Accompanied by Sibers Android Developer
Kuban Dzhakipov

On September 14th Konstantin Zolotarev and Kuban Dzhakipov received a notice that their initiative for the creation of the local Google Technology User Group (GTUG) in Bishkek was approved by Google.

By this time, the men had already held two local meetings on Google technologies and even started the development of their own open-source project.

We wanted to better understand what GTUG is, why we need it, and why our colleagues from the Sibers Bishkek branch are ready to fully devote their time to this project. Konstantin Zolotarev, Sibers PHP Team Leader and founder of Bishkek GTUG, took the time to answer a few of our questions.

— What is GTUG? How did you learn about it?

Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs) are communities for people using, and those interested in Google’s technology.

Actually, I learned about this program from the Internet. Google tweeted about an event held in the company office together with a GTUG. After some searching I discovered that there was such a program. So, the next step was to complete an application for the local GTUG establishment.

— Why did you decide to proceed with applying?

Before starting my work with the GTUG program, I was the coordinator of a similar Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) program. The program was called OSUM, and pursued similar goals, but was aimed at students. I was supposed to supervise the program at Bishkek universities.

Unfortunately, this program is closing, but it helped me to learn the general working principle of such programs. Therefore, as soon as I heard about GTUG, I started working with no questions. Kuban almost immediately joined me (together, we are the founders of this group), and our work started to shift into high gear.

— What personal goals did you pursue?

My main motivation with starting a local GTUG is to continue my self-development and to gain access to new technologies. Besides that, I often use Google technologies in my work, and I use it to share my knowledge with my team. It is much easier to do live communications in our group, rather than simply reading forums. I am thankful for the Google support that made this possible. Also, I like how the title of ’Bishkek GTUG founder’ sounds :)

— What steps have you taken to found the Bishkek GTUG?

To register your GTUG, you have to meet certain conditions. At the very least, you need to create the group’s site, forum, twitter, etc. You also need to conduct organizational work: arrange meetings, search for sponsors and advertise your events. I want to give a special thanks to everyone who helped us. We are very lucky to have our sponsor—Sibers supported us even in the beginning, when nobody knew who we were.

— Who are the members of your group? How did you find them?

Our group unites people who are interested in new technologies. Some of them do not deal with the actual development, but they do follow the progress of the technology.

There are people who have joined just because of the Google brand. Initially our colleagues and friends comprised the members of the group. Then, when we started to grow and information began to disseminate, people started to join us spontaneously.

— Tell us about your meetings?

So far, we have only had two meetings. Both were in the form of conferences. The first was regarding the Google Web Toolkit, and the second was about Android.

Despite the experience of organizing such events, we were faced with some organizational obstacles. The most difficult thing was to find a location for the meetings. The first meeting took place in a café, while we were granted a conference room at The National IT Centre for the second meeting.

At our first meeting, there were only about 15 people in attendance. However, our second meeting hosted more than 80 people!

Our team prepared all of the speeches and made various presentations.

Our second meeting also hosted Sibers’ top management who made a speech.

There are five event formats within GTUG but both of our meetings were in a Tech Talk format. We have a lot of room to grow and a lot of things to do—we have great plans and much work ahead!

— You have already started your open–source projects. What are they?

Recently, our group has decided to start three open source projects. We have selected several directions to pursue simultaneously so that everyone has found something of interest.

One project is well underway. It is a game for browsers and Android devices made with PlayN and jBox2D.

— What are your plans?

We have great plans to create a good and active community. We also hope to present our projects at the next Google Developers Days.

Recently, Google agreed with the organizers of StartupWeekends that their events would be held with the participation of local GTUGs.

We do hope that Bishkek GTUG will be a successful group with interesting projects and with a great professional community!

With more than 13 years in business, Sibers has so much to offer you and your specific project. From the moment our prospective customers first contact us, they are surrounded with help and expertise from our team of outsourcing consultants. Even though there are many different instruments to advise and inspire our customers, our team of outsourcing consultants may face some difficulty in finding the one that is best – this is because the variety of instruments available is just too extensive.

In an effort to overcome this difficulty, our outsourcing consultants recently organized an internal seminar to review the instruments and tools they have available. They also classified the cases for when choose the most effective tools for both the company and the customer.

