BadrIT Blog

Should I fill the mobile gab with PhoneGab?

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. It is open source and supports many native features over 7 mobile platforms.

After trying many featured apps built using PhoneGap, I see that apps quality are quite good but some times screen flickering happens (which gives you the feel what you are using a browser).

Some stackoverflow posts shows that these flickers can be solved but I did not give it a try.

Also I felt the UI controls used in these apps were not so pretty. Though I believe some pretty Javascript UI libraries can be used, such as jquery mobile and sencha touch but I did not presonaly tried them.

Another thing I noticed is that a lot of PhoneGab apps are available for Android and iPhone only and even some of them are available just for iPhone which means that PhoneGap targets web developers who wants to make a native mobile version of their web app quickly to reach iPhone and Android users.

Conclusion:

Phonegab evolution is very promising, it is a very good solution for web developers to create native mobile apps using technologies they already know (HTML5, Javascript). PhoneGab is really filling the mobile gab for web developers.

For native mobile developers I believe (not only me) it is better to use native SDK if they are much concerned with quality and don't want to learn web technologies.

Running iPhone Apps in the Background

iPhone OS4 has been introduced with a new important feature which is multitasking.

Multitasking and the ability to run program in the background opened a new development field for iPhone developers, so I just wanted to blog an introduction tutorial to develop an application that runs in background.

When an app According to the iOS Application Programming Guide, if the device doesn't have iPhone OS4 or later versions it will not support multitasking and the application delegate will receive the applicationWillTerminate: message instead of applicationDidEnterBackground: .

I attached a project that demonstrates the multitasking capabilities, find it here .

In The "AppDelegate" class, you will notice the new messages that the application sends to notify the delegate of its foreground/background states.

I added logging message to show the sequence of calling these messages.

In the applicationDidEnterBackground: message you can perform some tasks to wrap up your work, and the framework only gives you a small amount of time to complete wrapping your work, so I tested that on the simulator and it gave me about 10 seconds to complete my background task until my application is purged from memory.

Also I add 2 alerts to demonstrate the new local notification feature, it's very helpful feature when it comes to alerting the user at a certain time or after a certain duration. The alerts will be registered when the AppDelegate executes applicationDidEnterBackground message.

I tried to keep it simple and quick for you to start working with background feature and local notification feature. For more info please see the reference .

Arkami app is the Top Paid App

Today, 5 October 2011, Our iPhone app Arkami is ranked the top paid app on the Egyptian App Store.

Best Practices using Git with Xcode

I wanted to share best practices using Git with Xcode project with everyone who had trouble with Xcode and Git.

If you have made any changes to your code and want to push just follow this steps:

Commit from gity (free excellent GUI git tool)
Pull from Xcode 4.3.2 (File->Source Control->Pull) (Xcode is good at solved .xcodeproj file conflicts).
Solve conflicts using Xcode (if any)
Commit and pushed from gity (or command line which is much more convenient).

If you want to get latest updates just pull from Xcode.

Enjoy

BadrIT is awarded SPI for SMEs Certificate

What's SPI for SMEs:

Software Process improvement for Small & Medium Enterprises, that’s awarded by ITIDA/SECC, and serves as a step toward being CMMI certified.

Why do we thought it’s important:

We believe that a suitable/agile development process is the hidden force behind building great products, so SPI for SMEs was the first step for us to take us one step toward this goal, and we believed it should put us on the right way.

How it works ?

During the course of SPIG program we moved gradually to order from chaos, and after 8 months of enhancements under the supervision of Eng. Amr Noaman, we had Clear definition for our process in Major process Areas Like Project Management, Configuration Management, Product Development and Quality Assurance, and since the program ended late 2011, we’re deploying/enhancing the created process definitions.

Did it work ?

We can say that, we (folks at BadrIT) and our clients have noticed clear improvement in the areas mentioned above, so we can say, YES it works.

So, special thanks to:
Amr Noaman ( Senior Quality Consultant at SECC)
M. El Kharashy (Our CEO)
M. Ali (Program Manager)
A. Adel, M. Hassan, M. Khaled, A. Nour (Project Managers At BadrIT)
AND Every one of BadrIT’s talented/enthusiastic engineers.

iOS SDK PDF Limitations

The purpose of this article is to measure PDF limitations faced while developing iOS apps like the ability to search, zoom, text wrapping (reflow), text selection, text extraction (Arabic), license of PDF libraries (if any).

