Blog

We got some prety cool features and updates this week.

New Projects and Dashboard Pages

We got new Projects and Dashboard (old My Account) pages.

With the new Projects page, you got the list of projects and project details in one page. Project details are separated into different tabs — for easier navigation.

The new Dashboard page is informational dashboard into everything happening in Appery.io, your plan information, and more:

HTML5 app hosting in all plans, plus Standard plan gets unlimited pages

HTML5 app hosting is now included in every plan. Yes, even in the Free plan. Plus, the Standard plan now has unlimited pages (up from 10).

Appery.io Backend Services

Appery.io Backend Services are out of beta. You can check out the features and pricing. We got a pretty nice Free plan so definitely check it out. As for new features, we are working on Push and Server-side code.

Last month we released app builder-database integration. You can view the video how fast it is to add a database to your app:

PhoneGap 2.0

We also upgraded to PhoneGap 2.0. All projects, old and new now get the new PhoneGap version 2.0.

Coming soon: new HTML5/JS builder beta

We have been working for the past couple of months on a really awesome new HTML5/JS builder. We are getting ready to launch the beta so you will be able to try it.

As always, we want to hear what you think: support@appery.io, forum, Twitter, Facebook.

We got some really cool changes in tomorrow’s release. Here is a quick heads up of what’s coming up.

New look for Projects and Dashboard pages

Here is a screen shot of the new Projects page. With the new tab design, it will be much simpler to work with a project and navigate the projects list:

Changes to pricing

We are making some (good) changes to pricing.

• The Free plan now includes HTML5 app hosting.
• The Standard plan now has unlimited number of pages (from 10 per app) and also includes HTML5 app hosting.
• The Pro plan now comes with 50 apps.

Appery.io Backend Services

Appery.io backend services are coming out of beta with pretty nice Free plan and the following pricing:

We are working on adding Push and Server-side code features!

We just released some really awesome features in Appery.io!

App Builder Database Integration

In early July we launched Appery.io Database where you can store app data. Now we have launched database integration in our app builder. This means you can point to a specific database, select the collection(s) you want to use and automatically generate all the REST services.  To create a services from database, select Create New > Database Services:

Next select the database:

Once the database is selected, you can select the services for which you want to generate REST services.

The first section creates REST services for User management.

The second section lists all the collections you have in current database. You can then select which actions (Create, Delete, etc) you would like to create for a particular collection:

When you click Import selected services button, the following REST services will be generated:

For example opening the service for creating a new message looks like this:

The request and response parameters are also generated.  Here is a screen shot of request parameters to create a new messsage:

Isn’t this awesome?

File API

We continue to add new features to Appery.io Backend Services by adding File API. You can now easily store files in the database. When you open any database, you will see a new Files tab:

Read more about the File API.

Project Export/Import

Our users have been asking for this feature for a long time and it’s now available. You can export and then import a project. To export a project, go to app options page (Export Backup):

To import an app from backup, click From Backup when creating a new app (you get to this screen by clicking More Options link, see next section):

Even easier way to create a new app

Last, but not least, it is now even easier to create a new app. Right from Apps page, enter a new app name and click Create. That’s it.

We got some really cool stuff out this week. Check it out.

Better way to test your app

When you open the app builder you should see a new and very nice phone frame:

The old one was more Android-like. The new one is neither Android, iPhone or Windows Phone. Just a nice phone frame.

There is an upgraded test page:

You can use the new tool bar at the top to change the phone orientation as well as change the size:

That’s not all. We also now have an option to test the app without the mobile frame. In the Test pop-up, uncheck Show in mobile frame:

When you open the app, it won’t use the frame:

The frame looks nice in the browser, but technically speaking testing without the frame is better — as you are testing the actual app (just the app code, no frame). Of course when you run the app on your device, the frame is not there as well.

jQuery Mobile Multi-page Template

jQuery Mobile supports multi-page templates where two or more pages are placed inside the same file. You can now turn on this features in Appery.io app builder (it’s turn off by default). Go to Project > Project Profile:

Queries In Database Console

Appery.io Database comes with Queries support (docs) and now you can try the queries right from the collection console:

Showing products that cost more than $30 (or any other currency):

PhoneGap Upgrade

We upgraded to PhoneGap version 1.8.1. Every new and existing app will now use this new version of PhoneGap.

Android 4.0.x

We also added build support for Android 4.0.x

As always, we want to get your feedback. You can always email us (support@appery.io) or post on our forum.

In addition to Appery.io Database (which is a pretty big feature), there are a few other features we added back in June.

Simpler app creation

We greatly simplified new app creation wizard. Just enter the app name and select whether you want a phone or tablet app. That’s it.

By default Appery.io creates an app that includes Apache Cordova (PhoneGap). This means you can export the app to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. You can also use any device API Apache Cordova provides.

We are going to simplify the app creation even more in the next release.

