An increasing number of first-time mobile app developers are also first-time developers. This makes sense if you think about it; mobile is the hot new platform and the barrier to entry is a lot lower for mobile devices.Furthermore, a simple — yet well-done — mobile app can be functional and a big success; look at the prevalence of tip calculators, flashlights and other applications. It’s much harder to find that sort of success with a small, single-purpose desktop app.
Although the barrier to entry is lower for mobile app development, you still need to be prepared to learn. If you have no previous experience in programming for the web or in a language like C, Java or C#, grasping the basics is going to take more time. Thus, we’ve traversed the web, the bookstore and bugged our developer friends to find some of the best resources — online and off — for the beginning mobile app developer.
There are development platforms — like Appcelerator’s Titanium — that can make it easier for web developers to transition to mobile platforms, but we also think it pays off to invest time in actually learning the programming languages for your mobile platform of choice.
On iOS, this means learning Objective-C and also learning Cocoa Touch. Android programming is very similar to Java, but with Android-specific APIs and frameworks. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 uses Silverlight, which means if you have experience with C# or .NET, you should find yourself at home.
iOS Books, Sites and Resources
For learning the basics of iOS programming, the Apple Developer site is chock-full of great information. Registration for access to developer documents is free, though you have to pay to become an iOS developer ($99 a year) to get access to extended tutorials, videos from WWDC and other tools.
There are also literally dozens upon dozens of books about developing for the iPhone. I’m a big fan of technical book resources, but keep in mind that because of how quickly mobile platforms evolve, it isn’t uncommon for information to be out of date — or less up-to-date — upon publication.
Still, some of my picks for really great iOS/Objective-C/Cocoa/Cocoa Touch education include:
- iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual — This book by the Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry is a really great guide to the ins and outs of iPhone development.
- iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide — If you have the money and can take a week or two off of work for some hands-on education from some of the best instructors around, you should seriously check out The Big Nerd Ranch. If you don’t have that kind of time, then you take a look at the book version by Aaron Hillegass and Joe Conway. Hillegass is also the author of the seminal Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, now in its third edition.
- iOS Developer’s Cookbook — My friend and former colleague, Erica Sadun, is about to release the third edition of her book on iPhone and iOS programming. It’ll be out in January and I have no doubt it will rock.
- Programming in Objective-C 2.0 — This is the bible for users who want to go in depth with Objective-C 2.0. The principles are often applied to Mac OS X programming, but they carry over to iOS programming too. A third edition of this book is expected in early 2011.
- iPhone Dev Forums — This is a solid site that is moderately active, and a good place to go for lists of resources.
- iPhone Dev SDK — This is a fairly active forum with lots of channels to discuss various topics surrounding iPhone development and the business side of iPhone development.
- iPhone-Developers.com — From the team behind XDA Developers (see below) comes iPhone Developers, a new forum and community focused on the iPhone.
Android App Development Zone
As you would expect, Google’s Android Developers portal has tons of useful information, guides and tools. The SDK, emulators and development tools are all accessible for free, and there are tons of examples and tutorials on the site.
Android’s selection of print or e-books isn’t as complete as what is available for the iPhone — and you need to be sure that the book you look at is focused on Android 2.0 or above. Still, if you look at the number of books projected for publication into next year, you can see this is an area that is on the move, big time.
Here are a few recommendations:
- Learn Java for Android Development — If your Java experience is nil, check this out to jumpstart your overall Android development.
- Android Programming Tutorials — The third edition of this book by long-time Android author Mark L. Murphy contains more than 40 different exercises and tutorials for Android devs or beginning Android devs.
- Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — The iPhone version of this book is fabulous and I have no doubt that Jonathan Stark’s Android version is just as good.
- XDA Developers — XDA Developers is a great resource for fans of modding their Android phones or installing custom ROMs, but its forums are also a great place to get answers to questions and learn.
- Anddev.org — This forum is for Android development and Android tutorials.
