nov 22
Le paysage des nouveaux écrans est d’une vitalité et d’une diversité rares. Les BkLabs ont pour objectif de faciliter la compréhension des nombreuses annonces faites par les différents acteurs du marché : fonctionnalités des systèmes d’exploitations, nouveaux terminaux… Cette analyse se porte tant sur les aspects fonctionnels que les aspects techniques, en les explicitant en termes d’opportunités pour les marques et les utilisateurs.
La première édition de ce dossier étudie les nouveautés apportées par iOS 5, dernière version en date du système d’exploitation d’Apple pour iPhone et iPad.
iOS 5
Avec son nouveau système d’exploitation iOS 5, sorti le 12 octobre, Apple a enrichi le périmètre fonctionnel de son OS, dans le but de proposer une expérience mobile toujours plus riche à ses utilisateurs. Le document « BkLabs : iOS 5 » identifie les opportunités d’évolution des applications existantes, aussi bien pour les marques que pour leurs clients.
Par exemple :
- iCloud
- le kiosque
- le centre de notifications
- Twitter
- …
Téléchargez gratuitement le BkLabs iOS 5.
La prochaine édition des BkLabs portera sur la nouvelle version (4.0) du système d’exploitation Android de Google.
nov 03
We present you all the characteristics of the new iPhone 4S. Watch the Video: iPhone 4S
- Hardware
- Operating system
- Browser
- Conclusion
Enjoy it !
oct 28
HTML5 video and audio tags are under the spotlights right now.
They are supposed to be THE solution to display medias on all devices without relying on third party plug-ins like Flash.
In this article, we will not discuss about the many issues to deal with video and audio containers and codecs. We just want to know if it is possible to use the video and audio tags out in the real world on mobile devices.
Continue reading »
oct 21
La conférence BUILD Windows tenue à Los Angeles courant septembre fut l’occasion pour Microsoft de parler en détail de son prochain système d’exploitation Windows 8.
La conférence BUILD Windows 2011 a eu lieu à Los Angeles du 13 au 16 septembre
Une version très jeune mais contenant plusieurs nouveautés majeures fut présentée et mise à disposition des développeurs et du public dans la foulée. Ce billet donnera des pistes de réflexion sur l’impact de ces nouveautés et abordera l’écosystème Windows existant.
Le nouvel écran de démarrage de Windows 8 présentant les applications Metro
Continue reading »
sept 13
The Nokia N950 Meego is only available for developers; we present you all the characteristics. Video: Nokia N950 Meego
- Hardware
- Operating system
- Browser
- Conclusion
Enjoy the video !
jan 24
Context
On most services (applications or web sites), there is a strong need regarding input dates.
The best way of achieving this is by displaying a calendar to the user. There are many ways of doing this using JavaScript but since the HTML5 team has created a specific tag to deal with that, we could use it, at least on devices that support it.
HTML5 – what does the W3C tell us
« The input element with a type attribute whose value is « date » represents a control for setting the element’s value to a string representing a date. »
A valid full-date as defined in RFC 3339, with the additional qualification that the year component is four or more digits representing a number greater than 0.
Example: 1996-12-19
In the HTML source, it looks like this : <input type=”date” name=”mydate”>
What do we expect ?
This tag is designed to input a date. We are expecting that a compliant browser would display a calendar without any use of JavaScript or at least it would display an optimized keyboard on touch screen devices.
Continue reading »
déc 15
Since a couple of months, BkRender team has been working really hard on providing you with a more and more powerful tool to be able to reach your clients’ highest expectations.
Nowadays using geolocalization seems to have become a habit for Smartphones owners. Although it is natural to access this tool when using a native application, it would be a very valuable service to implement on your own Mobile Website.
Key usages for BkRender are also to provide advanced and basic devices with a downgraded equivalent solution – meaning matching the best handsets capabilities as well as the lowest.
Since BkRender V.4.2 release it is now possible to develop your own widgets to implement any sort of services suiting your particular needs. We’ve implemented a Template Rendering tool called Velovity which basically lets you inject casual HTML into your page along with a BKML version.
Continue reading »
nov 26
Why statistics matter
To know how often the pages of your app are viewed or which feature is used the most is hugely important. It lets you know how to improve your app, and more importantly what to improve in priority.
Roman Nurik, Android Developer Advocate at Google pointed out this need in this post about « Improving App Quality ».
As he says, statistics can lead you to move some less used functionalities of your app into a sub-menu, or even remove them entirely.
Continue reading »
nov 22
When starting a Mobile WebSite development, the most important thing you have to bear in mind is to preserve the User Experience. This is mandatory. Even though you would provide your visitors with the best features ever, the key thing is that your users have to find navigation easy and intuitive… Funny would be even better but before to get there let’s focus on the easy and intuitive ones.
In others words you even may have great ideas regarding features you wish to offer but beyond anything what’s important is that visitors use them! This is all good sense in a way but it is far too often forgotten by developers – talking about developers, the thing is before to start coding any line at all, you have to take some time to actually draw on a sheet of paper an advanced draft of what you wish to display. This is a key thing! Draw a couple of drafts and then finally try to imagine them on screen. Then wonder:
- Is it intuitive to browse from one category to the other?
- Do I find easy the reading?
- Am I being smashed by an outraging amount of information on only one screen?
- Do I really need to know everything I can see at a glance?
- Oh and actually, what do I see at a glance? If I take a quick look at my page – meaning less than 10 seconds – what do I remember seeing? You can always ask your colleagues to play that game which is a great lead to find out whether your layout does the trick and your colleagues see what you want them to see!
Continue reading »
nov 18
Develop once, display everywhere!
Beside your casual WebSite, you may want to develop a proper Mobile Service.
Whilst on one hand you first need to think what sort of usages you want your visitors to do with this dedicated service, on the other hand you have to bear in mind your content will be displayed through different technologies, WebBrowser etc.
Even though you’ll have developped something with an amazing look and great features, you will also soon experience some technical issues essentially due to the wideness of devices used to access your pages.
Mobiles currently in circulation (Backelite sources)
Then first question: Do you want your content to be accessible from any sort of devices one could be using? In other words, while you want your Mobile Website to look amazing over a new generation of devices such as an iPhone, how are you going to downgrade your Mobile Site for the older devices? What about next generation? How will you anticipate mobile phone industry innovations? On the left side is a figure which talks by itself… New generation mobile phones are much more used for browsing, however, many of cheaper handsets are still in circulation. As you can figure out here, there still are loads of different sorts of devices currently used. And for each familly you will have to think about the best solution to suit devices specifications and capabilities. Sounds like a huge work doesn’t it? you definitely want to provide former handsets which may have been the big sale at its time with information too. While developping a page per type of devices would be way too much work especially if you want it to stay up to date, BkRender, our solution we’re providing you with, consists of developping a single page in BKML and then: let BkRender optimize the rendering over up to 6.000 handsets so far! Else, you may want to consider learing dozens of technologies to be able to render your Mobile Site everywhere properly… With BkRender, there is nothing you’re going to need to learn furthermore than what you already know. Here are two examples of a pretty basic page as a first step and then a more complex page, with some examples of rendering for the 3 devices famillies.
Continue reading »