The first set of tools used by our consultants is intended to understand the customer’s needs correctly. These tools include a type of wizard that is equipped with questions on all aspects of the project, starting with the business’s purpose for the developed application, what the customer’s design preferences are, and how the app should be unique.

The initial sketching (or wireframing) that is done by the consultant for the future application together with the input of the customer can also make the whole workflow much clearer for both parties.

When the background for the idea is well communicated, it then becomes possible for our consultants to advise on a technical solution for the project and to assure the customer of our capability to execute all aspects of the work. At this stage the technical expertise of our consultants as well as the thorough support of the team leaders take on the leading role. A comprehensive analysis of the requirements and the project’s prospects results in finding just the right technical solution for a project. The consultant’s tools for this step include a stack of questionnaires for each type of development technology, along with the extensive Sibers’ portfolio that contains more than 900 completed projects.

When aims (customer needs) and means (technical solutions) are clear, it is much easier to define the form. Once defined, the consultant can make suggestions on the work arrangement. For example, should this outsourcing cooperation be organized as a Custom Remote Team, a fixed contract per project, or should it be based on interactive development? The pros and cons of each type of Customer-Provider cooperation for the IT project needs to be carefully explained and the right method should be suggested.

The final step before actual development is the legal side. Sibers’ consultants will guide customers through all the aspects of making a formal contract for outsourcing their design as well as outlining how the development process works. At this stage, the legal documents and all 13 years of our outsourcing experience work together to completely protect the interests of both sides.

We do hope this seminar and developed internal source classifying the variety of tools available will help our prospective customers get the information they are interested in from Sibers’ outsourcing consultants rapidly. This will help us to achieve our number one goal, which is to complete projects for our customers successfully.

It all started with a water pump in the middle of a village in India. This water pump with its chipped blue paint and rusted exterior was the bane of my existence. It was my responsibility in our miniature townhouse situated among roaming cows and pigs to make sure our water reservoir was sufficient for our daily activities. My two roommates had other responsibilities to facilitate our living conditions. All I had to do was flip a switch to fill a water tank that was located 10 feet below our townhouse. Once that was full, I had to flip a second switch to move the water from the bottom reservoir through a long cylindrical filter, and then ultimately to an overhead concrete tank located on the roof of the house. Seems simple enough, right? Hardly.

We were not required to pay a water bill at this point, so we didn’t have the greatest expectations for the quality of the water being pumped into the house. Our thoughts were correct. The filtration unit was not particularly effective; the water would change from light brown to a semi-clear substance. The water that entered the house was the most corrosive agent I have ever seen in my life. It rusted everything it came in contact with. Cutlery, bathroom faucets, and of course the actual water pump itself. That stuff should be used for chemical warfare. The only thing that survived the wrath of the village water was my titanium folding bicycle that I used to transport myself between the hospital and my house. The whole contraption of pumping water was not a closed system as it should have been. The corrosive nature of the water caused the cheap metal to let air in, causing multiple air leaks. We pleaded with our landlady to fix the issue; the only responsibility she felt she was obliged to do was collect rent from us every month and nothing else. My friends loved to use the term “shafted” to describe this particular situation, among other things that would constantly not work for me. We didn’t know the language and there is no such thing as a Yellow Book in India. Only after walking down the dusty road next to our house, I was able to find a “plumber” who proceeded to install an air valve that was faulty among other things. The net result was that water had to be poured into this open valve whenever there was an air leak, which was every day. I was forced to spend wasted time every day after school, placing water from a bucket and a mug into the valve like a village idiot to provide water pressure to run the motor. During my moments of water pouring reflection, I thought to myself there had to be a better way to find a solution for my problem. Eureka, the idea for Unshaft was born.