- Android Developers Community Portal — This is part of Google’s official Android Developers page, but it’s a good guide to the various mailing lists and Google Groups for Android development.
Windows Phone 7 Apps
Windows Phone 7 just launched in Europe and Asia and will be in the U.S. on November 8. This platform is brand new and already shows a lot of promise.
Perhaps more than any other software company, Microsoft excels at providing developers and would-be developers with tons and tons of resources and development tools. Unintentionally hilarious or not, Steve Ballmer’s famous “Developers, Developers, Developers” speech wasn’t that far-off.
Windows Phone 7 is just in its infancy and the development tools are still being modified and adjusted. Because of this, we would actually suggest that first-time programmers wait a few months before jumping into Windows Phone 7. However, if you have C#, .NET, Silverlight or WPF experience, building apps for Windows Phone 7 is going to be a very easy transition.
Here are some places you can go to get more information of Windows Phone 7 development:
- App Hub — The App Hub is Microsoft’s portal for Windows Phone and Xbox 360 developers. It provides access to tools, forums and blog entries and documentation from the experts.
- Getting Started with Windows Phone — This page contains links to hands-on labs and videos about how to get started developing for Windows Phone 7.
- Silverlight for Windows Phone — This portal offers lessons and training on using Silverlight to build Windows Phone 7 apps.
- XNA Framework 4.0 for Windows Phone — This training course contains lessons and videos for using the XNA Framework to build games for Windows Phone 7.
Your Picks
What are some of your favorite books or resources for getting started in mobile development? Let us know!
Web Development Job Listings
Every week we put out a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we post a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the web development job opportunity from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
- PHP Developer at Synacor in Los Angeles, CA.
- Web Developer at Web Developer in Plainsboro, NJ.
- Ruby on Rails Developer at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.
- Web Developer at IMRE, LLC in Sparks Glencoe, MD.
- Flash Developer at Bean Creative in Alexandria, VA.
Please for more information about this follow this link:
http://mashable.com/2010/11/07/how-to-mobile-app-development/
About learning something, comments are also important. Because They face problem or they know some thing better then you. So share with them and thy to know what are they know actually.
thanks =)
http://www.quotes-safari.com/
Still, we'll keep this in mind for the future.
@Christina Warren Indeed this is a problem, my opinion is that also for Nokia is not clear enough. MeeGo I think it was panic decision from management, facing iPhone and Android success. I would follow Symbian, because you still have a lot of support for it, and I would use Qt for portability and Python for rapid experiments.
But you make very good points about the various aspects of Symbian, in regards to Python, Ruby and QT.
Thanks for the comment — we’ll consider addressing Symbian stuff in a future article.
while Symbian^3 will be addressed to the markets Nokia has the biggest share in like Europe and Middle east etc…
so whoever wants to develop an app for symbian should put that in mind and try to develop in the OS he would like target
http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1460185&utm_medium=email&utm_source=peer360&utm_campaign=FN_INFO_BLAST_11082010&utm_content=FN_INFO_BLAST_11082010
Oh, and also: http://www.work-wherever.com/work-from-anywhere-with-app-development/
http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html
Great post……
Sent from my iPack
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mobile/wm_iphone_android_market.aspx
I get sick and tired of hearing of the extremely powerhungry iOS and Android phones who have lousy RF parts and can't keep phonecalls in medium conditions.
Do you get paid by Apple and Google for this ignorance?
Anyway go to http://qt.nokia.com for information about development for the majority of the mobile phones out there. (The SAME APP in Qt works on MaeMo, Meego, Symbian so your comment just shows that you really have no clue) When it comes to the cheaper S40 phones you use Java. Have you heard about that? It's well kind of industri standard, not propriatary like iOS / Android / Windows Phone 7.
But still thanks for the article, it's good just lacks the platform with majority of phone users.
