Building and deploying an Apache Cordova app using Visual Studio 2015 Community Update 3

Visual Studio 2015 Community is a free Comprehensive Windows IDE from Microsoft. You can develop both web apps as well as native apps. It is also cross-platform. Besides these you can develop a whole lot other types of projects including Databases and IoT.

Besides Visual Studio 2015 Community there are other IDEs that cover cross-platform app development using HTML5,CSS and JavaScript such as Intel XDK. Visual Studio 2015 or(VS 2013) address a whole lot of technology besides web and mobile. Here it is not the intention to compare or contrast but mention the availability. If there is a requirement for a simpler IDE then perhaps Intel XDK could be an option where as Visual Studio would require a steeper learning curve.

This post deals with creating a Apache Cordova app using Visual Studio 2015 Community Update 3.
In the New Project... window you find only one template, a Blank App available for developing a Apache Cordova JavaScript based app.

ApacheCordova_00.PNG

If you accept the default blank project you would see the following in the Solution Explorer.

ApacheCordova_01.PNG

The project can be developed at least for two platforms Android and Windows unless scripts are not needed for WP8 and IOS devices.

By default when you try to build this project, the IDE builds it for Android. The build process is lengthy and takes some time. As this computer does not have Google Chrome installed when you try to Start Debugging, you will get the following error:
==============
Severity Code Description Project File Line Source Suppression State
Error  Error: DEP10401 : The Ripple emulator requires Google Chrome to launch your app, but Chrome is not installed on this computer. Please install it from: https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html. BlankCordovaApp_0   IntelliSense
=====================
In order to test this blank project you need the Ripple emulator.

However one can direct debug target to another device Windows Universal (for example).

In order to build for Windows Universal we can change it from the Project's Property page (Menu Project | Project Properties) as shown:

However when you try to run this you get this error:

Most of these errors are related to not choosing the right debug target device / emulator.

Windows as deploy target:

Windows Emulators run in Hyper-V and that needs to be working as the next message shows trying to work with Windows 10. This message is strange as Hyper-V is enabled. However, there

must have been a Windows 10 update which probably resets other settings.

I enabled Hyper-V using the Control Panel. However, you also need to restart the computer.

 As I had launched the Visual Studio as a normal user, it needs to run in elevated mode.

 Well. I still get this error message and cannot run..

 I changed my emulator to Windows x64 and the program ran without any errors and the emulator image is shown below.

 I tried to run in Window Phone emulator and it came up with many other errors. This one is hard to run in Windows 10 emulator.

 I am not sure what this error message is about. I wish there were more helpful messages.

Finally I ran the start debug for Window Phone with the Emulator 8.1 WVGA 4 inch 512 mode and the program ran without errors.

I have to see how it runs in other emulators/devices. Let you know in another post.

Paint 3D Debuts in preview for now

Microsoft has released  a preview version of Paint 3D which you can download from Windows Store and test drive.

I have been using Paint (it was not called 2D) for quite a long time although it is quite limited in many ways. I think it did get an upgrade, I do not remember when.

The new Paint 3D looks nice and it can do a lot of things.

This is what you see when you search for Paint 3D in Windows Store.

Paint 3D_00

Here is the description.

Paint 3D_01

Some more additional information.

Paint 3D_02

I downloaded the APP to my laptop (Toshiba Satellite S 70 series) with Windows 10 Professional and launched it. Here is the as launched view of the app.

Paint 3D_03
There are two videos that you should review and quite interesting.
I did a very quick test drive and the interface is very intutive. May be I will make another post for those who want step-by-step help.

But here is the first picture I created using the interface. Not really all the 3D things it can do.

Paint 3D_04

Cloud-based service- AppDome's AppFusion automates mobile apps

Less coding and more fusing is what AppDome offers on the cloud.

First of all AppFusion is a codeless platform to automate mobile integration. It is a cloud-based service that can be used by mobile developers as well as mobile professionals (Mobile IT, Ops, LOB etc) to rapidly integrate new functionality and services to mobile apps on demand without any coding.

The following are the key parts of this platform:

Mobile Integration Workflow
 Primary user interface for interacting with the services. The workflow is intuitive for uploading, fusing, signing and deploying. Also analyze fused apps plus collaboration and productivity tools.

App library
 Upload and store unlimited number of apps in a stateful, private repository.

Fusion workbench
  Choose services that the customer wants to fuse to the app and create what are called Fusion Sets to apply to apps.

AppFusion Catalog

Also to note: When you sign you can add a complete best practice mobile security suite to mobile apps - for FREE

View fusion video here:




View security related video here:



Read more details here, or even better create a trial account if it is available. Trying it out to find if it  fits your requirements.

Get your beta here.
Source: AppDome web site.

