Hello! Messenger is a free, cross-platform mobile chat app which lets iPhone and Blackberry users chat in pairs or groups while avoiding SMS charges. Hello! had a great product already on the market, but were looking to expand their userbase by releasing an Android version of the app with cross-platform functionality. That’s where GT came in…

Developing for Android

When tasked with porting Hello! to Android, our developers looked at three possible options in detail:

• Write new code for the app from scratch.
• Use Beem, a Jabber client as a foundation for building Hello! Messenger.
• Use Yaxim, another open-source Jabber client as a foundation.

After examining the pros and cons of each of these routes, we decided to go with using Yaxim as the foundation of Hello! Messenger. Yaxim offered a clean code structure, and its functions aligned with the goals we had in mind for the app. By using Yaxim’s core code, we had a head start on development, saving the client development time and costs. Additionally, because Yaxim is available under the GPL, we were able to also release the Android client under the GPL as well.

Wifi Troubleshooting

Programming for Android presents unique challenges. Certain settings in Hello! had to be adapted to fit Tigase 4, the Jabber server which Hello! was already using in its iPhone and Blackberry instantiations.

Another issue arose with regards to the app’s wifi connectivity. Hello! is designed to be able to save data (including drafted messages) and change settings if a user has no wifi access or moves out of a wifi hotspot, and porting those features over to Android proved tricky – we used a simple Faraday cage to help with troubleshooting.

While substantial, these issues were welcome challenges for us. Mobile app development is obviously a hugely expanding market, and we’re keen to find ways for our years of development experience to be applied to this expansive frontier.

Hello! Messenger sorts and displays chats

Upgrading A Hosting Platform

Hello! Messenger were running their site on an unmanaged Amazon EC2 cloud server which regularly ran into performance issues. While developing the app for them, Hello! realised that Gossamer Host would be a great fit for their needs, and would reliably serve all Hello! Messenger users worldwide.

After completing development of the app, Hello! Messenger migrated their site and app infrastructure to one of our virtual hosting plans.

Moving Forward With Android Development

The Android version of Hello! Messenger is now in public beta release and can be downloaded for free.

If you have an Android-based project in the works and are looking for a partner with over 15 years in web development, please get in touch with us.

Related posts:

1. Sneak Peak: Gossamer Threads Development Lab I know many of you are wondering what we’ve been...

We’ve been working with e-commerce platform Magento for a while now, and have found it to be a great fit for clients looking for an all-in-one e-commerce solution. However, the stock open source Magento is quite slow, and needs both good hosting and a number of plugins to really get it to where an ecommerce platform needs to be.

We’ve published a few speed guides as part of our work with our GTmetrix project, but for Magento, we went a step further and created a Magento plugin called GTspeed.

How It Works

GTspeed takes four key steps to improve Magento’s performance:

JS/CSS minification

GTspeed removes superfluous data like whitespace and comments from JS and CSS files, decreasing their filesize and speeding up their load times.

JS/CSS script combining

GTspeed merges all JS and CSS scripts into 2 single JS and CSS files, drastically reducing the number of requests sent to your server.

Enable Caching Headers

GTspeed adds headers which allow JS, CSS, and image files to be cached by browsers, preventing unnecessary requests.

Image Optimization

GTspeed uses lossless compression utilities to deliver all images in optimized formats. You can schedule automated image optimizations to ensure that no needlessly large files are ever served on your site.

Results

Installing GTspeed has an immediate and pronounced effect on Magento load times. Here’s a “before and after” breakdown of how GTspeed improves the load time of a default Magento installation, measured with our GTmetrix utility.

Detailed report on the improvements

Get GTspeed Working For You

Read more about how to install how to install and use our free GTspeed plugin.

GTspeed optimizes the front end part of Magento, but equally important is being on solid hosting. Please read more on our managed Magento hosting and the expertise our sysadmins can lend to your Magento installation.

Related posts:

1. Customizing Magento: Building the Ultimate E-Commerce Site While Gossamer Threads does a lot of work with traditional...
2. GTmetrix – A Free Speed Analysis Tool for Websites! Speed is a critical element in a user’s experience of...
3. GT and LoHud.com: WordPress Optimization LoHud.com is a news and culture Web site serving the...

Fine Choice Foods is a family-run Vancouver company whose web presence needed a fresh start. Using the flexibility of Gossamer Links as the foundation of their site, Fine Choice was able to liven up their website and make it as tasty as their food.

Designing a Fresh Site

Fine Choice’s website design was a unique endeavour. The company was undergoing a redesign in their product packaging as well, and so GT’s designers had to make sure the two designs were consistent.

The new product packaging design with the new site design.

GT’s designers first developed wireframes which laid out where and how content should be laid out. After approval, the wireframes were sent to the brand masters at Studiothink, who were working on the product packaging design.

Wireframes vs Final Composition.

Studiothink produced a home and product page design, and sent it over to us, which we used to design the rest of the site, sharing the creative workload.

Keeping it Simple With GLinks

Fine Choice knows plenty about making tasty food, but less about maintaining websites. Thankfully, the GLinks installation which powers their site generates pages dynamically, meaning that whenever the company wants to add, remove or modify a product page, all they have to do is modify a simple form in the GLinks admin panel, and their site’s pages are updated.

A Seamless Experience

We helped Fine Choice Foods update their web presence, from concept to launch – taking care of everything. Planning, design, development, hosting and even photography of their products was part of our solution.

They were quite pleased with the results and had this to say:

We had talked with a number of web site developers and Gossamer was the obvious choice. After sitting down with Darius and Jack, we had no doubt that they could deliver the site that we had envisioned. And they did! Very professional in their dealings, but also flexible with our requests. We look forward to working with them on our future projects.

Check out Fine Choice Foods and fulfill your craving for some delicious Chinese delights!

On a personal note, your humble blogger has been a fan of Fine Choice’s food for years before they became a client – there have been plenty of late nights here at GT HQ fueled by their veggie gyozas!

Related posts:

1. Custom Video Sharing: Gossamer Links & Venetubo Venetubo is a video sharing site dedicated to Venezuelan news...
2. Gossamer Links v3.3.0 Released! We're happy to announce the release of Gossamer Links v3.3.0!...
3. Gossamer Links Google Base Integration! Here’s a sneak preview of what we’re working on in...