Move to December of 2010 and I was jaded. I had wasted 6 months and $3,000 dollars on a middle tier Indian programming team. I initially thought I was getting a cut rate bargain, but after the months rolled by, I realized I was getting a programming team that just wasn’t cutting it. I had wasted so much time, doing rotations in the hospital all day, trying to read in the evening, staying up until 3:00 AM testing shoddy code/making sure we were on task, and heading to the hospital the next morning bleary eyed. Rinse and repeat for half a year. It was especially exhausting because I promised myself by taking on this extra night shift, I would attend all my required classes, which I did successfully. Home for Christmas break, I slumped back in my chair watching snowflakes cascade softly down through the window. I had already fired the team, although I paid them the lump sum that we had agreed up at the beginning of the project. What to do now? I put up an auction on eLance to see if any high tier programming teams could help me finish my site. I was hopeful at least some of the code could be salvaged. I interviewed about a dozen teams and they all reviewed my code. The funniest/saddest message was from a team based in Ukraine. Their message was something along the lines of, “On a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the best rating, I give your code a 5. And that’s just out of sympathy. Wonderful, so I’ll have to start from scratch. So I decided if I was going to launch this startup correctly, I am going to go for an elite quality team to support me.

After browsing all the profiles, a team from Russia caught my eye. Their handles were HireRussians/Sibers, a word play on their location from Siberia. My exposure to Russia was limited. I only knew about Kasparov and Kaspersky; the former a famous chess master and the latter an award winning anti-virus program. I figured with Sibers high rating and Russia’s ability to churn out men of great chess ability/anti-virus programming, this was probably my best bet. On top of that, they stated upfront that I own all intellectual property rights. I took the plunge and accepted them as my provider. The first message I received from them was on my birthday, December 21st. It was a highly organized e-mail asking the right critical questions about the site and it included a wonderful birthday message to boot. I was excited; this had the potential to be great relationship. Their estimate came to me on Christmas Day, again detailing exactly line by line what each milestone consisted of and a reasonable timeframe to it. After securing a generous loan from a third party, I was ecstatic heading into the new year.

Fast forward to September 2011, it is close to show time. After our 9 month relationship, the baby is close being born. It’s exciting and scary at the same time; will the site be a success or will it be a flop? Only time will tell. What I can say for certain at this point is that there are some core values that stood out during the work we have done so far, especially in comparison to the previous programming team I worked with. They are as follows: integrity, critical thinking skills, and meticulousness organization.
Integrity refers to not only giving a realistic estimation to the client at the beginning of the project. It also refers to providing a solution to a particular problem a client has or even better providing a unsolicited improvement on a particular aspect of the site to enhance the project as a whole. It also means that the particular work will done perfectly the first time around, so it does not have to be worked on again in the future. Critical thinking refers to being able to think 2 or 3 steps ahead of what is being worked on currently, to avoid future problems. Organization refers to having everything lined up perfectly on both the frontend and backend, so everybody knows what their job entails and that all the pieces of the puzzle fit correctly to create an elegant end product.

It’s been a great ride so far; I hope the journey takes me to bigger and better places while providing people a way to improve their lives.

Madhu Amara, September 2011

Accompanied by Sibers Design Teamleader Eugene Odnoval

Sure, you have probably heard the jokes (or depending on the attitude, horror stories) like this one about working with graphic designers. If you have been in this predicament, you most likely do not find the joke very funny at all. We understand your feelings: you told them exactly what you wanted” yet still your final product does not look professional, appealing or for that matter, even nice. Sometimes, creative people are not that easy to deal with, and of course, there is always the possibility that you could have fallen victim to an incompetent and unskilled novice. The most common problem however, is that there may have been things you should have more effectively communicated when ordering a design for your cutting-edge website or save-the-world app, but you did not do so properly because it never occurred to you they would be things the graphic designer would need to know.

So, what exactly should you have stated?

To help you avoid future problems, we have jotted down five tips for communicating your wishes to graphic designers; the importance of which is often underestimated.

What is Your Idea?

This is actually what you should begin with. There should be a clear and concise business idea behind each design. What do we want to design? Who is our target audience? What goals would we like to accomplish? What problems should we solve? You might just be surprised by how much information is vital for the success of your design project aside from just colors, styles, and fonts. You will still need to stipulate that you would like vivid colors, web 2.0 buttons, or your site to essentially look and feel like www.apple.com (boy, do we get that a lot!), but you will also need to be prepared to dwell upon your business goals before you get down to choosing color palette.

Customer: I want my site to look a little bit like this site and a little bit like that one. And copy the left menu form this site. Designer: Please tell me first what your site is about.

As Dan Rubin (no doubt, a really smart designer) says: “There’s a common misunderstanding of what design is exactly. Design is not just the visuals and the aesthetic aspect of making something look pretty or attractive. […]Design in its core is about the visual aspects that support the functionality in a given thing. If we’re talking about physical products in the real world or virtual products such as web apps and services, the design is what communicates the functionality to the user”. It’s really hard to put it more explicitly than that.

