1. If you need to run MySQL on your Mac (e.g. for development) one the good ways to do it with Docker. It is pretty straightforward to install and use. You can have multiple MySQL instances running side by side. Most importantly they can run different MySQL versions, including version 8. Which is still not supported by other popular option, MAMP. Here is a short guide how to get it up and running in no time.

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  2. By 2023, 6% of all retail purchases will happen via smartphones, Forrester reports. As marketplaces comprise more of the online retail landscape, native mobile applications will become differentiators for marketplace operators looking to distinguish themselves from competitors.

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  3. Sometimes you might need to get the duration of an audio file, located somewhere on the network. There are a lot of libraries for any programming language as well as command-line tools that can do that for a locally available MP3 file. However, downloading the full MP3 file might not be desirable. The problem with MP3 files is that the nature of the file format doesn't really allow for quick and easy extraction of the duration data.

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  4. The dark side is on the march this autumn. Both iOS 13 and Android 10 are introducing the setting to opt into the dark version of the interface on the mobile phone. It saves battery life, reduces digital eye strain and makes the Dark Lord happy. System applications obviously support it out of the box, but third-party app developers don't get the dark support for free. Certain steps need to be taken and code written in order to add the support for this shiny (or actually the opposite of "shiny") new feature.

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  5. Apple reported self-care to be one of the trending topics in recent years. The company announced that it has been witnessing a surge in apps that are primarily focused on mental health, mindfulness, and stress reduction.

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  6. We understand the importance of digitizing businesses onto platforms accessible to anyone. Our innate ability to deliver quality has not gone unnoticed as we’ve caught the eyes of Clutch, B2B ratings and reviews company based in the heart of Washington DC.

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  7. What do we use smartphones for in our daily life apart from communication? - Right, the answer is for so many routine stuff that everyone feels bored when it comes to list them. However, the variety of purposes never ceases to amaze. Let’s take a look at automotive service stations, for instance. How they might refer to our smartphones? Keep reading to find it out.

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  8. React Native has recently gained a lot of traction. Those, looking to commission an application development, are attracted by the promise of reduced development costs and a single codebase for iOS and Android. My team has accumulated certain experience with React Native for the last couple of years. I'd like to share some general tips on what to do and what not to do if you develop with React Native in 2018.

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  9. If you have recently considered developing a mobile application, you have likely heard of React Native. Developers either love it or hate it. But here is a short guide for those are looking to make a business decision whether to use React Native or not bother. Actually, I am going to save your time and jump right to my conclusion: the only good reason to use React Native is to save money in a short term.

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  10. n a digital era when smartphones have already become a significant part of our lives, it is quite hard to imagine a person who doesn’t use this device on a daily basis. They dominate almost every aspect of living: from regular social communications to health examinations and measures. Even if your clinic has an outstanding website, people tend to use mobile devices much often as there may be no access to the laptop or computer during the day while mobile phones and tablets are easier to be carried with anywhere. Talking about the choice of the informational source, apps account for 89% of mobile media time, with the other 11% spent on websites according to www.smartinsights.com. This means that people find applications more functional than a regular website and would rather install one than look through web pages.

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  11. In 2015 Factorial Complexity team has released the set of iOS travelling applications for National Park Serviceaimed to help visitors get the most of their experience. After 2 years of active use, gathered feedback and the worldwide changes in design trends, the customer decided to go with the improved 2nd version of the app - Park Mobile. Thus, we had a new challenge coming on and would like to share the most interesting features of the application and provide you an insight of some of the useful technical solutions that were used during the development process.

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  12. Working with small dedicated teams that are easy to control is one of the most optimal solutions for your business if it is connected with the development of mobile applications. This, of course, could be an obvious and unreliable statement of a technical writer that is preparing a sponsored post, but we at Factorial Complexity have a considerable experience in this and everything that you are going to read below is written by the people who interact with these kind of teams on a daily basis.

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  13. People we hire are our main strength and our weakness at the same time. Those who we entrust with the work that we are not capable to do ourselves can both please us with their results and let us down. By trial and error, we at Factorial Complexity invented our own recruitment criteria which we hope will help you not to fail and entrust efficiently the reliable employees with the most valuable thing that you have - a part of your business.

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  14. Photon Unity Networking (PUN) is a Unity package for multiplayer games. It provides authentication options, matchmaking and fast, reliable in-game communication through Exit Games Photon backend.

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  15. Very often Tablet applications are just resized versions of Smartphone applications. But does it mean that they have the same UI needs?

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  16. While working on the user interface in their applications, mobile developers tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. If the development process is properly organized, these are normally fixed during the quality assurance phase. However, the mobile developers should normally avoid making them before the code is passed to QA engineers or even merged into the code base. To help our developers in Factorial Complexity I have compiled the list of the most common mistakes.