Broadening IoT adoption and building trust with IoT test beds

IOT Solutions World Congress takes place in Barcelona, Spain during 25-27 October 2016. Not many days left.

The IoT Solutions World Congress is the only event featuring live testbeds of Industrial IoT solutions and applications.

Here are some copied from their site:

Communication & Control Testbed for Microgrid Applications
ENERGY & UTILITIES
Continuous noise monitoring and sound event detection & identification
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

Energy, Information, and Avatars
ENERGY & UTILITIES
"When a physical system is connected in such a symbiotic relationship with its virtual representation, we call the resulting interconnected system a “cyber-physical avatar”.

Industrial IoT beneath our cities. Interoperability and IPv6
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

Remote Patient Monitoring
HEALTHCARE

"Cognizant’s Remote Patient Monitoring solution, powered by Microsoft’s Azure Internet-of-Things platform, empowers healthcare providers to transform the patient care relationship while mitigating the challenges impeding innovation and outcomes.

Sensitive Networking Testbed
MANUFACTURING
"The goal of this testbed is to display the value of new Ethernet standards referred to as Time-Sensitive Networks in a Manufacturing ecosystem of applications."

Smart Airline Baggage Management
TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS
"Actual smart baggage trackers / RFID sensors will be shown that generate live data when they move – illustrating how the trackers are used with and applied to airline checked bags generating baggage data and alerts. "

Surgical Kit Tracking Solution
HEALTHCARE
Inventory tracking for surgical kits

Transformation of business operations through IoT enabled edge to cloud video, sensors and advanced analytics
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
"Telefonica Fleet Management testbed will show how B2B customers from different industry segments can benefit from vehicle telematics solutions and the best way to support them through the digital transformation process."

Complete agenda of the IOT Congress here:
http://www.iotsworldcongress.com/congress/2016-agenda/

New JS Foundation launched

The Linux Foundation announced the launch of JS Foundation. JS Foundation will be a new project for everything that developer would be going to the open governed, open source JavaScript.

Both JQuery Foundation and Dojo Foundation plan on joining to create a more forceful new foundation.

The fact is JavaScript has become very popular.

"JavaScript is a pervasive technology, blurring the boundaries between server, client, cloud and IoT. We welcome any projects, organizations or developers looking to help bolster the JavaScript community and inspire the next wave of growth for application development."

The initial members are:

Bocoup
IBM
Ripple
Samsung
Sauce Labs
Sense Technic Systems
Site Pen
StackPath
University of Westminster
WebsiteSetup

There is also a mentor program.

The main motive for the foundation is to encourage and drive JavaScript centric projects towards broad adoption and facilitate ongoing development of related technologies.

Read for more about this interesting article here;
https://adtmag.com/articles/2016/10/17/js-foundation-launched.aspx

Java Developers can use Red Hat's extension for Microsoft's Visual Studio Code

The Red Hat's extension is based on what is called a Language Server Protocol(LSP).
Read this interesting post on LSP.  LSP is a new protocol for language and IDE interoperability based on JSON.

The extension is based on Red Hat's Java Language Server & JSON-RPC-20
This summarizes (Source: article by Paul Krill on InfoWorld Setp2016, ) the highlights of this extension as vocalized by one of Microsoft's engineer:

""When the extension is not present, VS Code can only provide syntax coloring while editing Java artifacts," he said. "When the extension is enabled, VS Code can assist developers with code completion, error reporting, code formatting, and similar features that developers are accustomed to from IDEs such as Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio."

I wonder anything like intellisense and code completion at the very least are also in this extension.

If you are interested in using it go here and get a copy:

I believe it is free. Install the extension and if you have JAVA 8 Development kit you are ready to go.

Enterprise. Open Source. For Life - the one liner of LIFERAY

Liferay's stated mission statement,

"By building a vibrant business, making technology useful, and investing in communities, we make it possible for people to reach their full potential to serve others.
"

Read more here:
https://www.liferay.com/

OK. How is it different from many others?

They talk about their first 10 years and that says a lot in this fluid industry. Liferay's main product is Liferay Digital Experience Platform.

The platform used to create and connect personalized digital experiences across web, mobile and connected devices.

The Digital Transformation Platform:
Easy Integration-Secure access to apps deep in the system
Modular Services-reusable and resilient services
Runtime Platform- Digital business model that supports cloud as well as on premises

Omni Channel Experiences:
Modern Web -Build fast usable web interfaces
Mobile-Native apps + mobile sites including gps and camera
Digital Hybrid-In-store experiences with context and services

Customer Relationship Insight:
Personalization & Segments-segment identification and targeted interests
Analytics and Metrics-evolve touch-points and increase click-through
Single View of Customer-  full understanding of customer actions

Got interested. Meet them at many of the international events as well as at Gartner's Gartner Application Strategies and Solutions Summit in Las Vega in December.