Notes:

We perform our research on both Arabic and English PDF
I will reference an Arabic/English PDF file called “Al3oshr Al a7’er”, this file can be found here
Conclusion can be found at the end of this article.

Features & Limitations:

View/Zoom/Scroll: I was able to load and view PDFs correctly with zooming/scrolling ability for all PDF I got. I could do this using two methods:
1. Using UIWebView
2. Using Core Graphics iOS APIs and libraries built on top of it like this one.
3. VFR PDF Reader
4. QLPreviewController
Text Extraction ( and Selection/Copy and Paste): I was able to correctly select and copy/paste PDF "pages" that contains only English letters. But some PDFs like “Al3oshr” that contained Arabic (with English) letters failed to read its text. Text I got are of strange encoding. I tried to extract text using 2 methods:
1. Javascript
2. Using pasteboard
3. I also found this code but did not try it as it does not mention text encoding
4. I found a very helpful presentation at:
  The presentation described the cause of the problem which is related to how PDF stores Arabic text. Text is stored as glyphs (drawn characters) and each glyph has an encoding specific to that PDF and that encoding is a number that is stored in Font object that should maps to Unicode. The process is a bit complicated as spaces are not stored (PDF draw a glyph (or more) in a x,y so spaces are not stored).
  My main trials was on “Al3oshr” file which returned strange characters (upon copy and paste).
  I also tried an Arabic PDF I created using OpenOffice and it was read correctly.
  I also tried this PDF and I read Arabic correctly
  I also tried this one and I could not read Arabic.
Text Search: If we where able to extract text correctly, searching can be done smoothly (see “Text Extraction).
1. I tried the commercial library FastPDFKit and failed to search with it in “Al3oshr” file. I also contacted their support (about Al3oshr file ) and they replied "searching and extraction of Arabic text is supported, as long as certain requirements are met - it depends on the encoding and how the text is stored in the page stream. Hopefully, the document you submitted will help us improve the library."
2. Also PDFKitten does not support non-latin characters and it mention that PDF specs are huge...
3. This post contains a lot of links that describe most of problems
Text Re-flow “Text Re-flow means that texts get automatically adjusted to fit the screen regardless of zoom level selected”)
1. Initial search says PDF wrapping not possible, I learned that from this thread. You may test the apps they mentioned. I tested Stanza and it does do any wrapping to PDFs though it does so with epub.
2. On the other hand there other apps that say that they provide text Reflow feature (even on Android), like:
  1. ezPDF Reader
  2. GoodReader for iPhone
  3. Even Android has Text Reflow apps.
3. In general it is hard to perform Re-flow as it is said in this answer as it depends on how text is stored in the PDF (as stated by Adobe itself)
Text Highlighting: Quite hard as stated in this thread

Conclusion:

View/Zoom/Scroll: Can be easily implemented for all PDFs
Text Extraction/Selection/Copy & Paste: Can be easily implemented for pure English PDFs, but hard or PDFs that contains non-Unicode Arabic, like “Al3oshr “PDF.
Text Search: Same as Text Extraction
Text Reflow (Wrapping): Implementation is hard and not feasible for all files. A work around for this is to use Landscape orientation while running on iPhone/iPod Touch. iPad will not need reflow.
Text Highlighting: Implementation is hard.

Localization of your iOS application's Icon.png.

If you found this blog post searching for how to localize Icon.png in you iOS application, I will share with you the answer I found out which is as far as I know "You can not".

Once the application is installed, the application's icon will not change by the change of the language settings of the device.

However, you can test the localization of your icon by deleting the application, change the language settings for the device, then reinstall the application.

You will find the right icon. Since users do not change their language settings daily, I think this is good enough.

Of course the icon should be localized like the rest of resources, either by using xCode, or manually by creating the language.lproj folders, and putting the different versions of your icon there.

I hope I saved some of your time by this post.

Solving Serialization/Deserialization issue in Flex

When I was trying to serialize an object in Action Message Format (AMF) , I faced a problem in deserializing it which was null object value, after some googling I found the solution:

I preserve the class (type) of any object before encoding in Action Message Format (AMF), so that it can be deserialized when decoding the object, so If the encoding context did not register an alias for an object's class, the object is encoded as an anonymous object. Similarly, if the decoding context does not have the same alias registered, an anonymous object is created for the decoded data.

Finally we can register class using one of the follwoing ways:

using function registerClassAlias("path to your class", your class);
using the metadata [RemoteClass(alias = "path to your class")]

Free Google Translate API v2

Background

Google Translate API v2 is now available as a paid service only, and the number of requests your application can make per day is limited. As of December 1, 2011, Google Translate API v1 is no longer available; it was officially deprecated on May 26, 2011.

Migration
So, if you were using google translate API in you application, you have to register for a paid service or you may do like other many developers migrated to other free API services like

Wait, Google Translate API is still FREE :) Lets see how.

Yes, but using an indirect method. Google Translate API is available as free through Google Apps API. So, you can access Google Translate API from Google spreadsheets as the following:

Create a blank google spreadsheet
Create a script from the spreadsheet to access Google Translate API
Access your spreadsheet remotely using spreadsheet API to translate your text :)

Lets see more details with steps and code....

Login to your google docs
Create a blank google spreadsheet
From spreadsheet menu, select "Tools" > "Script editor"

Add the following javascript function

function gTranslate(text, from, to) { 
  return LanguageApp.translate(text, from, to); 
}

Save your script file
Now, lets access spreadsheet from your application. I will give an example using Ruby language and for sure you can use any other language. We will need to install google-spreadsheet-ruby ruby gem to access our spreadsheet. My Ruby code will be as the following...

require "rubygems"
require "google_spreadsheet"

# Logs in. You can also use OAuth
session = GoogleSpreadsheet.login("username@gmail.com", "mypassword")

# First worksheet of http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pz7XtlQC-PYx-jrVMJErTcg&hl=en
ws = session.spreadsheet_by_key("pz7XtlQC-PYx-jrVMJErTcg").worksheets[0]

# call my script from spreadsheet
ws[2,1] = '=gTranslate("this is a test", "en", "es")'
ws.save

# Reloads the worksheet to get my changes effect
ws.reload
puts ws[i,1]  #Esta es una prueba

Wow, it works without any payments :)

Note To pass parameters to the script function “gTranslate”, you need to use double quotes

ws[2,1] = '=gTranslate("this is a test", "en", "es")'

Single quotes will NOT work.

ws[2,1] = "=gTranslate('this is a test', 'en', 'es')"

Side effects:

This work around solution works fine with me but something slow because we make many requests to save an reload spreadsheet. So, if you need to translate many strings fast, I suggest you join them be new line and then split the result over the new lines.

Install Xcode 4.2 documentation manually

If you have installed the new Xcode 4.2 (only a 1.6 GB file instead of the former 4GB file), you will notice that documentation does not work properly, actually people have been complaining about it and the solution was to download the documentation from inside Xcode as stated here.

But if you are a team of iOS developers and want to download the documentation only once and install it on many machines running Xcode?

Here you are the steps:

Download the documentation from Xcode from any machine (as stated here).
Go the download installation (See Figure Below)
Copy the "documentation set" files (it is actually packages with a lot of file so it is recommend to zip them).
Move them to the same location where you installed Xcode on the other machines
Restart Xcode.
Done.

SMS contact name not shown on iPhone

لماذا لا يظهر اسم مرسل الرسالة على الأى فون ؟

قام الجهاز القومي المصري لتنظيم الإتصالات يوم الخميس 6 أكتوبر 2010 بزيادة طول رقم المحمول الحالي من عشرة أرقام إلى أحد عشر رقم وذلك في إطار خطة زيادة السعة الرقمية للمحمول والتي سبق الإعلان عنها بداية العام 2010 لتتماشى مع خطة الترقيم الجديدة.

فى نفس التوقيت ظهرت العديد من البرامج لتعديل الأرقام علي أجهزة المحمول ومنها برامج لتعديل الأرقام على جهاز الآى فون و لكن تظل مشكلة اظهار رقم المرسل فى برنامج الرسائل SMS مع جميع برامج التحويل الخاصة بالآى فون حيث نجد أن اسم مرسل الرسالة لا يظهر ولكن يظهر رقمه فقط مضاف إليه (2+) مثال: 6758600 114 20+

والغريب فى الأمر أنه عندما يتصل نفس الشخص فإن اسمه يظهر على الآى فون بطريقة سليمة مما يجعلنا نتسائل لماذا تظهر هذه المشكلة الآن ولماذا لم يتم حل هذه المشكلة بعد استخدام برامج التحويل؟

هذا ما سنوضحه فى هذا المقال بعد توضيح بعض الحقائق:

الحقيقة الأولى هى أن 2+ هو رمز الإتصال الدولى الخاص بمصر - لنكون أكثر دقة 20+ هو رمز الإتصال الدولي لمصر ولكن تم حذف الصفر لأن رقم المحمول أوله صفر أيضا - منعا لإلتقاء الصفريين :)
تخيل معي لو كان هناك صفرين سيكون الرقم بهذا الشكل : 6758600 114 200+

بالمناسبة "+" هى إختصار ل"00" أى أن الرقم 6758600 114 20+ يكافئ 6758600 114 0020

نعود إلى رسالتنا القصيرة SMS - مرسل الرسالة أرسلها من داخل مصر فلماذا يظهر كود الإتصال الدولي وكأنه يتصل من خارج مصر؟

هذا ما توضحه الحقيقة الثانية هي أن خدمة الرسائل تستخدم طرق دولية لتوجيه الرسائل

حسنا لماذا كان اسم مرسل الرسالة يظهر قبل تغيير طول الأرقام ولماذا تحدث هذه المشكلة على جهاز الآى فون ولا تحدث على أجهزة أخرى مثل نوكيا؟

لكي نجيب على هذا السؤال نحتاج أن نفهم كيف يقوم جهاز مثل نوكيا بإظهار إسم المتصل (أو مرسل الرسالة)؟

وهذا يقودنا إلى طرح الحقيقة الثالثة وهى أن أغلب أجهزة نوكيا إن لم تكن كلها تقوم بالبحث عن أي اسم فى دليل الهاتف مسجل تحته رقم يتطابق مع رقم المتصل (أو مرسل الرسالة) ولكن جهاز النوكيا يطابق آخر سبعة أرقام فقط وليس كامل الرقم.

هذه الطريقة لها ميزة ولها عيب , الميزة هي أن جهاز النوكيا لن يقع فى المشكلة التى نحن بصددها وسوف يظهر اسم مرسل الرسالة والمتصل بطريقة سليمة لأنه ينظر إلى الرقم

6758600 114 20+

و الرقم 6758600 114 0

كأنهم رقم واحد لأنهم يشتركان فى آخر سبعة أرقام 6758600

عيب هذه الطريقة أن جهاز النوكيا سوف يُظهر المتصل من الرقم:

6758600 111 0

أو الرقم

6758600 100 0

على أنهما نفس الشخص.

جربها بنفسك على أى جهاز نوكيا. إتصل برقم صديقك وبدل أي رقم قبل آخر سبعة أرقام برقم آخر ستجد أن الجهاز يظهر أنه يتصل بصديقك مع أنك تتصل برقم خطأ من الأساس!!

طبعا هذه حالة نادرة أن يكون لديك صديقان رقمهم مشترك فى آخر سبعة أرقام ولكن قد تحدث هذه المشكلة مع أجهزة نوكيا ولكن لا تحدث أبدا مع جهاز مثل الأى فون والذى يطابق كامل طول الرقم مع مراعاة كود الإتصال الدولى وخريطة الترقيم للبلد وهذه هى الحقيقة الرابعة وهي أن أبل لم تقم بتحديث الجهاز أو نظام التشغيل ليتوافق مع نظام الترقيم الجديد الذى أصدره الجهاز القومي لتنظيم الإتصالات ولذلك كانت الأرقام القديمة - بطول عشر أرقام - تظهر أسماء أصحابها بطريقة سليمة عند الإتصال أو إرسال رسالة.