I struggled with mentioning or researching into Symbian but ultimately chose not to for this particular post (we may revisit it in the future) for a few reasons:
* I have virtually no modern Symbian experience. Save futzing around with Java ME circa 2004 and 2005, I have no Symbian experience period. For articles like this, I always try to have at least SOME hands-on experience with what I'm writing about. I will look into speaking with some Symbian experts for future posts.
* Although there is, as you note, a HUGE number of existing Symbian devices worldwide, the number of new devices is dwindling all the time. Sony Ericsson and Samsung both dropped the platform, leaving Nokia as the only big player left. Nokia is still a big player, but even their strategy for their future higher-end devices is more geared towards MeeGo and not Symbian^3.
* Most of our readers are interested in iPhone or Android development — and Windows Phone 7 is new enough (and to be fair, the available resources are good enough) that it warranted an inclusion.
This isn't to say that Symbian isn't a viable option — or even a preferred choice depending on where you live and what your target market is — but for most of our readers who are looking at getting started with development, iOS and Android are where the interest lies.
Again, I do appreciate your comments and we will look at doing some roundups or articles on Symbian in the future.
Why don't you give your readers access to the majority of mobile phones out there??? You mention the 3% of the users using iOS and 5% of the users using Android.
You could easily have been mentioning the 40% using Symbian/Maemo/Meego and S40.
Symbian/Maemo/Meego is DEADEASY to develop for using Qt. You just recompile for the target and WOW you can also compile the same apps for Windows, Mac PC, Linux and Windows ME if you like.
Typical American to ignore what comes from abroad.
http://qt.nokia.com contains info about the Qt installation and there is a great developer network too.
Otherwise the article was useful.
S40 uses Java.
With standard languages you really get a much easier start than with weirdo “objective” C and the not-standard Android API.
Go to http://qt.nokia.com for installation and documentation about Qt.
Wow yeah it compiles for Windows, Linus, Mac OS and Windows ME too. A true cross-platform development tool.
Windows Phone 7 was an inclusion in part because while I was trying to figure out if I could capture screenshots from the device itself and not an emulator for my Windows Phone 7 review (short version — you can't unless you build a function into your apps, which of course doesn't work for any built-in or third-party apps), I wound up downloading the SDK, the toolkit and looking into the available resources, which to give Microsoft credit, at this stage is already further along than where Palm/HP is in terms of resources for webOS.
But yes — I would definitely like to revisit webOS in the future, especially once some new devices come out.
Appcelerator is by far an extremely worth while investment of time. Kill two birds with one stone developing for iOS and Android.
–
http://www.srcnix.com
But very good point — Appcelerator is a great way to “kill two birds with one stone” — so to speak. Still, to be fair it's not a simple “click and convert to Android” process — if you want to make the Android version of an app (or an iOS version of an Android app), you can reuse code and blocks, but Titnaium, by virtue of the fact that it is very well synced with the official SDKs and functions. That's a GOOD thing in my book, I might, add, that's the right way to to do things. The port will require a whole lot less work, but you're still going to want to optimize for what OS you're actually using.
Incidentally, I also didn't mention (again, in this roundup — I've given them shout-outs in previous posts) Unity, which is a terrific game engine for Windows, Mac OS X, the web and iOS. The Android version is just about to leave beta and looks like it will be a great, great way for game developers to easily bring their games to both platforms.
http://www.bestwp7games.com
Enjoy!
Rob
thanks :))
Also check out the SIO2 engine. A cross platform 2D/3D game engine framework uses OpenGL ES as its core to deliver fast graphics and provide all the modern game engine functionalities. You can use this engine to develop on MacOS and/or Windows. http://sio2interactive.com
http://downloadiphoneapps.org
Thanx
Aubrey at http://www.howtomakeapps.org
http://www.onthegoware.com/services/training/individual-classes
http://www.axetue.com/2012/01/22/android-app-creation-tools-without-coding/
http://www.ioslearner.com
http://www.rawenderlich.com
http://www.9to5mac.com/34499/will-apple-allow-virtualization-of-osx-server-on-non-apple-hardware