Being a mobile application developer, you should understand how important it is to be up-to-date on all the latest application development tools and technologies that have been brought into the world of mobile application development. Let’s have a look today at some essential ones that will be useful for Android developers. Of course the following list is not completed, so please feel free to add your own best tools in the comments below.
Fluid UI
Fluid UI is a browser-based wire framing and prototyping tool developed by Fluid Software and used to design mobile touch interfaces. It helps to rapidly create prototypes by arranging pre-built widgets into a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor during the requirements stage of app development. It enables iteration and collaboration between user and client. Fluid UI is built with the latest web technologies HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Open source libraries are also integrated into the tool – primarily jQuery. About 300,000 designers in 204 countries are using Fluid UI to visualize the basic flow of their mobile apps. With Fluid UI, you may choose from more than 3,500 mobile, desktop, tablet and wearable widgets or upload your own images to get a pixel-perfect appearance for your Android application. Recently, Fluid UI has come up with its Enterprise edition that has been built keeping the large business organizations in mind.
Pencil
The main purpose of Pencil is to provide a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that can be easily installed and used in order to create mockups in popular desktop platforms. It provides various built-in shapes collection for drawing different types of user interface ranging from desktop to mobile platforms. Starting from 2.0.2, Pencil is shipped with Android UI stencils pre-installed. This makes it even easier to start prototyping apps with a simple installation. Popular drawing features are also implemented in Pencil. Available in its current version 2.0.5, Pencil serves extremely helpful for creating stunning mockups for apps targeting different mobile platforms.
Intel XDK
Dedicated to those who deal with HTML5 development, Intel XDK is pre-built into Chrome and lets you streamline the process of developing your Android app very conveniently. You can use Intel XDK to design, test and build HTML5 apps efficiently. Plus, you can take the opportunity of delivering your app on multiple app stores and form factors. Intel XDK is developer-friendly and makes the process of designing, building and testing apps very easy. Built with the aim of cutting down the app development time, Intel XDK supports integration with various third-party plug-ins that work as great tools for in-app purchasing and flawless advertising.
Parse
If you find it horrifying to develop the back-end for your Android application, then Parse is the right tool for you. It comes with different APIs which you can use for such things as storing data as well as setting up the push notifications feature for your Android application. Plus you can add custom JavaScript to your application’s server-side interaction. Whether you’d like to insert lengthy code into the right data path or make simpler the app’s interaction with multiple social networks, Parse will do all this for you.
Appscend
It is a cloud-based app development tool which comes with a wide range of shortcuts that enable you to make your app available for the world. This tool utilizes PHP and an XML markup language for merging the intuitive properties of cloud-based CMS and template-based design system to help you with balancing of the app content. The Appscend UI permits you to add advertisements, followed by uploading the app to Google Play and other popular app stores.
Adobe PhoneGap
If you’d like to create fantastic Android apps using your favorite web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then PhoneGap is the perfect tool for you. With PhoneGap, you can easily create mobile apps using the standardized web APIs available for the mobile platforms that you intend to target. The Adobe PhoneGap Enterprise edition enables you to develop Enterprise mobile applications that function brilliantly across multiple channels and platforms.
Genymotion
If you have difficulties starting an emulator and running your Android application, then Genymotion is the right tool for you. It is an Android emulator which comprises a complete set of sensors and features in order to interact with a virtual Android environment. With Genymotion, you can test your Android applications on a wide range of virtual devices for development, test and demonstration purposes. Trusted by over 2,500,000 app developers across the globe, it is fast, simple to install and powerful thanks to user-friendly sensor widgets and interaction features. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.
Android Debug Bridge (adb)
Android Debug Bridge is a versatile command line tool which lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device. With it you could upload and download files, access multiple features via the shell available on emulator or device, install and uninstall packages, perform a query for emulator/device instances etc. It is a client-server program that includes three components:
• A client, which runs on your development machine. You can invoke a client from a shell by issuing an adb command. Other Android tools such as the ADT plugin and DDMS also create adb clients.
• A server, which runs as a background process on your development machine. The server manages communication between the client and the adb daemon running on an emulator or device.
• A daemon, which runs as a background process on each emulator or device instance.
LogCat
LogCat serves as the Android logging system which gives you a good tool for viewing and collecting system debug output. You can access it from within Eclipse and Android Debug Bridge. With LogCat it’s possible to easily get useful diagnostic details about different things that have taken place on your logging system. Other than that you can easily let your applications log the debugging and diagnostic details to this tool. What is interesting about LogCat tool is that you can run it as Android Debug Bridge command or directly in the form of a shell prompt which belongs to your connect gadget or the chosen emulator.
AppIconSizes.com
Android application development expects a developer to use a variety of icons, default Android graphics and splash screens. Fortunately, there is AppIconSizes.com which allows you to auto-generate icons and splash images, followed by unzipping and copying them into your Android Studio project. Since AppIconSizes.com does all the processing in JavaScript, you don’t have to worry about your files getting exposed to the public. As a free-to-use website, AppIconSizes.com created icons after taking into account factors like proper resampling, no watermarks, no flash etc. One of the greatest advantages of using AppIconSizes.com is that the files aren’t stored on the web server. This means, different launch images and icons can be created and downloaded in the form of a zip file.
It goes without saying that all the above mentioned Android application development tools offer excellent options to a developer. And what are your favorite ones? Please feel free to comment below ☺
Yuliya Tolkach
Business Development Manager
