Best App Building Tools?
I've had a number of simple application ideas that I would like to throw together as fast as possible.
The steps: Create the application, publish an MVP beta, do user testing, get them into the hands of more people, iterate.
What tools to build mobile applications have worked well for you?
https://hireframes.com/collections/frontpage/products/mobile-sketchpad
Might not be what you expect, but this is exactly what I created HireFrames sketchpads for. I used to just start programming right away without thinking about design or UX flow first. I would change my mind a lot and have to refactor things I’d already written.
Now I used these mobile sketchpads to draw out the entire app before I write a single line of code. It speeds up development time and helps you plan out each screen and what work will be needed
Xcode and Android Studio.
(Probably not the answer you were looking for, but hear me out)
Native app development isn't hard because the development itself would be hard (hard as in harder than learning an alternative app platform), but because apps are hard.
You should be able to create a simple app with xcode's storyboard + a bit of swift. Android Studio has a WYSIWYG UI editor to get you started too.
I decided to go a different route than most when building apps. I wanted to make apps that run on any device with a web browser, run offline first, and I wanted to keep the learning curve for doing that as low as possible by leveraging what I already know.
So, here's what I primarily use:
Client side: PouchDB.js, jQuery, Mustache, Bootstrap, Service Workers.
Server Side: Apache web server, CouchDB, Perl.
From there I add smaller more focused JS libraries and Perl modules. I'm sure one can use Python on the server side for what I do with Perl (user signup, sending emails, uploading images).
One downside to this approach is all your app code is visible to anyone using the app.
That's not something I'm worried about and I intend to use that as a feature by offering options to make that really easy for end users so they can modify and extend my apps for their specific needs and even offer "addons" they've developed to other users of the apps I make.
You can check out the apps at https://cherrypc.com
Hey Christian,
Right now I'm really enjoying working with React Native and its associated tools, there's lots of materials around to help get up to speed with it too.
P.s great name ;)