The Top Android Devices & the Testing Challenge

Developing apps for Android can be painful at best. With new devices coming out every day it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up, let alone to get ahead. Max Knobloch of Mashable says in a recent article “It’s a brave new world out there for Android users. The list of capable smartphones powered by Google‘s mobile operating system grows every season.

android devices

With Apple falling to the second spot of top operating systems after 2013’s fiscal second quarter (nearly 80% of devices shipped at that time ran on Android), now is as good a time as any to consider the humble droid.”  The article goes on to list the top 5 Android devices of 2013 including the HTC One, LG G2, Galaxy S4, Nexus 4, and the Moto X.

One must make careful consideration of which devices they would like to support and more importantly how those features will be tested.

You may also would like to see:

1. Android App Testing

2. Testing on mobile devices

3. Thoroughly Test Your Mobile Apps

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Software-as-a-Service at Last?

After years of latency, software-as-a-service is moving to center stage, swept along with the bigger concept of cloud computing. On the software side, applications like Salesforce, Workday and Freshbooks — and yes, GoogleApps — have become serious players in enterprises of all sizes.

And in the bigger cloud, services like Amazon’s EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud and IBM Smart cloud services — and yes, Google AppEngine — are changing the way IT departments approach their missions and their development tasks, enabling greater speed and flexibility than ever before.

We’ve seen this type of technology trajectory before and can recognize its course; think back to the Web itself, to early social networking, to the still-snowballing mobile data market.

The dominant SaaS providers are still rising to the top; economics, standards and best practices are being sorted out; business models are being built and business cases made. The difference is that these sweeping technological changes keep happening faster and faster.

You may also would like to see:

1. The future: For everything an API

2. Cloud application performance monitoring

3. Cloud Testing – SaaS 

Data visualization made easy by APIs

More and more every day, it’s a data-driven business world. Whether it’s to find the consumers most likely to buy a product right now, or to make sure an online experience is fast and flawless, data is the key to maximizing results. But digesting huge data troves and parsing the results into usable form is an ominous task at best. That’s where data visualization comes in.

Thanks to APIs, data from various sources can be pulled together and presented in whatever form it’s needed, whether it’s to correlate multiple data sources or to prepare a compelling management presentation. You can have Google Analytics next to Keynote Transaction Perspective next to Facebook Page Likes, or whatever data you need and are able to access via an API. One startup that’s targeting the need for data visualization is Leftronic, which is on a mission to make it simple to create impressive data dashboards.

Given the need to be agile and responsive, no matter what business you’re in, usability is key factor for any kind of data visualization process. It can’t be a major IT project anytime a VP requests a particular data mash-up

You may also would like to see:

1. Application Performance Testing

2. Testing Web Applications

3. Test Mobile Apps

4. iPhone app testing

5. Web Developer Tools

The Evolution of the Web Page

The Web was originally intended to help researchers share documents as static pages of linked text formatted in HTML. From there, Web pages quickly evolved to include complex structures of text and graphics, with plug-in programs to play audio and video files or to stream multimedia content.

Web developers supplement the basic browser function of rendering HTML by invoking code (scripts) on the user’s computer (the client).

These scripts can create interface elements such as rollover effects, custom pull-down menus, and other navigation aids. They can also execute UI methods, for example, to validate a user’s input in an HTML form. These script capabilities, while they enhance a user’s interaction with individual Web pages, do not change the fundamental model in which application logic runs on the server and executes between Web pages after the user clicks. This behavior is said to be synchronous, that is, after each click the user waits while the server handles the input and the browser downloads a response page.

In e-commerce, a typical user interaction involves a series of Web pages, which represent steps in a larger process that comprise a Web application

You may also would like to see:

1. Web Page Monitoring

2. Web Performance Monitoring Just Got More Better

3. A New Approach to Gathering User Experience Data

Various Cloud Monitoring Service Approaches

The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud monitoring service approaches.

