There's only one weekend left until we get to EclipseCon 2009 - and I can't wait! You'll have already seen what talks I'm looking forward to. We'll have lots of coverage of the conference here at EclipseZone. Another really easy way to follow the conference is by using Twitter to follow EclipseCon people. All you need to do to find these people is head over to the EclipseCon Birds Nest. There's four different ways to partipate - as a standard follower, as a speaker, an exhibitor or an attendee. There's going to be a Twitter monitor in the lounge area for people to watch what people are saying about the conference. Twittervision - how cool is that?! Ian Skerrett is also planning a tweetup on Sunday night. Over the last few weeks I've become a Twitter addict myself - it's a great way to keep in touch with the latest goings on. (If you want to follow me, just go to my profile as dzonejames.) In other EclipseCon news, Sun Microsystems have become a Gold Sponsor for the conference. They will be showing their Eclipse support for JavaFX, GlassFish and Solaris. It's good to see Sun there. If you haven't registered yet, there's still time for advance registration, ending today. Make sure to use your DZone coupon to get 10% off, using the DZONE10 code. Otherwise you can register on site. So, if you want to stay in the loop for EclipseCon, become part of the Birds Nest , follow me around on Twitter and keep visiting EclipseZone.
You don't generally hear that you should develop for Android first, but even if you go iOS first, Android comes second. That's the traditional wisdom, anyways. According to Semil Shah on Haywire, though, "iOS first" is an understatement. It should be iOS first, and Android in the distant future, if at all. Shah is fairly direct with his point of view: The most common trap here is the early iOS app which gets some buzz. All of a sudden, the founders hear “When are you building for Android?” The natural, enthusiastic response to sincere requests of the Android chorus is to go ahead and build for Android and seek more downloads, more growth, more revenue. I have a different view though. The proper response is: “No. Buy an iPhone.” Shah's reasoning is presented in three central arguments: Android's fragmentation problem is too much for small teams iOS users have all the money (and their numbers are growing) Future Apple hardware (iPhone 5c, for example) may level the playing field And these are some interesting thoughts. The third point in particular is one you don't hear often - one of the big selling points of Android as a development platform is the massive reach, which is a product of the sheer number of phones in consumers' hands. After all, iOS traditionally has a higher barrier of entry when it comes to economics. On the other hand, we've already seen some counterarguments to some of these points. For example, if you ask Nick Bradbury, fragmentation is a completely overblown problem, and according to Danny Roa, there's not really that much point to supporting older devices in the first place. Similarly, Kevin Quach suggests that the common notions surrounding Android's monetization opportunities - that they're not there, basically, at least compared to iOS - are bunk as well. In other words, the "iOS first" vs. "Android first" argument may not be so clear in either direction. Check out Shah's full article for all the details.
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So affirms Sencha, in the latest installment of their HTML5 developer scorecards series. Four-sentence version: After putting the Galaxy Nexus through our test wringer, we can say that Ice Cream Sandwich is a major step for the Android browser. However, it still falls short of iOS 5. It’s a solid browser for normal page browsing and it adds major new features that support most of the HTML5 spec. It also has taken a big step forward in correctness of rendering, which is a welcome change for people who want to push their mobile browsers to the limit. The most exciting new feature support, in Sencha's opinion: tons of CSS3, including the more nativey-slick, like animations, refletions, transformations, and transitions. Some specific missing features: Web Workers Web Sockets WebGL datetime and range input types overflow-scrolling Shared Workers The device Sencha used was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which meant that some performance and zoom issues might tell you as much about the hardware as about the OS. But the biggest rendering improvement: rendering was simply correct. One way Ice Cream Sandwich beat iOS 5? Embedded inline HTML5 video. They actually played inline on the Galaxy Nexus, in Sencha's tests; they didn't on the iPad and iPhone running iOS 5. Here's Sencha's rather glowing closing summary: In summary, the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich are a major step forward for the Android platform. Feature by feature, HTML5 support has gotten much better, rendering has become more accurate, and performance has gotten much faster. Although still behind the current HTML5 gold standard of iOS5, Android 4.0 is night and day compared to previous versions. That 'night and day' is pretty strong, and definitely great news for HTML5 developers. If you're developing HTML5 apps for mobile, you should probably read the full report, which includes JavaScript performance numbers via SunSpider, Acid3 scores, and detailed results of Sencha's own touch-specific test suite.
Sometimes, Android development is terrible. This recent blog post by Tony Cosentini discusses some of the more common and recognizable pain points in Android development, and how to get around them. Consentini concedes that Android development has been improving lately, pointing to developments like Android Studio and its Gradle build system, but there are still problems. In particular, he focuses on the following: Activities that are treated like view controllers The fragility of intents Problematic unit testing And for each, he provides a solution. For example, he points to Square as a useful source for a number of Android-simplifying solutions. Take a look at the full post for more ideas on how to solve some of the basic frustrations in Android development.
So, Android Studio exists. While there are a number of fixes for the less-than-graceful aspects of Android development in Eclipse - Genymotion, right? - some are moving to Android Studio for a more stream-lined approach. This recent post from MeetMe's engineering blog details Bill Donahue's switch from Eclipse to Android Studio, and he has some pretty strong feelings about it. He says - and this is his own emphasis - the following: I will never go back to Eclipse Donahue then explains the key differences as he sees them. First he makes a list of complaints about Eclipse - constant refreshing, awkward UI building, hogging RAM, and so on - followed by a list of the improvements found in Android Studio, such as full-program themes, new UI tools, better stability and performance, and more. He does point to a couple of hiccups, such as the switch to a Gradle build, but it's more of a thing you're going to have to learn than an issue with Android Studio. Check out Donahue's full post for more details on the switch and the little things Android Studio does to make it more comfortable.
Explore how flexibility in ACE allows the progression of independent unit testing, without needing to wait for a larger organization to move to containers.
In this interview, learn more about what kind of data Foursquare deals with, what it does with that data, and how using a knowledge graph is going to help.
IoT needs speed, reliability, and energy efficiency that isn’t guaranteed in a desktop environment. Let's look at how to choose the right real-time operating system.
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