You can also downlaod:
Liferay Digital Experience Platform-an Enterprise trial
-launch your business-critical deployments with Liferay DXP
Liferay Portal CE
-Community supported Liferay Portal CE- smaller and non-critical deployments built with Tomcat

Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg - 2

The breakfast was good at the Radisson Beke hotel in Budapest.

We left around 8:00 AM for the city tour and we had a very good city guide. Our main, more detailed tour consisted of visiting the Castle District; the Fisherman's Bastion; the Matthias Church and the Parliament. After this some of us opted to visit the City Market and have lunch there and take our bus back to the hotel.

The rest of what we saw was from inside the bus. We could have spent some time near the Hero's square.






Tour guide explaining finer details of the beautiful roof of the church

Day 1:
Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 1 

Day 3:
Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 3

Random thoughts on Google's foray into crowded smartphone market

The smartphone mobile area is full of actors having various kinds of difficulties from exploding phones to trembling hardware infected with 'touch disease'. Apart from the headline news of problems there is the underlying problem with 'Sales'. Well, Google wants to take on Apple, if I go by some of the Internet sites. Good luck Google! In any case, competition is good.

More here:
https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-our-new-phone-made-google/

Microsoft tried to enter smart phone market with a really good phone like Microsoft Lumia 950. Tiles display with living updates and badges is still to be copied. But, it has not made any significant dent and can Google with similarly priced phones with very similar features do any better. OK, there is a better camera, so what?

Google is also moving to AI-First from Mobile-First. Looks like it wants to one-up the Microsoft's Mobile-First slogan. That's OK, too. Everyone is on the AI bandwagon with Microsoft rearranging its entire AI related research activity by beefing up with more developers.

Google phones were already in the market with the brand name Nexus made by Chinese and Korean manufacturers but now PIXEL is a Google branded phone made to Google Specifications by HTC.

Verizon appears to be the sole vendor and I did not have a great experience with Verizon when I bought my Nokia Icon.

Pre-ordering has started in many countries and you can pre-order at the Google site.

The most significant feature of what makes Pixels  different from other phones it appears is its advertised AI integration embodied in Google Assistant whose name you can customize. Can it compete in a big way with Cortana, Siri and others? Wait and see how good it is! We probably need impartial technical fact checkers and some bench mark.

Apart from the Pixels, Google has come out with other products which may perhaps bring in more revenue although competition exists product-for-product for all of those new Google Products.

Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg - 1

Living in Honolulu, Hawaii, it is not easy to think about going to Europe. However, as we go even eastward to India, sometimes, it does not feel too tough to go to Europe. In order to visit Budapest, we had to go via San Francisco, Newark, and Munich.

We took off from Honolulu at 10:55 after our son, daughter-in-law and their dog Oliver dropped us at the airport, a mere 20 minutes from where we live. We reached San Francisco the morning of June 16 at 9:00 AM just in time for a breakfast at airport.

We hung around in the airport as our flight was in the evening at 8:00 PM. It was quite a wait. It so happened that our flight from San Francisco was delayed more than 2 hours and we barely made it to Newark. Newark airport has changed a lot with lots of new construction. We barely caught the shuttle to the departure terminal. We reached Munich somewhat late (around 11:00 AM) on June 17. The arrival/departure gates are such that it takes effort to board the plane as you need to change the terminal using the shuttle. We literally ran like crazy to board the shuttle. The escalators at Munich Airport are really steep and run fast like at other airports/subways in Europe compared to those in USA.

Again we hustled to board the plane from Munich to Budapest where our tour begins. We reached Budapest a little after mid-day and to our chagrin the suitcases did not accompany. We had to do some paper work and the girls at the Lufthansa kiosk attending the lost baggage were very efficient. Good show!

We were met by our tour director, a very friendly and outgoing guy. He seems to have had lots of experience as tour director in Europe as well as North America. He was presently living in Salzburg, Austria. He spoke fluent German and English but I am not sure how well he spoke Hungarian (a tough nut) and Czech. He being originally Czech, I am sure he spoke Czech like any other native.

We were going to stay (for the following three nights) at the Radisson Beke in Budapest and after check-in we attended the tour orientation for a short while with a glass of champagne and had dinner at the hotel. I assume either the food was good or folks were hungry, I could not tell. Being vegetarian it is not my place to make a comment. I did observe though that the waiters appeared to have been preoccupied. I later found that the Europeans were playing football and surely they had the game on their mind.

  Although we were dog tired, decided to take a short walk and followed some of our tour buddies.

The photos we took are in the video hosted on google docs slides.
Partially filled slide pictures were taken with iPhone 6S and the full screen pictures using Microsoft Lumia 950.



Day 2:
Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg -2