Servage Magazine

Recently I described Sencha Touch, a mobile development framework which allows you to create rich web applications. It gives an almost-native experience on various mobile platforms like iOS and Android, while using open web standards such as HTML5, Css3 and JavaScript behind the scenes. Read the previous posts about Sencha Touch and converting into native apps for more information. Some users are having difficulties getting started developing, because basing most of the (or the entire) code on JavaScript is new to them. Most have some experience, for example with jQuery, integrating plugins or other JavaScript functionality into websites, but creating an entire MVC app in JavaScript seems ...

I've previously fought the degradation of system performance on my Mac computers, specifically due to slower hard drive performance. Earlier I attempted resolving this by approaching the problem from a fragmentation perspective. Testing different tools on my machine, I learned that my system was quite fragmented, even though Apple always says that their OS defragments the system continuously, making specific defragmentation unnecessary. Back then I ended up with a Time Machine restore, which worked out surprisingly fast - despite others who have reported very time consuming Time Machine restore processes (on a sidenote, I have experienced such a slow restore on another machine in the meantime. I believe the restore ...

In the previous article I discussed the possibility to develop native feeling apps with web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Today I will show you how to take this one step further, to create real native apps based on your web app, which you might have created for example with Sencha Touch. Now, I maintain my opinion that general technologies are to be preferred, and used to deploy on multiple platforms. Generally I am not a fan of developing custom apps for various platforms. It seems like doing the same thing over and over again. However, some functionality requires that you interact with the user device natively. You Sencha Touch ...

Version control is an important part of your business and code development process. It enables developers to work independently in isolated areas, implementing and testing new features, without disturbing other developers, or touching the precious live environemnt with customers. After succesfull testing version control systems allow you to submit code to the live environment, making it available for your customers. In the worst case scenario you can also roll-back code, if something unexpected happens. Alltogether version control is a tool used to enchace the development experience and quality of your product, by giving developers an agile work environment, but keeping the live systems safe. Beanstalk is a web-based code-hosting ...

Have you ever tried to manage a startup project? There are sooo many ideas and tasks floating around in the beginning. It can be overwhelming and hard to keep track of everything. Meeting goals and deadlines quickly becomes an annoying hazzle, killing some of the vital energy for the project. It's important that you and your team maintain the positive engery, and focus on the important tasks, the product development. Just because you need a ToDo/Task/Milestones planning tool, doesn't mean you actually need to spend a lot of time creating or setting one up. Administrative tasks & co. can build up and kill a project, so focus focus focus on ...

I find it rather frustrating that numerous modern platforms use an increasing amount of different systems. Not long ago we had major platforms such as Unix and Windows to take care of, but today we are working with consumers on a plethora of platforms. There are not only different browsers in different operating systems, but also native app developers face decisions to develop for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOs, Android, WebOS etc. Some platforms have bigger market shares than others, but I feel it’s bad practice to exclude potential customers based on their platform of choice, merely because we are unable or don’t have time to develop for their operating ...

You ever tried setting up a wiki for a project? You ever tried creating/editing content in a wiki? You will know that wikis can be rather tiresome to set up, and keep up to date. Many wikis not only lack good interfaces for efficient editing, they often also utilize complex languages for markup, categorization etc. All in all I found that most wikis are rather annoying to work with, and therefore many wiki-style documentations etc. are abondoned sooner or later. The only real large wiki success is Wikipedia. I believe it works because of its amount of users. However, small businesses or projects aren't having the excess of capacity in ...