أما بعد تغيير طول الأرقام إلى إحد عشر رقم فإن الأى فون لا يدرى شيئا عن طبيعتها ولذلك لم يستطع إظهار اسم مرسل الرسالة.

شئ واحد أخير:

الحقيقة الخامسة وهى أن هناك برنامج واحد فقط "حتى الآن" اسمه "أرقامى" يحل هذه المشكلة على الأى فون وهذه البرنامج من شركة بدر لتكنولوجيا المعلومات. البرنامج ببساطة يقوم بتكرير كل رقم ليكون منه نسختان نسخة بالكود الدولى (لتعمل مع خدمة الرسائل) ونسخة بدون كود دولى لتعمل مع المكالمات العادية و طبعا هذا الحل مؤقت لأجل غير مسمى إلى أن تقوم أبل بتحديث نظام تشغيل الأى فون ليدعم الترقيم الجديد.

تحديث:

إذا اقمت بالترقية بنجاح لآخر نسخة من نظام تشغيل الآى فون 5 فلن تظهر مشكلة أسماء مرسلى الرسائل لك ولن تحتاج لآخر نسخة من برنامج أرقامى أما إذا لم تستطع الترقية (قمت بعمل جيلبريك أو فك حماية) فأنت مازلت بحاجة لتنزيل آخر نسخة من برنامج أرقامى

Ataxx Bio-Warfare - Online Multi-Player Game

Ataxx Bio-Warfare is a turn-based game of strategy, where you control the movement of Fungi petri dishes. Get one of your dishes within one space of your opponent's dishes and your fungi will take them over. Be the first to gain control of all the dishes on the lab table.

Choose from 9 enemy bacteria, in 30 levels of increasing difficulty.
Or challenge your friends in Multi-Player mode, and check the leaderboards to see who's the best Fungi of them all!

You can check its trailer here.

Keep in Touch and give s like to it's official Facebook page

Log to Debug efficiently in Objective-C

Everyone wants to have an effecient logging method that releave him from the stepping debugging.

The following is a macro for debugging showing only in debug mode.

It shows:

Current File.
Current Function.
Current Line.
Custom Argments.

#ifdef DEBUG
#   define DLog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s %s [Line %d] " fmt), __FILE__, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__);
#else
#   define DLog(...) ;
#endif

// ALog always displays output regardless of the DEBUG setting
#define ALog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s %s [Line %d] " fmt), __FILE__, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__);

Ex: ALog(@"Hello world") will print:

path/to/LibraryController.m -[LibraryController awakeFromNib] [Line 364] Hello world

Enjoy

Reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/969130/nslog-tips-and-tricks

Rails Helper including another helper problem in Development mode

I had a tough couple of hours fighting with Rails helpers , my desire was to include a helper inside another one to have a method of that other helper aliased, so I wrote the following:

module MyHelper

  include TheirHelper

  def their_method_with_my_mehtod
    puts their_method_without_my_method
  end

  alias_method_chain :my_method, :their_method

end

That worked with the first request, but subsequent requests, throwed a "Stack overflow error", because in development mode, helper is re-included and the two methods "their_method_with_my_mehtod" and "their_method_without_my_method" became pointing to the same thing, so the solution was:

module MyHelper

  include TheirHelper

  def their_method_with_my_mehtod
    puts their_method_without_my_method
  end

  alias_method_chain :my_method, :their_method unless method_defined?(their_method_without_my_method)

end

Another way to do that is through writing "unloadable" at the module start

module MyHelper

  unloadable # prevent it from being unloaded in development mode
             # other wise, a stack overflow exception will be 
             # thrown due to the alias method chain being called twice
  include TheirHelper

  def their_method_with_my_mehtod
    puts their_method_without_my_method
  end

  alias_method_chain :my_method, :their_method unless method_defined?(their_method_without_my_method)

end

RMagick installation: no such file to load — mkmf

I was following the steps mentioned here: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/install2-linux.html,
to install RMagick gem, but I got the error

http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/install2-linux.html

And the solution to this error was to install the dev package of Ruby, (ruby1.8-dev OR ruby1.9-dev)

After that, the installation worked fine.