Microsoft begins charming developers into supporting its dual-screen vision

Microsoft has kicked off its campaign to get developers to support its dual-screen vision with the release of a preview toolkit.

The toolkit allows developers to begin crafting apps for the company’s upcoming Android-powered Surface Duo smartphone. However, those wanting to start building apps for the Windows 10 X-powered Surface Neo PC will need to wait a bit longer.

Both of the new devices feature two displays which Microsoft is betting on as being the future of...

By | 23 January 2020 | Android

Apple launches accelerator in China to boost app design and development

Apple has cut the ribbon on its first app design and development accelerator in China.

The accelerator, located in Shanghai, aims to help Apple scale its operation in one of the world’s biggest markets.

Apple will hold regular lectures and networking sessions for developers at its new accelerator. All of Apple’s platforms will be covered, including iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS.

Enwei Xie, Apple’s Head of Developer Relations in Greater China,...

By | 11 July 2019 | App Stores

Project Catalyst: Apple explains how porting iPad apps to macOS works

Apple’s freshly minted Project Catalyst team has provided further details on how it’s managed to achieve iPad app porting to macOS.

The macOS store launched in 2011 but has failed to gain the traction of its iOS counterpart. To help fix this, Apple announced Project Catalyst at this year’s WWDC.

Project Catalyst aims to make it easy for developers to port their iPadOS apps to macOS Catalina. Apple claimed basic porting was as simple as opening their iPad...

By | 2 July 2019 | Apple

WWDC 19 recap: Developers will provide the excitement

Apple has completed its annual WWDC keynote for another year, so let's dive into the announcements to see if we should be getting excited.

Let’s start with how our  ‘what to expect’ predictions fared last month:

✔ iOS dark mode

✔ iPad home screen update (widget support added)

✔ Updated first-party apps (Messages, Reminders, Mail, Notes,...

By | 4 June 2019 | API

Uniting developers and designers with Unite UX

Developer sat down with Unite UX product manager Daniel Levy to hear Progress’ plan to bridge the gap between developers and designers.

Most of us have witnessed or experienced the disconnect. The different tools used often results in a back-and-forth with constant reiterations needed. Ultimately, this wastes effort and money with a slow time-to-market.

Unite UX aims to offer a roundtrip workflow allowing developers and designers to continue using their existing...

By | 9 May 2019 | Design

Android Q ‘dark mode’ will help logical third-party adoption

Dark mode is an ‘approved Android Q feature’ that will be adopted system-wide, hopefully driving third-party developers to support in their own apps.

A Chromium Gerrit tracker created by Googler Lukasz Zbylut says the “[Android] Q team wants to ensure that all preloaded apps support dark mode natively.”

The tracker also states, “In order to ship dark mode successfully, we need all UI elements to be ideally themed dark by May 2019”. Google...

By | 7 January 2019 | Android

The benefits of darker in-app colour schemes are clear

Google has finally confirmed what many have suspected, there are clear benefits to offering darker in-app colour schemes.

During its Android Dev Summit this week, Google displayed several comparisons of the power drain while displays show different colours.

As suspected, black is the most power-efficient. White, on the other hand, is by far and large the most power-hungry – consuming over six times as much juice.

While all displays consume less power...

By | 9 November 2018 | Android

Opinion: Poor user experience is the enemy of customer loyalty

It used to be the case that people bought a product, used it until it wore out, and then replaced it. If it had worked well, they went back to the same manufacturer. Today, the separation of product and service means that purchase decisions are much more frequent and that ongoing loyalty is based much more on the user experience.

App performance, therefore, has a huge impact on whether consumers continue to subscribe to connected services such as Facebook or Netflix. It is also...

By | 4 October 2018 | Design

Google sets Android P guidelines for ‘notch’-featuring devices

Android P is nearing release and so Google has set out its guidelines for how the ‘notch’ found on many new devices should be accommodated.

Love it or hate it, the notch has become mainstream. First marketed by the first ‘Essential’ smartphone and quickly followed by other Android manufacturers to maximise the screen-to-device ratio, even Apple has adopted it with the iPhone X.

On the Android Developers blog, Google wrote:

By | 31 July 2018 | Android

The 10 best fonts for programming: A guide

Here, we'll look at ten fonts favoured by programmers, including some of the latest typefaces and some retro classics. Let's get right into it.

Fira Code

Fira Code is one of the most popular fonts for developers, having been developed with special programming ligatures from Mozilla's Fira Mono typeface. You can see these used in the Sublime Text 3.1 screenshot above, with the != and <= operators being represented via a single glyph to aid readability. It also...

By | 16 May 2018 | Design