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  17. When it comes to developing a mobile application the first question one should be asking is “Which platform to support?”. These days the answer is obvious. iOS and Android heavily dominate the market with a combined share of more than 95% and growing. Between iOS and Android market share is not equal: Android has twice as much active users as iOS and the gap is growing, as the 2016 smartphone sales indicate that for each Apple iOS device sold there are four new Androids. However, even though Android has advantage in users, it is still behind in dollars spent by users for a multiplicity of reasons.

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  18. It is commonly believed that a fixed-price model is the best way of cooperation which gives the client absolute clarity of the project budget and timeline, insure them against the team’s fails and cheating, and saves the costs. But is it really so and are not there any hidden rocks in fixed-price contracts for you as a client who seeks mobile app development? And what are the situations you when you should 100% use fixed-pricecooperation?

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  19. I have recently shared my thoughts on the UI/UX mobile trends for 2017 and today I’d like to talk about the web design trends and what will be popular in the coming 2017 year. It is hard to give such predictions but we can say that for sure about the things which are taking a back seat to the trends gaining ground.

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  20. I was really excited when it turned out my new Android project was related to the video processing because the task was very interesting and I thought I knew some possible solutions. But in some time after starting the development, I realized Android OS did not (and does not) have instruments for that kind of manipulations. There was no simple solution and I had to solve the task and besides do it quickly. After lots of googling and reviewing possible options and existing similar apps and examples, I found only a few tools which seemed reasonable at that point. They were several libraries allowing some video manipulations but I did not know much about their functionality at that point.

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  21. So how to make sure your new app wins howling success and not a total wreckage? The answer is in sleek and custom User Experience. We have heard this from the digital evangelists for thousands of times but do we completely realize this?

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  22. We are happy to revive our blog with useful and fun information for our readers and to mark this wonderful event we decided to connect it with a present for everybody involved into mobile. This is a free UI Kit for a music app and you can do whatever you want with it: download and save on your computer in order to use in some time, have a look at it and get inspiration for your own apps or rework them partially or completely and create your next great app based on this UI kit!

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  23. There is opportunity to combine this languages in the same project. It’s great. Apple provides a tutorial how to do this magic. You can find here. But in spite of it I would like to share my experience on real examples, because it’s not as simple as it sounds.

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  24. Today I want to share with you one of my pieces of code that has proved to be quite useful. Sometimes what you need is not something brilliant or especially sophisticated, but something steady and dependable, doing all that annoying work for you. Well that’s DAAlertController.

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  25. There’s no official way provided by Apple for this purpose. Let’s look at two methods for solve this problem.

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  26. WatchKit Overview

    Few days ago Apple released long-awaited SDK for Apple Watch. Device itself is scheduled to be released early next year (spring most likely). However, Apple as usually granted registered developers an early access to set of libraries and tools for developing application. It is embedded into Xcode 6.2 Beta and called WatchKit. I have put together a quick overview of SDK, describing what developers can and cannot do with Apple Watch.

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  27. iOS Airdrop Custom Data

    In iOS 7, Apple introduced AirDrop, a way of sharing files and links between nearby devices using a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. If you’re sharing images, or simple web links, you’ll get the simple behavior with UIActivityViewController , but if you want to share custom data into your …

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  28. n iOS 7 Apple introduced new approach to status bar. It is now rendered above the navigation bar, effectively looking as a part of it. It required some efforts to adapt older applications to this new approach. If developer follows Apple suggestions and guidelines that's not really hard thing to figure out and adapt.

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  29. If you want to create cross-platform solutions quickly, in particular 2D or simple 3D games, I think you should pay your attention to Marmalade SDK.

    Marmalade SDK is a cross-platform solution that allows us to write the source code for a game or an application once in C++ and then deploy it to a number of different platforms, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, etc.

    What you need for this? You will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/2010/2012, if you are using windows platform, or the latest Xcode for Mac users, and a licensed copy of the Marmalade SDK.

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  30. Infinite Page Control

    I just love UIPageControl, don’t you? It’s simple and intuitive, it does not get any more "native" than this since apple used it in SpringBoard for ages. UIPageControl is the perfect choice when you have a fullscreen UIScrollView (UICollectionView) with pagingEnabled and you want to encourage your users to “swipe to see more”.

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  31. If you are looking for web images caching solution for your iOS application project, we strongly recommend SDWebImage. It is simple, easy to use, stable and well documented. And impressive list of users speaks for itself.

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  32. Post coverOur artist Oleksiy Beztsinnyy shares the process of creating art for Pirates VS Ninjas. Pirates VS Ninjas is a two players strategy  game for iOS and Android. It took around 6 weeks to complete all the graphics. In total there are 14 unique unit types. Each has at least 3 types of animations. Oleksiy also created icon, logo and all the menu screens.

    Among the first things I have created logo and main menu screen. Got some references and started picking colors and fonts. Also created some sketches of how things would look.

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  33. Today I want to share the sprite generator utility we extensively in our game development projects. It is pretty simple, doesn't have much options, only generates cocos2d compatible spritesheets and only works on Mac OS X. But still we find it extremely useful. Source code is available on github and can be easily tweaked to anyone's needs.

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