What do you have So Far?

The next important thing to mention is whether or not you have some designs completed for your project so far. You must understand that if you need a design done from scratch, your new designer has vast room for creativity, but this also makes his job a bit more difficult because he needs to come up with the whole new concept.

Design example

Another case would be if you need your new design to be in accordance with an existing corporate style. If you would like to have a company website, for example, and you already have a company logo, this is a great start! That being said, you must make sure you show the logo to the designer before he sits down with his graphics tablet. This somewhat limits the designer’s imagination, but is also good, because he won’t get carried away in the wrong direction, and you will wind up with a nice conceptual design for your entire product.

Just recently one of our customers ordered a design for his site and he already had a logo with a white-blue, kind of Old Testament dove on it. Now he was smart to tell us about this beforehand. Imagine him saying as our designer hands in his work: “Oh, and could you integrate my dove logo… into this high-tech grey-and-red design…” That would have been fun!

You may also want to address redesign. If you already have a design for your product, but you are not particularly fond of it any more, make sure you communicate what exactly is wrong with the old version and what you want to avoid in future. This will prevent both you and your designer from having to do double work.

Before and After

What would you like the User Experience to be?

To create a masterpiece, a painter has to think of its future composition. We know for sure that even Michelangelo did a little sketching, so why shouldn’t we? To create a functional design (that “communicates functionality to user”, remember?) the designer must know where the banners will go and if there should be several levels of menu on the site. This kind of sketching for web and software designers is called User Interface or User Experience design.

If you know what results you want to achieve with the product, but aren’t sure how to organize the information properly, we strongly advise to allocate this to a UI designer first. The result of this stage is a set of wireframes – schematic drawings of the future site that show the basic elements layout.

Example of wireframing

If you have a clear idea of what you need to see and where you would like to see it, don’t be shy and share this. Even an old-school hand drawing is better than nothing at all.

What Type of Content do you need?

If you have dealt with designers before, chances are you have seen the Lorem-ipsum-expelliarmus-blah-blah-blah spell they often put as a dummy for article texts in sites’ designs. They basically have to do it to improve the future site visualization, because the content is either not ready yet or they do not suspect it is. Usually, the site content is often left for dessert in the site creation feast. However, the designer must have at least a vague idea of what content will go onto which page. So, what exactly does this have to do with the designer’s work? It could happen that your joint efforts produce a stunning design, but when you start putting the content in, you might discover that the style is not suitable for the amount of information you are inputting or the photos you are uploading do not go well with the general concept. Ouch…

What Level of Complexity Should the Site Possess?

There is probably no need to mention that the complexity of design requirements directly influences the amount of work that must be done by the designer. Even people who have only a vague idea about the designer’s work would agree that coming up with a simple and neat icon is quite different from creating an elaborate 3D animation. The first case scenario may take just 1-2 hours, the second one – much longer. So don’t forget to mention the complexity of graphics you expect to see so that your designer is able to give you realistic estimations and complete the work on time.

Two sets of icons different in complexity

Conclusion

The above mentioned criteria are the things that are vital to cover when ordering GUI design. If we were to sum it all up with just one good piece of advice on how to avoid confusion during the design stage of the project, we would say: “Communicate with your designer”. Verbalize every expectation you have from the beginning to the final product. Be ready to answer a plethora of questions at each and every stage of work. We assure you, there is no irrelevant information you could possibly give, whether you talk of the color shades that appeal to you the most or your business organization – all of this extra effort will show through in your dream design.

Stay tuned: next time we’ll discuss in more detail what UI design is, and why do you need it. We’ll also take a closer look at different types of GUI tasks and see how the design turns into a real app or a complete website.

Our birthday party passed in a Mayan style too. We’ve made a trailer for our collegues to be prepared. And of course, we share it with you, enjoy!

Hurrah! Happy Birthday, Sibers!

