20 things you need to know to get involved in mobile development

1. Choose your platform

What platform to choose depends on what you want to do and who your users are. The topmost layer of these platforms is the Web. If you want to sell your app, then you might want to put it in the store. If you need to use a camera or other device's API, then you can use the local method, or use some well-encapsulated frameworks such as Air/phonegap/titanium.

There's no clear answer, and the platform you choose depends on a lot of things, so you might want to review what's on the wall and maybe they'll tell you the answer.

2. Don't want to get rich quickly

Many people compare the current App store craze with the California Gold rush of the late 1840s, just as the gold rush, where someone succeeds and someone fails, is more of a failure. I don't advise people to join the line just to make money, which is not as good as the fact that the nearest casino has blocked thousands of of pounds.

But we often hear the media preach some great examples of success. My favorite story is that the Canadian developer Matt Rix spent a few months in the evening, making a game that eventually went beyond Angry Birds to top 10, which is not an easy task. The game is called Trainyard, and he opens it up and shares the data.

Flurry, a mobile app analytics company, reports that there are more than 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store, and that the Android electronics market is running at 450,000.

It is not easy to emphasize this again (to get Rich).

3. Read Hig

HIG (Human Interface Guidelines, user-friendly interface guide) is a document that is available on all development platforms, and it tells you how to create a good user interface so that users feel at home as natural and comfortable when they use it. Each platform is different, so you need to take into account every nuance of the difference.

For example, iOS users are accustomed to having a back button in the upper-left corner, but for Android, most models will have a physical return button, so adding an additional one to the application can only lead to unnecessary redundancy and confusion.

On the BlackBerry tablet, the user wants to display the setting options through the drop-down top status bar. Users tend not to thank you for providing these known human behaviors, but if you do not do so, they will certainly be furious.

So read hig to understand these concepts, but keep in mind that these are simple guidelines, but not rules, and more than a list of classifications.

4. Make the function interesting

Developing a practical application does not necessarily mean it will be boring. We developed an application Flash on the Beach in 2009, using a standard set of IOS components, but the design looks and experiences are completely different. We want this app to have its own unique personality, but it doesn't make users want to alienate. This was not very common at the time, so it was also awarded a Gulltaggen award.

My favorite iphone camera app is camera+, its buttons and titles look normal, but with a cute custom font style.

Tweetbot is my favorite Twitter client, which combines the clever use of shadows and gradients, so that the custom cue box matches the rest of the app's design, and the whole app looks pretty, which is the attention to detail.

So our application can follow those guidelines while still having fun. This is now made easier by using the new Look API on IOS5.

5. Challenge Practice

The most obvious example of this is "pull to refresh" (drop-down refresh). You probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Since Buricel introduced the word in Tweetie 2, the concept has spread rapidly to other mobile phone operating systems.

The concept is simple, you pull a list down to the middle of a location, and then release, then there are some events, such as refreshing the data, like your Twitter message. Although there is no very intuitive product at the time, once you think of it, it is a genius, perfect "amazing" example.

Today we can see many applications that use "pull to refresh", such as Gowalla, Facebook, Google +, Tweetbot, Foursquare, Oink, Fribi, and more, and more and more apps will use it in the future.

Another popular pattern is to raise the middle bottom of the toolbar button. Oink, Foursquare, Fribi, and many others use this approach to focus on the application.

6, the scene behavior is different

When developing an application, you only have 30 seconds, maybe a minute to get the attention of the user. Your app must let users understand and get started at the first glance. Never use a complex interface, just give us the details, right?

Yes, but it's not (well, yes.) And no). So where are your users? What are they going to do? The design should also consider these accordingly.

7, the content should also be different

Simplicity is good, but simplicity doesn't mean stupidity-we need to focus on the core features of our application and write efficient, relevant copy.

However, Micro-copy is very difficult to write, super difficult.

8. My fingers are very thick.

My fingers are fat so it requires at least 44 pixels of area. If you don't do that then clicking on it will become very difficult. We made such a mistake in the application of FOTB2010.

This back button is 10 pixels high and has a large touch area which makes it easy to click. So where's the problem? It can hardly be seen. Be sure to avoid this situation!

9. Independent Solution

If you are going to develop an application for different devices, then you need a lot of resources. It is not a good way to enlarge the image to fit a flat plate.

The simplest way is to ask your designer to create a variety of resources from the beginning, so that when you need to use a 512x512 icon on itunes, there is no problem.

10, design a beautiful icon

As the saying goes, you have only one chance to make a good first impression, and your icon is the basis for your application to achieve this goal.

We can do great things on a blank canvas and take this opportunity to solve your problems in an effective and beautiful way.

I like that.

So let's take some time and energy to refine these details. Last year, for Flash on the Beach, we developed the fotb.me, which is the first time we have tried to develop webapp for mobile devices.

