Lessons learned
Building an app (or doing any other development work) using solely a tablet or other mobile device is not currently an efficient workflow. It’s possible to do it all - from wireframing to design to development to testing - which is a testament to how far mobile devices and apps have come, but the aggravation resulting from not being able to easily see network traffic and tweak CSS in-browser isn’t worth it. That being said, there were some aspects of using the tablet that I did enjoy. Hey, how about a couple of lists -
Cons
- Testing complex PHP and JS is just brutal.
- Using the “old school” method of tweaking CSS (adjust a number in text editor, save, switch to browser, reload, repeat as necessary) is unacceptable, with the advent of desktop browsers’ layout inspectors. What could take seconds to adjust on a desktop can take minutes in a browser.
- Lack of windows slows things down a little.
Pros
- Wireframing simple (and possibly complex) applications is quick and to the point. Lack of options and granularity can be liberating and let you focus on important things like flow, rather than trying to use the right button theme or making sure everything is perfectly lined up.
- Roughing out the HTML/JS/CSS framework is just as fast as on a desktop.
- So much nicer to use my finger to control things.
- The tablet form-factor recalls days of yore when “laptops” could be used on one’s lap and in all manner of positions.
Final assessment: I’m not going to try to build anything using solely mobile apps, but I will for sure use my tablet to take care of the simpler, more straightforward aspects of design and development. Troubleshoot a database connection? No. Sit on the back deck while I throw together a mental map or user flow? Absolutely.
Thanks for following along. This was a fun experiment, and I hope that some of the things I’ve found and learned have been of some use to someone. Excelsior!
There is no new thing under the sun.
Turns out that there’s already a fairly popular (in the niche market I was targeting) and robust product that does what I was intending my application to do. It’s not mobile, but it works fine. Time to regroup.
Progress. Working registration, registration confirmation email, and login functionality. Database creation and management is humming along, too. Next step - group and group member management. Styling will come later, but jQuery Mobile lets you quickly throw down some basic, easy-on-the-eye placeholders.
All the usual suspects are accounted for (HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, others), and while not as complete as Eclipse, Dreamweaver, etc., it’s a huge improvement that makes an already excellent text editor that much better.
Ghost Commander has all the features you’d expect from a file manager and looks great on a tablet, but all I need is a reliable, painless FTP client, which has been delivered in spades. The connection doesn’t drop every time I switch out of the app, and the dual-pane layout takes advantage of the larger tablet screen. You’d think that type of layout wouldn’t be so tough to find, but this was the only Android FTP client that I saw with it. I actually more or less stumbled on Ghost Commander. None of the “best Android FTP apps” lists mentioned it, so I was stuck with the consensus “best FTP app” - AndFTP - for a few weeks. Don’t use AndFTP. Use Ghost Commander.
Working outside in the Winter is one of the many benefits of using a low-power tablet/laptop while living in the South. Watching dogs play under the table is something that anyone can enjoy, regardless of computing set-up or living arrangement.
Jota Text Editor.
Bar none, the best Android text editor I’ve found. It doesn’t offer syntax highlighting or code hinting, but it does all the basics just about flawlessly. Undo, copy, paste, keyboard commands for saving, opening, etc - all things that you expect from a text editor but are bafflingly difficult to find in the Android market. Even the fact that the cursor is so easy to locate visually is a treat.
Jota also has a sort of plug-in framework that allows for all manner of neat little tools to be added on. CopiPe, for instance, lets you create and organize code snippets (or any bits of text) for easy pasting. Incredibly useful for something like jQuery Mobile, with its various repeating chunks of code.
My single favorite feature, however, is the ability to QUICKLY switch between recently opened document. A couple of other editors have similar features, but Jota’s is perfect. Ctrl+H (oh yeah - you can set hotkeys for a few dozen different operations) opens a modal with the complete paths and filenames of the last several opened docs, and tapping on the file immediately opens it (unless you need to be prompted to save your currently open file). It’s awesome and such a huge timesaver.
Jota’s free, and I can’t say enough good things about it.
https://market.android.com/details?id=jp.sblo.pandora.jota&hl=en
