

Max and the Appery.io team.

Appery.io is a cloud-based platform with visual development tools and integrated backend services. Appery.io provides powerful visual tools to build the app UI, but what’s the technology under the hood when you create the app? It’s pretty simple, the resulting app has:

• HTML
• JavaScript
• CSS
• jQuery Mobile
• Any custom HTML, JavaScript, CSS added by the developer
• Apache Cordova — for native APIs and hybrid app creation
• Any custom Apache Cordova plugins

As you can see, it’s a pretty standard technology stack when you build an app in Appery.io.

Google Maps is probably the most popular map widget used in the mobile apps today. Working with Google Maps in Appery.io app builder is very easy but as the same time is not very different than using other dev. tools. To add a Map component, simply drag and drop it from the palette onto the page:

Rename the Map component to google_map. This is done so it’s simpler to reference the component from code.

Next you can create your own JavaScript class and define map variable as following:

var map;
function initialize() {
    map = Apperyio("google_map").gmap;
    if (!map)
    {
        setDelay();
    }
    else
    {
        directionsDisplay = new google.maps.DirectionsRenderer();
    }
}

function setDelay()
{
    setTimeout(initialize, 50);
}

Google Maps is usually loaded asynchronously, so the approach with delay (as mentioned in code above) can be handy. This will ensure the map is completely loaded before you try to use it.

Generally that’s all you need to use Google Maps JavaScript API. All the actions you want to do next you can make based on Google Maps JavaScript API. Lets say you want to show direction from point A to point B. Place the button on the page and run following JavaScript by clicking on it:

var directionsDisplay = new google.maps.DirectionsRenderer();
var directionsService = new google.maps.DirectionsService();

var request = {
origin: 'Los Angeles',
destination: 'San Francisco',
travelMode: google.maps.DirectionsTravelMode.DRIVING
};
directionsService.route(request, function(response, status) {
directionsDisplay.setMap(map);
if (status == google.maps.DirectionsStatus.OK) {
directionsDisplay.setDirections(response);
}
else
{
alert("Directions query unsuccessful. Response status: " + status);
}
});

The directions will be shown on the map:

To place the marker on the map you should provide latitude and longitude values of a certain point. Try to run following JavaScript code and you’ll see how the marker drop on the map:

var markerLatLng = new google.maps.LatLng(37.913597,-122.066059);

var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
    position: markerLatLng,
    map: map,
    title: "Walnut Creek, CA",
    animation: google.maps.Animation.DROP
});

You can also place markers based on geographical names, not latitude and longitude. In this case you should use Google Geocoding services, to convert user-friendly names to latitude and longitude values. Create a REST service in the app builder with the following URL:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json

You’ll get a coordinates (latitude/longitude) as a response of this service, and you of course can use them to add markers.

Any layers provided by Google Maps can be added too. Here is an example for Traffic layer, just run this code by clicking on the button:

var trafficLayer = new google.maps.TrafficLayer();
trafficLayer.setMap(map);

Traffic layer in action:

As you can see using Google Maps and its API is very straightforward in Appery.io app builder. Check out our Google Maps section for more detailed tutorials.

As many of you know, last month Apple announced that as of February 1 it will require the use of xCode 5 for all submissions to the App Store.  We are working hard on an update that will not only update our platform to support Xcode 5 but also to jQuery Mobile 1.4.  This version of jQuery Mobile comes with major upgrades and performance improvements but also requires more testing than we originally anticipated.  We estimate that this upgrade will be completed on February 11*.   Until that time, any app exported as an iOS binary may be rejected by Apple.  This does not impact apps that are distributed via enterprise app stores, of course.

Temporary workaround:  if you must submit an app to the Apple App Store before we release this update, you can always export the source code as an Xcode project rather than as an .ipa binary and create the binary on your own computer using Xcode 5.   The option to export the source code is available via the Export pull down menu within our App Builder.

If you have questions about this, please contact our Tech Support team as usual.

*Updated this post on February 3rd:  changed the estimated completing of this upgrade from “mid February” to “February 11”

2013 was a stellar year for the Appery.io platform!

The biggest event happened in April when we launched the Appery.io platform a (pronounced “Appery dot io”), as we transitioned from the Tiggzi app UI builder to a completely cloud-based mobile app platform for creating enterprise HTML5 and native mobile apps. The Appery.io platform provides both an app UI builder and integrated backend services (MBaaS)  including a cloud database, push notifications, and a server code facility.
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