Photo by passer_by

The eclipse is unique due to its completeness and duration as well as the type. In fact, lunar eclipses are quite an ordinary thing, you can even see the summary of them on the NASA site, but this one was the first this year and uncommon. The Moon passed through the center of the Earth shadow, which happens rarely (the next such an event will take place in 141 years) and the Moon totally disappeared in the shadow. The full beauty of the event in Russia could be seen only in southern regions, and Novosibirsk, which is in the south of Western Siberia, belongs to the area.

The sky in Novosibirsk was excellent — clear and starry. The event took place on 16 June, with its total phase at 2:22 a.m.–4:03 a.m. local time. This year being full of different natural events and disasters, we can witness everything going its usual way, luckily, without any catastrophes.

Team Insights: HireRussians

The HireRussians team has been active on Elance for years and has worked with hundreds of software development clients. We interviewed HireRussians’ team member Anie Taskaeva to discuss how the team leverages Elance today and how their application development business has evolved over time. Read more.

Accompanied by Sibers PHP Developer Konstantin Sherpaev

Is it possible to quickly add features to your applications without having to completely rewrite them from scratch?

As a customer have you ever thought about the technical structure of your development project? Of course, you are probably thinking “Isn’t that your job?” Regardless of occupational designation, you are still probably aware that every application inherently has an abstract structure. Sooner or later you might want to change it, and thus you should have an understanding of at least the basic structure. A clear and good structure includes certain patterns of development, which is exactly what we are going to debate in this entry. These patterns, when used in the design of your application, can save significant development time and allow developers to use a number of useful features. So, what exactly are design patterns, and when they are useful for your tasks?

Design patterns are fixed templates which are used by developers for building a basic application frame. The frame choice depends on the specific features and purposes of the application. Since some application features are similar, developers create models for how to solve the most frequent design problems. These models are effective, internationally accepted design patterns. For these patterns work well, you need to consider what functions and supplements your application will need during the specification phase, as well as what you might want to add. In this phase developers can identify and reserve some “free places” for these components.

If developers ignore design patterns when creating application versions, adding every new feature, even a simple one, is going to become a very difficult task requiring a great deal of the developer’s time. In fact, it will result in rewriting the entire source functioning code. By sharing your project plans with your project manager upfront, your team will be able to change the code according to your desires with minimal difficulty and minimal time.

This particular issue has come to light a number of times with our own customers. One such example of this type of project involved an application that did not have any patterns in its structure. Each time our customer wanted to add a new feature, we had to add more and more work around. It was too complicated for us, but seemed very simple for the customer. He thought such minor additions could not possibly take hours of development. So, when the next feature addition was estimated to take 40 hours of work, we decided to apply design patterns. This task took 60 hours, but as a result we could add every new feature in just 4 hours. In addition, further support became simpler, and the customer, needless to say, was quite satisfied.

Another important advantage to using design patterns is their international recognition. These patterns speed up the transfer of your project to other developers in the event that you want to change the team, or want to make further additions with another provider some time after the project concludes. The new provider or developer will not have to spend hours working from scratch, and your money is going to be allocated more wisely.

However, the key to using patterns may is to use them wisely. The worst way to use patterns is to use them in all cases, with all variants in the same application in place, which will not be needed for some additions. This will actually increase the development time, and will result in complicating the code. Even worse, the next developers will have to spend much more time to repair the matter.

Types of Design Patterns

According to the Gang of Four, the authors of the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, there are 23 design patterns. These patterns are then divided into 3 functional categories: Creational, Structural, and Behavioral Patterns. Let’s briefly describe each and look at some case studies from our own practice.

Creational design patterns deal with object creation mechanisms, and attempt to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic form of object creation designed without patterns could result in design problems or excessive complexity. Creational design patterns solve this problem by controlling object creation.

Structural design patterns ease the process by finding a simple way to realize relationships between entities in the code.

Behavioral design patterns identify common communication patterns between objects and then realize these patterns. These patterns increase flexibility in carrying out communication between the objects.

Example 1

One project the Sibers team developed involved using the WebSpider module. WebSpider is a website downloading program that is used for analyzing and recording information in a database. For this project we completed multithread downloading by using a special algorithm.

