The last few years seem rife with disruptive technologies: iPhone, Android, iPad, HTML5, and more. Lots more. For some organizations – not to mention the developers and testers who work in them – these disruptive technologies can be scary. You’ve spent months or years working with a particular platform and getting good at it. Now [...]
mobile
6 Tips for Beginning App Developers
by Donald Baker | Comments
App stores have drastically changed the traditional view of how to market software. User ratings and reviews can steer a mobile application in a completely different direction than the developer originally intended. The community has never had so much direct control of the development process of proprietary software. Here are some tips for developers starting [...]
Gesture Recognition Moves Beyond Gaming
by Steve Sechrist | Comments
Gesture recognition holds the promise of new frontiers in user interface that will change the face of coding forever, in much the same way that touch technology did a few years ago. And while touch-based computing has been around for decades, it wasn’t until the advent of the smartphone and “smart devices” like tablets that [...]
Re-Thinking User Interface Design for the TV Platform
by Jim Mischel | Comments
Internet television is the next big thing. Already, people are connecting their computers to their televisions with special-purpose devices like the Boxee Box, Logitech’s Revue, Roku, Apple TV, and home theater PCs (HTPCs) of all descriptions. These and other devices give you access to the vast quantity of free and pay content available on YouTube, [...]
Frontiers in Virtualization for Quality Assurance
by Cameron Laird | Comments
Quality Assurance was the first domain where virtualization (as currently understood) moved from hype to reality. Testing laboratories began to manage desktop environments. Instead of inventorying them as physical assets — that machine over there is set up with WinNT SP3, and that’s a Vista system, and so on — desktop environments became software images [...]
Testing Apps For SmartPhones and Mobile Devices (Without Buying Out the Store)
by Daniel Dern | Comments
When its QA team began testing the company’s mobile expense tracking application, “We started out buying one of everything,” says ProOnGo CEO Phillip Leslie. At the time, ProOnGo was targeting Windows Mobile and BlackBerry smartphones for its ProOnGo Expense software. But, Leslie acknowledges, “This approach to testing on devices doesn’t scale.” As the company expanded [...]
6 Top Snags in Mobile Apps
Developing mobile apps is exciting. Getting them ready for market, not so much. Developers aren’t happy about the need to test such a vast and growing array of devices and operating systems. “It can be hair-raising to get a firm stance on the compatibility ground as it shifts underneath you,” says Bruce Williams, manager of [...]
The Mobile Website Revival
Developers are in for a pleasant surprise in 2011. Jobs and freelance gigs galore are opening up as a result of a mobile website revival. “Mobile website development is a pretty empty room right now. Everyone’s over at the mobile app party,” says David Bodnick, founder and president of WebINTENSIVE Software. “But that’s likely to [...]
Safest Career Choices for Developers (If You Don’t Want Your Job To Go Away)
Jobs-wise, 2011’s going to be the same suck-fest as in 2010. The grisly data: According to a recent study by Computer Economics, 42% of IT outfits are cutting headcount—not much less than the 46% a year ago. Only 28% of IT departments expected to employ more bodies in the coming year—about the same as last [...]
