Android Development

As part of my work at FanTrail, I am responsible for testing and creating the test automation for web services, iPhone applications, and soon Android applications.

So to prepare for Android testing, I’ve downloaded and begun playing with the Android SDK. Wow, guess what? It is also Eclipse based. So I simply added the Android Eclipse plug-in to my existing Zend Studio/Eclipse installation, and I was up and building test code in almost no time (Well, actually the download itself took the most time).

Now I’m having to brush off my Java skills, and I’m ready to dive in. I had initially resisted getting involved with Android for fear that it would interfere with my iPhone skills, but I’m rethinking that now. So maybe there are Celestino and/or Leander KOA Android apps in my future…

FLEXing my muscles

I’ve finished revamping the Celestino Couture website. This will be the second revision. I had originally redone their website using Flash Pro. This was a great learning exercise, but I wanted something that fit my programmer experience better.

So when Rusty contacted me about updating the website with their new press articles and collection, I decided to take things to the next level and convert the Flash site to Flex.

This turned out to be much easier than I thought. Adobe’s Flex Builder is built on top of Eclipse. I’m a long time Eclipse user, and use Zend Studio (also built on top of Eclipse) for most of my web development. Since I am already familiar with both ActionScript and Eclipse, it was just a matter of learning Flex and MXML.

I’m really delighted with the results. Appearance-wise not much has changed, but under the covers this is a very maintainable website. All code has been tracked from the beginning with Subversion, and the code is easily organized into components.

Now I’m integrating FlexMonkey testing which will bring this website up to my normal, professional standards.

Rusty has been very patient with me in doing all of this, but I expect that the next updates will happen in the order of hours instead of weeks.

The site should be online this week, after I get the go-ahead from Rusty and Sergio. Until then the release candidate website can be viewed on my test site. Once it is online at the official Celestino website I will remove it from the test site.

Celestino iPhone Application

Celestino Couture iPhone Application

I’ve just completed porting the Celestino website to an iPhone application.

I had been looking for an idea for an application to refresh my iPhone skills, and this fit the bill nicely.

This application is essentially the Celestino website deployed as an actual iPhone application. It is not just a web viewer or shortcut to the site.

It is available on the Apple iTunes App Store.