Another application in the project required a different supplementary module — AvailabilityWatchet. While developing this application we found that this unit had the same structure and functionality as WebSpider, however the downloading algorithm was slightly different. In this case we had two possibilities: copy the process thread characteristics and correct them for new tasks, or redevelop the first module with a design pattern without code copying. It was a much wiser decision to follow the second variant, in case similar applications appear again and again. Therefore, we decided to apply a design pattern Factory Method. This pattern makes it possible to describe the logic of a process once in the basic technical class. In the new module we described a simple class which created concrete objects. As a result we created a technical class to manage abstract threads. In each module we had to briefly describe peculiarities of management and how the application met new needs.

Thus, the Creational design pattern was most beneficial in this situation.

Even more importantly, we were able to greatly simplify the addition of new units with similar structures without having to spend any time on new coding, as all we needed to do was use the design pattern established in our code.

The design pattern used allowed us to decrease the amount of code, making it more structured and readable. This meant there was less potential for developer mistakes. Overall, the process was a great advantage for us as it decreased the development time for further modules.

Example 2

Another of our case studies involved developing a site downloader which required data to be transferred in the same format. PHP language was used in the development process.

Downloading was needed to accomplish this task, and was started repeatedly. Since the design pattern using downloader had to be initialized for every feature and every time, be it Loginer or Extractor, a solution was needed as the process was quite inconvenient.

We then used Creational pattern Singleton for the downloader, which had a request generation method description. This downloader’s major advantage was logging request data, thus allowing us to process several parallel requests.

***

These cases clearly show the necessary and beneficial usage of design patterns. When we began analyzing the excessive use of patterns in our practice, we only came up with a handful of cases where developers erroneously used a certain type of a pattern. The effect was obvious as the application had a big code dimension, experienced trouble with testing, and worked with objects that required many unnecessary actions. If you see similar symptoms in your project, it is a sign of using an incorrect pattern. However, this does not mean that all the patterns have to be removed. When developers replace just the pattern used erroneously with the correct pattern, everything ran smoothly, and worked effectively.

By now it should be clear how using appropriate design patterns can simplify the process of development, save time and money, as well as improve the functionality of the application. You should also be aware that developing such patterns can take some time, but the extra cost will most definitely pay for itself in the long run. If the code is written without such patterns, which may be less expensive upfront and may seem unnecessary for some customers, any further desirable features in the application may result in many hours of development time, in spite of being consider “minor” or negligible. Now it’s time for you to make a decision as to whether to allow developers to use these suggested design patterns for your project or not.

If you want to develop an Android application, chances are you will be advised to use NDK. So, what exactly is this modern tool, and why do so many developers recommend it? This article will answer these questions, as well as explain the differences between using NDK and Java. You will gain a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of NDK, as well as for what purposes NDK is recommended and for what purposes it is not recommended.

NDK (Native Development Kit) is a type of technology that is used to develop Android app components by using so-called “native language”. In many cases, Android applications that are written in Java have low productivity. When developing using Java, you will be able to use just 24 Mb of RAM, whereas developing with NDK will give you more than 24 Mb, thus increasing efficiency. In addition, by using NDK you will also have a greater increment of process execution speed.

Another handy feature of NDK is the option to use many native libraries. Since you can use various ready solutions for your project (e.g., a library which completes math tasks), the overall time for development decreases.

You must be aware of the fact that NDK cannot be the sole technology for development. You will have to use another platform as well due to some of the disadvantages of NDK. For example, NDK makes it impossible to work with events (keyboard, touchscreen or accelerometer) and sounds. For these tasks you should use Java because NDK native libraries can be easily implanted into Java shell.

NDK Advantages

NDK is especially good for tasks when process acceleration is needed, for example, as part of game development where you calculate a game physics engine or AI. These calculations require a lot of RAM despite the fact that the gameplay background itself may require only 3 Mb. Java copes with this work with difficulty, so the majority of games today are developed with NDK (“Angry Birds” for Android is a great example of a program developed with NDK). Sibers developers not only actively use NDK-tools, but also organize workshops based upon this technology for colleagues and interns. This article is a result of one such workshop.

More examples of beneficial usage of NDK include tasks regarding pattern recognition, data encryption and compression, images/video/audio processing, and all actual and modern trends which require a good deal of complicated calculations. It would be quite simple for a PC to perform these tasks, however mobile platforms have limited resources. In fact, Android is a more “convenient” development platform than the iPhone. The iPhone has many limits for potentially dangerous actions (e.g., access to user’s sms, emails, address book, wi-fi signal strength information etc). Thus these dangerous actions could never be legally realized on an iPhone application that needs to be approved by the iTunes App Store. The Android market does not restrict the usage of these actions.