When the site is added to the iOS home screen, you can customize the icon and splash screen. So we created a series of icons and splash screens, a set for the old iphone, a set for the new iphone (it has a "retina" screen), a set of ipad for the screen.

However, this will only be seen by a handful of people. But if they notice, I hope they'll be surprised and even smiling. If that's the case, that's great.

11. My cell phone is my identity.

The reason for all this is that my phone will reveal a lot of my information.

You can see that I've installed a lot of apps, but they're all neatly categorized in different folders, even though my desk is a mess. What does that mean? I don't know.

The bottom line is I can't stand my beautiful desktop screen is an ugly icon ———— because that would explain what kind of person I am?

12. Don't let me read those manuals (RTFM)

If you think people don't think that way, then you can read the desktop software manual, which will take two or three times times more time than the app.

When the ipad comes out, there's a magazine app (not named here) that uses a lot of gesture navigation. At first I thought it was cool, it was like a Minority report (film, "Minority Reports"), and it was interesting.

One weeks later I didn't know how to use it, and the help screen was hidden, so the only way to do that was to reinstall it. This is not a good experience.

If you want to use some crazy gesture-based navigation, we won't stop you. But if you have to do this, keep the help screen in the nearest place, and it's best to make your app worth the time.

13. Do not disguise

I'm not a fan of webapp that mimics the look and feel of native apps. There are some UI frameworks that try to make them look like local controls. But the problem arises when users download them from the store.

These webapp are inherently slow to run, but because they look and feel similar to other applications, users will have false expectations about them and download them. They make implicit promises but have no way of achieving them.

I'll avoid it.

14. Your ideas are not original

Nas said in 2001, "No idea is original, nothing new is in the sun." The point is not what you want to do, but how you achieve it. "No idea is original."

The unfortunate truth is that the idea is a plethora of things, and execution is everything. A well-designed product can go very far at the right time with a little bit of luck.

15. Build for yourself

This way you can guarantee at least one happy user. More importantly, if you build for yourself, you will know exactly what you want to solve and how you can target it.

16, listen to the user's suggestions

If you are lucky, in some ways your users will pay your fees, so there is a way to communicate with them is very important. Use getsatisfaction-like services and user interactions, whether it's feedback errors or suggest new features. The key here is that it is open and transparent communication. That's how Twitter operates.

Although we listen to the suggestions of the users, and they can sometimes really make some great ideas, you don't have to do everything they say and trust your own intuition.

17. "Track" Your users

The analysis is very important. It allows us to learn a lot from the user's behavior and will let us see how users use your app.

For fotb.me We use Google Analytics, primarily for Android, IPhone, ipad and playbook. I saw someone say on Twitter

@FOTBme I was hoping the heard web app, and on Opera/symbian the site doesn ' t work at All...-thomas Kr?f Tner (@tkraftner) September 11, 2011

(When I heard WebApp, I expected a whole year of fotb.me, and it turned out to be completely useless on Opera/symbian)

At first I thought, nonsense! How many people can this affect? As a result, I found that only four of 4,241 visitors were affected by Google Analytics. Although unfortunately there are 0.09%, we can tolerate this. Of course you may not be so lucky.

A few hours later we saw that the impact increased to 20 users, 0.5% percentage points, but we can still accept it.

The point is that without these statistics, we have no way of knowing how big or how small the problem is. With this data (it's not a big problem) we can sleep well.

18, Prototype!

This is a great tool for you to show your thoughts to others and to detect technical feasibility. We tend to write a typical, small set of functions to detect possible ways to solve a problem. Whatever you do, first implement your prototype on the device. Nothing is more convincing than direct testing on the device, even sliding through a series of pictures.

Here are a lot of tools you can use to create prototypes such as prototypes, Balsamiq and Fieldtest, and you can even work with keynote.

Whatever you choose, put it on the device and show it to your friends and let them give you feedback at the cost of a glass of beer. But when you're done with this, throw away the prototype.

I mean it, throw it away! It's really hard to be willing to, but you need to know that any code you write, once you've made the product, will never die.

No matter what the way, you write prototypes quickly. But you don't want to use the next few years to maintain the code. Throw It away!

19. Start

Start to realize your idea, because it's time to make it come out. It's hard, but it's also exciting, and these ideas are no longer just stuck in your head, bringing them to life!

If you want everything to be perfect from the start, it's easy to fail, you don't have to do it perfectly, but we'll do our best.

20, we can make the world become better

It's a lofty goal, but that's what I think. As designers and developers we have the ability to create something that affects not only ourselves but also the lives of other people.

If we make life easier, simpler, even a little bit, and solve a problem, then we do good things that can make us proud.

Original source: http://www.w3cfuns.com/thread-5592495-1-1.html

20 things you need to know to get involved in mobile development