HELLO
The much anticipated Intel XDK Training finally went down at the Dedan Kimathi
University of Technology on the Wednesday 24th June 2015 and I must
say it was a great event. The event drew a crowd of 100+ attendees from the renowned
developer community. The event featured three sessions, the first one involving
an in depth session about Intel XDK followed by two technical hands on sessions
on the Intel XDK.
+Ngesa Marvin the
intel student partner kicked off the afternoon event with an introduction to
the Intel XDK explaining how it provides
a simplified workflow enabling developers to easily design, debug,
build, and deploy HTML5 web and hybrid apps across multiple app stores, and
form factor devices. For a long time developers have been suffering as there
is no common language for developing mobile applications. In order to create
mobile apps for popular platforms like iPhone, developers have to use Xcode, they
need to have a Mac and must learn objective C , to develop the same application
for Android market, the user must learn Java and use Android studio and for
other platforms like Windows Os the user need to have a knowledge on C#. This
wastes a lot of time as developer need to learn new a language as well as tool
just to finish on a single application on a different platform. But with Intel
XDK the user just writes HTML5 codes once, and with a single codebase he can make
it run in all the devices. Intel XDK makes the same source code compatible on all the
mobile operating systems including Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8
Store, Tizen, Amazon and Nook. It also includes the ability to build the app as
a webapp, Chrome installed app (for the Chrome web store), and Facebook.
With no extra development skills required as long as developers of all types are familiar with
HTML, CSS and JavaScript, developers focus more on user interface rather
porting on different devices thus cutting down overall multiple developers
cost. It also gives the user the ability to enjoy the same experiences across
the PCs, phones and tablets.
He explained about the different frameworks that the Intel XDK Supports,
including Bootstrap, JQwery mobile and top coat. He advised the new developers
not to worry in case they had no developer experience as there were templates
which they could use to jump start their mobile development career. With these
templates, anyone can build an app on top of the initial code. They also help
developers understand the code and working of Intel XDK better.
He also explained to the
attendees about the game engines such as Scirra which provides drag and drop game
creation to those who doesn’t have much programming experience.
Here is what everyone
is talking about |RoboControl
The attendees were then given the Intel XDK tool free of charge in flash
disks. The attendees had to sign in using the same email address to start
working with the IDE. After a good number had signed up, the second session kicked
off. For good understanding of the IDE, Ngesa Marvin build an app and used it
to explain the Intel XDK features during the building process. The app enabled people to be taught more
about the DEVELOP, EMULATE, TEST, DEBUG, PROFILE and BUILD tabs.
+Dedan Kimathi University of Technology is known for making robots, so the best example to use was an app that controls a robot. After
ensuring that a good number had already installed the software, the developers got
into the real deal, fired up the XDK and started to navigate to the tabs.
He helped the attendees create a new XDK projects, gave it a name,
RoboControl then chose the app designer option in the project type. APP Designer enabled the
developers to quickly create an app in common UI frameworks using this
drag-and-drop tool that supports responsive design layout. The multiple UI
framework support is an excellent feature offered by Intel XDK. He selected App
framework. The other UI frameworks supported by Intel XDK are Ratchet,
Bootstrap 3, Topcoat, jQuery Mobile... He then got into the develop tab and explored a lot of things before
digging into code. Drag and drop features from the vertical tab were used to to
add layouts and controls to the app.
They easily switched from the design view to code view by clicking on
the CODE and DESIGN buttons located in the upper left corner of the DEVELOP tab. In the code
view, the Intel XDK uses its code editor, the brackets. The attendees could see
all the codes generated for each the controls, text areas and different
layouts. They then moved to the Emulate Tab which offers device settings where
developers can test their app with different platform and type.
RoboControl was then tested on different phones, tabs, notebooks and
they finally settled on Lenovo K900. XDK also provides the option for testing
the application on a real device. People can connect to their phones using a
USB cable and experience live design layout changes. They can also use Intel
App Preview to test the app over the Wi-Fi on a real device. The test tab will
allow them to push their app to the XDK server and use the app preview. The
Debug tab allows for similar options like testing but just for Android devices.
Performance is key in mobile development. Intel XDK has a profile tab
that allow developers to evaluate their application performance and helps
developers gain important insight into how their app utilizes the device
memory. With this information the app can be fine-tune for optimal responsiveness
and performance.
RoboControl mobile app can be advanced to utilize the accelerometer
available on the mobile devices to interact with a REST API. A robot device provides
this REST API that include captured robot motion together with its latitude and
longitude. The app then makes a REST API calls and provide a feedback to
control the movement of the robot when the user presses either its forward,
reverse, left or right buttons or even a combination.
Making use of Cordova
plugins in Hybrid HTML5 Mobile apps
Miss +Angela Sambu then took to
the stage and focused her presentation on creating
a camera app framework plugin using the apache Cordova inside the Intel XDK.
The Apache Cordova plugins are a very important tool for enhancing the features
and functionality of Intel XDK HTML5 mobile application. They provide a way to
extend developer app's JavaScript API, resulting in a much tighter integration
of the apps with a mobile device's software and hardware.
She
prototyped her design using the drag and drop environment and included the
Intel XDK camera and file plugins. JavaScript codes were then used to handle
the events.
To
display images, they were first stored in the local storage and all of them got
a unique name. The image file name is the image identifier. They were then
uploaded using the Intel XDK File Upload API and displayed on the screen. The
application was then tested on different devices utilizing the power of Intel
XDK.
Giveaways
Those who followed the app building process correctly were then awarded
together with the top three persons with the most tweets. Those who answered
questions were also awarded. All the t-shirts
were then given to the attendees. Miss Angela then signed the certificates and
all of them handed over to the attendees.
Wrap up
As usual, we arranged
ourselves and took the final photo to mark the big day. It was another great
event. Big thanks to our sponsors, Intel, thanks to +Intel At DeKUT team for
hosting, and much thanks to everyone who attended. We would love to hear from
you, in case you have anything about the event, contact your Intel student
partner. We will communicate to you about our next event, hope to see you then!
Keep checking on this blog for more information on our upcoming events…Oh and it only takes a few minutes to get started
and build hybrid apps using the Intel XDK, get out there and start building
some apps!
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