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Apple Watch Development: Top 3 Usability Considerations

Now that Apple Watch is starting to ship (although slowly, it seems), we’ve been getting a steady stream of inquiries about developing apps for it, and for adding Apple Watch functionality to our customers’ existing apps.  However, there seems to be some confusion about how Apple Watch apps “work” and best practices around user experience.  If you are thinking about building an Apple Watch app, or adding Apple Watch functionality to an existing iPhone app, then there are some usability considerations that you should keep in mind: There really isn’t such a thing as a stand-alone Apple Watch app (at least at the [...]

2018-07-12T01:02:56+00:00May 4th, 2015|Mobile Development, UI/UX Design|
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Web Font Techniques Explained

The use of fonts in a website is a common discussion point with customers.  This article provides a high level overview of the various options for displaying fonts on the web, along with their advantages and disadvantages. For us at Outright, the discussion usually arises after the customer and/or their designer has created a nice design for a new website and then hands the design over to us for implementing the code of the website.  This is usually when it’s discovered that the fonts that were chosen during the design process are not “public domain” and/or may not be commonly available on most PCs [...]

2018-07-16T23:40:13+00:00March 17th, 2015|Web Development|
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Android 5.0 Lollipop OS Update Offers New Features for App Developers

The new Android 5.0 operating system release dubbed “Lollipop” was announced in June of 2014 and was released mid-November 2014.  Google’s Nexus devices were among the first to ship with and also receive updates to the new OS and many other hardware manufacturers have been releasing updates throughout January 2015 and ongoing.  The new Lollipop release contains a number of new features for Android phone users, but also contains new APIs for developers to use when building custom apps.  Although the new release contains thousands of APIs for developers, we’ve highlighted some of the most promising related to custom app development [...]

2018-07-16T23:39:06+00:00February 13th, 2015|Android Development, Mobile Development|
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Top Mobile Development Predictions for 2015

Happy New Year from the staff here at Outright Development.  We are excited about what 2015 will bring, especially in the area of mobile app development.  Here are our top predictions for 2015 – it should be an interesting year! Internet of Things (IoT) Integration Internet of Things (IoT) is the interconnection of “smart” devices on the internet (think smart home thermostats, light bulbs, GPS beacons, smart security systems, etc.).  2015 will see the need for mobile apps that will integrate these various devices, providing users with more ability to control them and receive feedback and data from them.  Look for [...]

2018-07-16T23:38:15+00:00January 6th, 2015|Mobile Development|
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Speed Up Your Website Using a CDN

A Content Distribution Network (CDN) is a service that can host your web content in the cloud and distribute it geographically to servers around the globe.  When web users access a website’s pages, the data that is hosted at the CDN gets sent to the user from the CDN’s server/node that is closest to the user which decreases the download time it takes to reach the user.  Many popular video streaming applications use CDNs as part of their infrastructure such as so that videos can be streamed to the user quickly and efficiently from the closest point to them. This same CDN technology can be used to speed [...]

2018-07-16T23:37:02+00:00November 7th, 2014|Web Development|
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iOS 8 Enables Fingerprint Security for Custom Apps

Apple introduced the "Touch ID" feature with the launch of the iPhone 5s which enabled users to secure their iPhone and unlock it using fingerprint recognition as well as to authorize iTunes purchases.  With the recent release of iOS 8, and the new iPad Air 2, Apple has made the Touch ID SDK available to developers which enables us to build custom iPhone and iPad apps that can use fingerprint recognition as functionality within the apps themselves. This new capability can be used to secure access to apps, as well as to secure the content and data within an app.  For example, we've [...]

2018-07-16T23:36:09+00:00October 19th, 2014|iPhone Development, Mobile Development|
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SSL Certificate Options Explained

Clients usually have a need to keep their user's data secure in transit from the end user's browser to the web server via a SSL certificate.  However, there are a number of options available today in terms of different types of SSL certificates which can be confusing.  There are free SSL certificates, domain validated certificates, company validated, and also extended validation certificate options.  While all of these options offer the same level of encryption, they vary based on the level of validation that is done to determine the legitimacy of the company who's purchasing them. Free SSL certificates are sometimes offered [...]

2018-07-16T23:43:38+00:00September 16th, 2014|Web Development|
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Postman REST Client is a Useful Tool for Testing APIs

Postman, a free Chrome browser app plugin is a great tool for working with REST web services APIs.  We are often creating REST APIs for clients, or integrating a 3rd party REST APIs into clients' web applications or mobile apps and often need to troubleshoot our code or demonstrate an API that we've built to a client.  The Postman REST client is a tool that enables users to post and get data as well as perform a wealth of other HTTP commands from your Chrome borwser.  It will enable you to test your APIs by posting in paramters and getting results back in JSON or XML format. We [...]

2018-07-17T00:14:42+00:00September 2nd, 2014|API Development, Mobile Development, Web Development|
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Quickly Test Usability With Mock-ups

A long-time client called the other day with a problem: their web application has some important functionality that their users were just not noticing and therefore not using. They wanted to re-design the UI for this "problem area" and wanted us to implement it. We chatted for a while and we were able to convince them that there are a few ways to "skin that cat" in terms of solving the usability issue. We recommended that rather than make a hasty decision, it is better to first have a couple of variations mocked up by a designer, and then usability test [...]

2018-07-17T00:15:53+00:00August 28th, 2014|Mobile Development, UI/UX Design, Web Development|
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Go Easy on the Reports!

Reporting capabilities are a common business requirement from clients while building web applications. The problem is that clients often get carried away with the amount of reports that they think they need. A common scenario is one where they will think of and define every conceivable report that might be needed (whether it is actually needed or not). This in turn increases the time it takes to complete the application as well as increasing the cost of the project. Clients often then find that they wind-up using a small fraction of the reports once the application is live. Over time, they [...]

2018-07-17T00:16:44+00:00August 19th, 2014|Mobile Development, Web Development|
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