Another nice and important advantage of NDK is the compatibility it has with OpenGL ES 2.X. This technology allows for the creation of more beautiful 3D graphics.

Disadvantages

While NDK improves efficiency in many cases, there are also situations when NDK works like Java, but requires even more development resources than Java. Take, for example, the development of an application with simple calculations and a lot of supplemental information to be displayed using a complicated user interface. Classic examples of this type of application are guide-books and shopping apps. In these cases using Java would be more beneficial, due to its effective tools for easy interface development. “Easy development” means that you save both money and time for your clients.

Interaction with Other Platforms

The use of native language makes porting applications easy, because NDK makes it possible to implement standard native code libraries. These libraries can be used for other iOS platforms development; however they do not simplify porting to Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, or Symbian. You will need to rewrite most of the code in these cases.

Porting C++ desktop apps to Android becomes simpler with NDK, but it does not mean that you can replace the app without any changes. This would be too complicated, slow, and inappropriate for a small screen.

To Sum Up…

You have now seen how the use of NDK helps solve many of the problems with Java, however development with this tool is not always ideal.

NDK should be used for:

• Developing components with complicated calculations (game physics, AI, pattern recognitions, data encryption and compression, images/video/audio processing);
• Making “a clone” of a C++ desktop application for Android.

NDK should not be used for:

• Creating user interfaces;
• Working with bulks of static data.

Long gone are the days when users were satisfied with a basic, working website. Users now need, not just the basics, but also a site that is convenient. Therefore, it is very important that you pay strong attention to your site’s usability, keeping in mind the user’s perspective. After all, even if you have a great design, if the information is not easy to acquire, the user will not return to the site.

So, how do you improve your website’s overall design to create the best possible user experience? Following these 10 simple tips can help accomplish this mission, and keep your users happy.

1. Use disappearing explanations in the text fields. For better usability, an explanation should disappear when the user clicks on the field, leaving the text field available for the user’s comments.
2. Avoid pop-ups. You should avoid advertisement pop-ups whenever possible. These items can be detrimental and may even force the user to leave the site. Instead, place all information and ads directly on the page layout instead of designing it to pop up when the site is opened, or the user’s mouse hovers on the page.
3. Post the publication date. Users want to know how current your information is; this helps to increase credibility and relevancy. It is always a good idea to display the date of your postings on the site.
4. Enable search functionality throughout the site. One of the most serious and common mistakes is a lack of search functionality. The availability of a search box on the page makes navigation on the entire site much more comfortable.
5. Disable automatic music intros and audio ads on the site. You should definitely give your users a choice whether or not they choose to play audio files.
6. Clearly indicate links. The user would appreciate it if it is clear what areas can be clicked and what areas cannot. Links should be highlighted in a different color from plain text, and they should also be underlined. This makes the page appear more pleasant to the eye, making it more readable, and user friendly.
7. Remember breadcrumbs. Of course, this issue has nothing to do with food, but is essential for site navigation. Visitors like to know where they are, where they can go, and how to keep from becoming lost when moving between pages.
8. Avoid deadlocks (windows can’t be closed, icons don’t work, everything freezes). If your site has a bug, you absolutely need to fix it. Of course, testing all the buttons and links should have been done in advance, before launching a live version; however, if you plant deadlocks as a strategy in an effort to trick and force the user to enter extra data (for example, you make them register for something), you can pretty much guarantee the user will never visit your site again.
9. Avoid animated ads. A lot of huge banner ads blinking with different colors and changing their size and location tend to distract and annoy even the most discreet user. Say “no” to blinking texts, and your users will thank you.
10. 10. Give your contact information. Providing contact information in a noticeable place helps visitors easily get in touch with you, as well as provides a feeling of trust. These simple details, such as your contact address and phone number will make you appear honest and friendly. Additionally, you can gain feedback, which many users like to view before deciding to apply, or contact you.

This list of recommendations is limited to the top 10 most common pieces of advice for site usability. More subtle issues are equally as important and can be discussed at a later time. That being said, if designers adhere to at least these basic points, visitors will enjoy their experience on your website and will appreciate the convenience of a user friendly platform.