You might be wondering but what about mobile web app hosting? If you use any native device feature, then hosting as a mobile web app doesn’t make sense. But if you didn’t use any native features, then you want to be able to host. If you go to app options, you can now switch the app type from mobile app (hybrid) to mobile web by clicking Change for Change project type:

Select the new type and click Save:

Once you switch the project type to Mobile Web, publish option will be enabled on the same page:

and also in the builder:

Simpler access to app settings

To access app settings you had to go to Project view, then Project > Project Profile. Now you can access project settings from the top level menu:

Project settings editor is divided into four panels:

1. General – for setting app name, description, start page and selecting a theme
2. External resources – for adding 3rd party JavaScript librararies
3. Android binary APK properties
4. iOS binary API properties

Faster

We made changes how Appery.io web site and builder work so things should be running faster.

New List component options

Check out the List component, we added more option that you can configure from properties. If something is still missing, you can always use More Properties feature. Our goal is to make the list as configurable via properties as you can do in source code.

We are super excited the announce the availability of Appery.io Database (beta). Appery.io Database is a cloud database that provides a backend and storage for your mobile app. You already know that any using 3rd party REST API is very easy in Appery.ioapp builder. Every REST API provides some specific functionality. For example, if you use Facebook API you can easily post a message to the timeline, but what happens if you need to store data specific to your app? Let’s say you are building a todo app – where can you store the list of things to do? That’s exactly where Appery.io database comes in. It comes with elegant REST APIs so you can easily show, create, edit, and delete app data. Appery.io database comes with built-in User Management. It’s powerful, scalable and easy to use. It works seamlessly with Appery.io app builder.

You can access Appery.io database today at https://appery.io. From appery.io, go to My Account, then click on Database.

On the first page you can see a lit of all your databases, you can also create a new database:

Once you select a database, you will see all the collections in the database:

A very nice feature is that you get curl command hints. This will enable you to define a service in Appery.io app builder very quickly:

In Appery.io app builder, defining a service is as simple as this:

Keep in mind that this service is still in beta. We got a lot more features we want to add, such as push, analytics and server-side code. Database docs are here. We also would love to hear your feedback. Let us know of the forum, email, Twitter or Facebook.

Appery.io mobile app builder got some new and cool stuff in May release.

jQuery Mobile 1.1

jQuery Mobile was updated to the latest stable version 1.1.

Windows Phone Export

We just added Windows Phone code export.

We are also planning to add binary build. For now, once you export the project you can jump to PhoneGap Build and get the binary there. Or, you can always build it yourself.

UI breadcrumbs, plus easier delete

A really nice feature in Appery.io visual builder is the ability to have containers such as grid and place other components inside. To make it super easy to select a particular component we just added breadcrumbs. It makes it very easy to navigate the UI by clicking the component id in the breadcrumbs bar.

In addition to breadcrumbs, we made it very easy to delete an element. Simply click on the red x icon. Clicking on the e icon will open Events view for the component.

Plug-in Properties

With new Plug-in properties, any service information such as API keys can be entered in one place and reused by any number of services. A small but nice feature to save time.

Code generation update

OK, the was requested for a long time. If you name your page MyCoolPage, in the resulting app it will be MyCoolPage.html. If you upload an image called MyCoolImage.png, in the resulting app it will be MyCoolImage.png. Yes, as simple as that, but a very important feature.

In our April release we introduced two new mobile components: Datepicker and Carousel.

Datepicker

Datepicker has been requested by our users and allows to select date from a calendar popup. This is how the component looks when displayed on the page (not activated)

and this is how it looks when activated:

The component comes with a number of useful options such as setting the earliest and latest date you can select. This is great for validation. Setting the Sunday or Monday as start day of the week as well as being able to edit months and days labels.

Note that Datepicker is a plug-in and not yet an official component in the jQuery Mobile library.

Carousel

Carousel consists of one or more panels which can be switched with a swipe (left or right).

The three dots indicate the number of items in the carousel. This component is best tested on the actual mobile device. Also note that only Webkit-based browsers support this component (Android and iOS).

Both components are available in any project (old or new) in the Mobile UI palette.

The Appery.io team keeps making the great even better, as you can see in this latest release of Appery.io Mobile App Builder. New features include everything from iOS binary builds to updated support for jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap. Read on to find out more. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we had our March release. Here is what’s new and cool.

Really Awesome jQuery Mobile Themes

We just added a bunch of new and awesome jQuery Mobile themes and swatches. Here is how the new Appery.io dark-gray theme looks:

Check out the rest here

Plugins

Plugins make it possible to package services, screens, images as a “plugin” and then add the plugin to any other project. You can even create custom project templates from plugins. A plugin is created by selecting Export > Appery plugin:

To learn more, read plugins documentation.

Panel – add any custom HTML code

The Appery.io visual editor is pretty cool but we know very well that being able to insert any custom code is a must have feature. In this release we added a new Panel component which can be.

• div
• html (any custom HTML code)
• span

Create Custom CSS

Staying on the topic of customazing your app, in addition to being able to add any JavaScript you can now also create a custom CSS file:

Visual jQuery Mobile-JSON mapper improvements

A number of improvements were were do the visual data mapper. Once a connection is mapped, a grey dotted line appears to indicate to which variable the connection is made.

Documentation updated

We spent the last couple of days updating Appery.io documentation with all the new features. We’d love to hear your feedback. One thing we are definitely going to add is more tutorials!