More tools for developing mobile apps

See this link for more tools to develop mobile apps. These are not necessarily free apps. See my earlier post for free apps.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223177#

Free Android Development Tools

As I have begun to tinker around with Android, I find more and more free tools for doing so. Here is a list of what I have found so far. I am sure (positive) it is not a complete list and please add to it if you care to. The Android SDK is a given for all of these solutions.

1) Eclipse and The Android ADT plugin - This is what I am using at present.


2) IntelliJ IDEA

3) MIT app inventor - I made a simple app with this - pretty cool

4) Appcelerator Titanium

5) Processing for Android 

6) Phonegap

It's great to work with a system that gets so much support and coverage.

Getting Design Help from Websites You Like

There are a gazillion websites out there. Every now and then you find one that has some features you like. Firefox and Chrome (and probably other browsers too) offer some tools to let you examine how the websites are put together. The first tool is the Page Source Tool. You will find it under the View menu in older versions of Firefox as shown below:

In newer versions of FF, you will find it under Tools-->Web Development as follows:

In Chrome, you will find this tool under the "wrench" icon as follows:

When selected, another window will open with the source HTML code for the webpage you are viewing. In this code window, you can view, select, copy the code for the webpage.

What you may find are links (url's) to other resources like .css files and .js files. If you are interested in these files - simple load the links. Then you can examine the structure of those files as well.

Portable Apps for Development

I am a fan of the portableapps system and have been for several years.  I have begun to mess around with web development, adobe air, and android development. I have several portable apps that I use for this.

1) Eclipse Portable - Java, Adobe Air, HTML IDE. Not the latest version but certainly adequate for some of the development I am doing.

2) Mozilla Firefox Portable - This is the browser that I use to preview HTML coding.

3) Inkscape Portable - Open source SVG graphics editor. Useful for logos.

4) IcoFX Portable - an icon creation/editing tool.

5) ColorPic - Get the color codes for any pixel on your screen.

6) FotoGrafix Portable - an image editor. Useful for combing images, resizing images, and touchups.

I find these apps quite helpful in my daily development work.

Building and deploying AIR apps in Eclipse using HTML and Javascript

Here is the setup I use for developing, building, and deploying Adobe air apps in Eclipse. I have the following installed on a USB drive:

1) Eclipse portable: Eclipse SDK Version: 3.7.2
2) Adobe AIR SDK

I create my project as a General project. Here is the structure I use:

ProjectName

    image File Folder
    cSS File Folder
    inc File Folder - javascripts

    ProjectName.html (pseudo Index.html)

    ProjectName-app.xml 

    page1.html
    page2.html

The must follow items are in red. The other items can really be named whatever you like. To use my external run configurations the project structure has to have the items in red above. The advantage to following this structure is I do not have to create a new external run config for each new project. Here's a "Hello World" project structure to illustrate the above.

 When I am ready to test the app in AIR I use the following external run configuration:

Before running this configuration, you must select the ProjectName-app.xml file.

When I want to generate a certificate I use the following run configuration:

The certificate file cert.p12 will be in the base workspace directory.

To build the project as an AIR app for windows, I use the following run configuration:

Once again, before running this configuration, you must select the ProjectName-app.xml file.

When using these external run configurations, the most frequent error is caused by not selecting the  ProjectName-app.xml file first.

Going Portable with Eclipse IDE

Recently, I had the urge to do some HTML coding for a new website. Having used Eclipse before as an HTML editor, I decided to go that route again. I installed Eclipse Indigo on my desktop and then installed the Aptana Studio 3 plugin. This is cool. Next, I realized I would like to have the HTML development in a portable app. I've been a fan of www.portableapps.com for some time. They didn't have one listed, but a google search gave this version of Eclipse portable. I loaded this on my USB drive with no pproblem. Next, I tried to add the Aptana Studio3 plugin. I tried the "update site" way first and I coould never get it to load completely. Next, I tried to load a downloaded version. This didn't work either. So I gave up on Aptana Studio 3 and looked for alternatives. What I found was the web page editor plugin. This provides a decent html editor and you can test the code in an external browser. Now I have a development system which totally resides on my USB drive allowing me to take it with me to work and play. The disadvantage of the web editor plugin over the Aptana plugin is that the web editor plugin doesn't support ftp. I haven't arrived at the point where I need this yet. I'll let you know the solution when I do.

Addendum 7 Sept 2012: One issue you might have using the external run configurations is that the usb drive with eclipse may have different drive letter for different computers. To solve this difference between my home and office computer I changed the drive letter of the usb drive to Q: for both computers. Then all my run configs reference Q: and they work on both computers.