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the Provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of Limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems; storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

You may also would like to see:

1. Cloud Performance Monitoring

2. Keynote Cloud Monitoring Solutions

3. The Four Types of Clouds Explained

ABCs of APIs

In its simplest form, a Web API is a request-response protocol written and published by the owner of some kind of digital asset — data, videos, photographs, the software to set your thermostat, or anything else that can be published online. A developer who is given access to the API (sometimes it’s open to anyone, sometimes to a select few) then uses that API in some kind of front end, for example, a website or a mobile app, to present the content or functionality to end users. The user sees website content or an app that does their bidding, but they don’t see where it’s coming from. Similarly, a user could use any number of apps to get the latest sports scores, for example, but all of those scores might really be coming from ESPN via its API.

At its most fundamental level, an API enables a behind-the-scenes, machine-to-machine transaction. At a higher level, it enables enterprises to offer access to their digital assets, and encourages developers to create new and innovative uses of those assets, and potentially creates revenue streams. For users, it gives powerful and convenient access to a world of content and applications in ways they’ve never had before.

You May Also Would Like To See

1. An Overview of APIs And How They’re Changing

2. Cloud application performance monitoring

3. Apps performance testing

 

Keynote Releasing New KITE 6.0 – With Lot More Puwerful Features

Keynote to release the KITE 6.0 is just around the corner.  With lot more powerful features

KITE users will be thrilled to learn that KITE 6.0 will provide them some of the powerful features such as;
1. DNS Mapping,
2. Load Test Scripting and
3. IE10 support.

Those are just a few of the reasons to be excited. What’s more, current KITE users can rejoice—KITE  will auto-update within the first few launches after any release goes live.

Be sure that this feature is not disabled or you can manually check for an update at any time (see image). KITE Check Now

If you don’t yet have KITE on your desktop but want to see what all the excitement is about, download it today to instantly test website.

Related Links

Web Performance Monitoring Just Got More Better

Testing on Emulated Devices vs. Real Devices

Web Performance Monitoring Just Got More Intelligent

Recently, Keynote released an exciting new product Keynote Real User Perspective. This newest member in the Perspective family of monitoring services delivers actionable insight into the performance of Web and mobile sites based on the experience of real users.

Real User Perspective is special in 3 ways:

1. Lightweight SaaS
2. Start-to-end Real User Journeys
3. Integrated with Synthetic

Keynote now offers the most comprehensive offering for end user experience monitoring delivered as a service. It culminates a tremendous amount of development, infrastructure orchestration, and feedback from the scores of customers who participated in our product advisory and beta programs. Customers can now complement active, clean-room, synthetic monitoring with passive, real user monitoring that aligns to business outcomes—a marriage made in heaven! We think that’s more intelligent web performance monitoring.

You can request for a free trial now!

A Smartphone Wake-Up Call For Business

We are seeing a lot of companies having that ‘a-ha’ moment, or in many cases more of an ‘uh-oh’ moment,”

says Rachel Obstler, senior director of product management for Keynote DeviceAnywhere. “This is the moment

when they see the numbers and suddenly realize that their mobile site is as important or even more important than

their desktop site. And they have to figure out how to support it with the same care and quality.

They may be having mobile testing epiphanies now, but companies have been slow to reach that point and are

scrambling to catch up. World Quality Report stats indicate that just 31 percent of companies test their mobile applications.

Among the reasons that number is so low is that nearly two-thirds report they don’t have the proper tools for testing,

and over half do not have access to appropriate devices to test. These are not challenges that companies can easily solve internally.

Related Links

Get Moving Toward Enterprise Mobility

Devices For The Always-On-Workforce 

Testing on Emulated Devices vs. Real Devices

There have been many articles written about the debate when it comes to testing on emulated devices vs real devices (in a cloud-based testing platform, such as DeviceAnywhere).

For those that are unfamiliar, testing on emulated devices (such as Keynote MITE) is popular, mostly for mobile websites. Other alternatives like this include SDK’s provided by Apple, Google, etc. And for real devices, we are typically speaking about a device cloud testing platform whereby you are renting time on devices to perform this testing (such as Keynotes DeviceAnywhere platform).

When it comes to the lifecycle of a mobile site, it is critical to be able to perform some basic mobile testing by which can be done on a emulated device. This provides the correct screen size, load time, etc. And having the ability to Record your test on one device and play it back on others to rapidly ensure functionality on a broad cross section of smartphones and tablets can be extremely helpful in improving efficiency.

 

Related Links

Making mobile testing manageable

Mobile Cloud Testing Is ‘The New Norm’

On Demand Web Load Testing