Articles about Developer

When you install Google Chrome Beta or Dev versions on your Windows computer, it overwrites and replaces the stable version. This keeps things fairly simple and neat, as home users won't have multiple versions of Chrome on their PC. The problem with that, however, is the Beta and Dev versions really aren't intended for home users -- even though some still use them. Those unstable versions are intended for testing, meaning having them run side-by-side, like with the Canary builds, would actually be preferable.

Thankfully, Google has now decided to change the default behavior on Windows so that Google Chrome stable can run side-by-side with both the Beta and Dev variants. This means a web developer, for instance, can easily test their page with all three builds at the same time. When you include Canary, that means you could have, in theory, four variants of Chrome at different development stages running at once. Unfortunately, macOS users are excluded from this side-by-side fun -- for now at least.

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The demand for business apps is escalating. Apps help management teams and employees run their operations more effectively, and better engage existing customers and help attract new ones. But developing quality and high functionality apps is often considered challenging, resource intensive and expensive. Additional challenges include getting apps to work across multiple device types and different operating systems and overcoming back-end integration issues.

Such challenges are slowing the rate of app development. Gartner recently reported that more than a quarter of enterprises globally have not built, customized or virtualized any mobile apps in the last 12 months. Here are some of the top challenges involved in business app development.

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There are many metrics by which to measure how good an app is, and Google is starting to use a few more when it ranks Android apps and games in the Play Store. The latest app-ranking algorithm now takes into account app stability, performance and battery usage.

As well as improving the relevance of listings for people downloading apps, Google is also using this change to push developers to improve their apps.

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The second iteration of Nearby Connections -- called, funnily enough, Nearby Connections 2.0 -- is upon us. Google has released the API to Android developers, giving them access to greater bandwidth, reduced latency, and -- most excitingly -- offline functionality.

Working over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Nearby Connections 2.0 makes it possible for devices to communicate with each other without the need for an internet connection. The API is supported by Android devices running Google Play services 11.0 and above, and it is essentially a peer-to-peer system that works much like a next-generation version of NFC.

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It is now two years since Google launched its open source compression algorithm, Brotli. Microsoft has already shown some interest in the technology, adding support to Edge late last year to speed up the loading of web pages. Having conducted rigorous tests with Brotli compression, Microsoft is now ready to bring it to .NET.

Microsoft's tests show that Brotli is at least as good as Deflate and gzip, in terms of compression levels and the amount of time it takes to compress and decompress. It is because of these results that Microsoft is happy to launch .NET support for Brotli compression "as an alpha-quality preview."

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Android fans with a Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P or Nexus Player (or if you're happy using the Android Emulator) can now try out Android O Developer Preview 4. Google has released the final beta version of its mobile operating system as we draw ever-closer to the official launch of Android O -- or Android 8.0, if you prefer.

At this stage we don’t know what the O stands for. There's an octopus-related Easter egg in Developer Preview 4, but that's not in keeping with the dessert theme naming convention. The biggest news in this release is the inclusion of the stable version of Android 26.0.0 Support Library, but the main focus is on small updates and stability improvements.

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Media Player Classic -- the codec-packed, open source media player much loved by video downloaders and encoders around the world -- has reached the end of the line. The latest release -- Media Player Classic Home Cinema v1.7.13, to give it its full title -- is likely to be the last one ever.

The developers say that the number of people working on the project has gradually reduced over the years, and the situation is becoming untenable. The words "the project is officially dead" are not any that users will want to hear, but they have been uttered.

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Google wants developers and scientists to build tools and write code for its quantum computer, and is making its high-powered platform available online.

According to a Bloomberg news report, Google is aiming to commercialize quantum computers, and turn them into an extremely powerful cloud-computing service.

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Does Microsoft support open source? Absolutely. The company has released many open source projects, and believe it or not, its has the most open source contributors on GitHub. With that said, Microsoft stops short of being a complete open source proponent. After all, the company makes a lot of money from two of its closed source golden geese -- Windows and Office.

Today, Microsoft releases yet another open source tool -- Visual Studio Code Extension for Arduino. This MIT-licensed code should greatly help developers that are leveraging Arduino hardware for Internet of Things-related projects and more.

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Software bugs have been a problem since the very earliest days of computing, and as we move towards more data-intensive applications and a more sophisticated and flexible user experience, QA and testing remains as vital as ever.

Development platform company Sencha has released the results of a new survey carried out by Dimensional Research, looking at current attitudes and common experiences surrounding the testing of web applications.

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On the tenth anniversary of the arrival of reCAPTCHA, Google announces the first reCAPTCHA Android API as part of Google Play Services. The API makes it easier for reCAPTCHA to differentiate between humans and bots.

Just as reCAPTCHA has evolved over the years into Invisible reCAPTCHA, the aim with reCAPTCHA Android API is to cut down on spam and abuse in as unintrusive a way as possible.

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Stack Overflow released a new report that details the needs and motivations of today's developers. With 98.6 percent of developers in employment, and just 9.5 percent actively looking for a new role, the new report aims to help businesses attract talent.

The newly released Q2 2017 Developer Ecosystem report: the Employment Trends & Insights edition concludes that:

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Creating add-ons for multiple web browsers can be a nightmare for developers, but Mozilla wants to simplify things. By introducing WebExtensions APIs it is going to become much easier to make extensions that work in multiple web browsers with only minor changes.

Based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the aim is to further standardize the APIs to make it even easier to share extensions between browsers. Mozilla is now pushing the technology in the hope that it will gain momentum and a growing following.

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Google has taken various steps over the years to try to combat dangerous apps in the Play Store, but this is far from being the only problem Google Play suffers from. There is also the ongoing issue of fake app reviews, incentivized activity, and other means of user manipulation.

Having already put in place some measures to crack down on such activities, Google is now updating its Developer Program Policies. It warns developers that they must "not attempt to manipulate the placement of any apps in the Store" and while banning the bribing of users is nothing new, here Google is aiming to provide additional clarity.

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Google has started to push out updates to the latest version of its web browser -- Chrome 59 for Windows, Linux and macOS. The update includes a number of important security fixes, but also sees the arrival of Google's Material Design on the desktop.

The Material look is one that will be very familiar to Android users, as well as anyone who uses Google's various online services. But Google is not quite ready to give its desktop browser a full makeover yet.

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