Sketchapp using for mockup designing - macos

I know this is not related to PHP but related to many Front-end designers and developers.
In now days experienced mockup or UI/UX element designer use an app called sketchapp specially who use mac os. but when it comes to front-end developers who don't have mac os to code front-end. Here is the problem start many of developers try to search a solution but I don't think any one had it because the app developers not create any thing for windows to support these files.
My Question: what is the solution for this problem? should we try to find a friend/colleague who have mac os with the app or should we ask the client for other file format (but sometime clients don't have other file formats) or should we reject the project.
what should we do?

The immediate solution is to have your clients export their Sketch files to pdf. That is a built-in function in Sketch and only takes a second.
Longterm you may want to evaluate whether or not you maybe should get a cheap Mac to expand your portfolio.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but if you need to get design specs to work with you could use:
https://zeplin.io/
OR
https://www.invisionapp.com/
They offer tools for collaboration between designers and developers.
Hope this helps!

Related

Desktop app vs. Web app development differences and similarities

Forgive me if there is vagueness in this question. In a nutshell, I've built websites for several years, working with PHP, Javascript, JSON, AJAX, HTML, CSS3 and ASP-(many years ago when I didn't know better).
Lately I'm coming across projects where the clients prefer the app on their desktop (offline) rather than on the web.
Is it going to be a long road ahead to learn this? I can't get my head wrapped around going from web to desktop. Could someone give me a 50,000 ft overview of what I need to research? No details needed.. just an overall approach.
Are there packages out there I should read into which give tools for running a system "offline" so to speak? I'm not sure of there terminology or even where to start.
One of the main reasons is that features like Imagemagick seems too slow to process images online. The client would like tool where they don't have to rely on the speed of internet. Go Daddy is useless when it comes to upgrading their tools and I hope to do a standalone system for image processing.
Also, I'd like to get into making desktop widgets like time tracking tools, or anything that can be self-contained and running from a downloaded program that I would create.
Is this a really bad idea?
Try Auto it, it has a tiny foot print and it is great for writing small tools. It does have an GUI editor.
example of auto it widget
auto it widget
Other than that you could use industrial strength Microsoft Developer studios for either VB or C# . You can even do apps in VBA excel.

Is Adobe Air/Flash the easiest framework for advanced GUI development?

Excuse a non-developer being forced to develop applications instead of administrating networks like I'm used to. This is a horrible post in many ways.
I'm developing an application which has reached the point of needing a GUI. However, I haven't done any GUI development ever before, so I feel the need to ask for help on this.
The application is your standard data collecting/management app, with all common widgets and stuff that every application is using. The problem is that I need the application to be able to display websites using an external browser of some sort, to pass a captcha on the site the application works against. The website guys haven't given me permission to circumvent the captcha in any way.
I know of GTK, QT, Tcl/Tk etc. None of these frameworks have struck me as easy to use. To be honest, I'd like to design the interface using drag-and-drop like I used to do in VB6 when I was a kid, although I get chills thinking about writing this thing in Basic.
I was thinking about Adobe Air, and to design the application in Flash/ActionScript. From what I've learned about Air, I should be able to do everything I want to do. And I do believe it has built in sqlite, right? Would it be considered more "simple" to develop the actual GUI using Flash than using one of the traditional frameworks? What pitfalls am I facing?
A few guidelines:
It only needs to run on Windows
I need to be able to work against a database. Currently using SQLite3.
Some sort of browser integration is crucial. A browser window of some sort needs to open up inside my interface, be directed by the application, and the application needs to be able to read some data from the site that is being used.
Any help with this would be great. This is a clear case where I have to rely on the experience of others to complete the project at all. I'm happy to provide more information if you need that to make a suggestion.
You can always try Titanium Framework, it was aquired by Appcelerator nor so much ago. http://www.appcelerator.com/
It actually puts a webkit browser in a window, so if you can design HTML and CSS you can use this framework.

User Experience With MoSync

Has anyone tried using MoSync lately? Apparently they are dropping the "beta" title soon and will be officially launching in a few weeks. How do they compare to say Appcelerator?
You should try the new new version,
http://www.mosync.com/documentation/manualpages/whats-new-mosync-26-pyramid
I especially love the HTML integration, the ability to create and call native code, it both directions, cool :) I'm really excited about the potential of HTML UI.
Tony
Appcelerator works by building you an application that contains a WebKit and JavaScript engine that runs your application. This makes the build's slightly bigger.
MoSync can target more platforms than AppCelerator because it's designed to be able to output to any target platform.

Are there any good drag&drop web app IDEs out there that support AJAX?

Can anyone recommend a GUI builder tool for creating DHTML web apps using AJAX to communicate with a web service backend? I'd like to avoid having to mess around with designing HTML, marshalling/unmarshalling data, checking for browser compatibility, etc. The tool should have a library of widgets that can be put into an application and hooked up to functionality, and be extensible enough to be able to define custom widgets. Of course free and/or open source is preferrable but I would consider proprietary tools too.
Also to what extent does the choice of GUI tool affect what platform or language I would use for the backend? If the GUI is just calling a web service then I should be able to use anything on the server-side to provide that interface but maybe some gui-side tools use a proprietary data exchange format that requires some specific server-side code?
Edit: I don't need a widget that can be dragged, I want an IDE that allows one to build a gui easily (i.e. a RAD tool).
WaveMaker is open source, runs on J2EE.
If you're comfortable with Java, maybe you could try Google Web Toolkit? http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
I'm using Wavemaker and it does exactly what are u asking...
It is really easy to use and very perfomant....
I believe Dreamweaver does some of this, but in my opinion such editors are not a good idea. They produce horrible, unmaintainable server-side code and are quite inflexible.
Wavemaker beats everything else I have used hands down. Applications can be developed rapidly, has drag and drop, can connect to any web service, and has unmatched database management tools. The only problem with it is that it has kept changing hands/ownership so much and its future direction is not clear.
Delphi for PHP from Codegear has some of this capability, but I would agree with ceejayoz that such tools don't necessarily make for nice code.
On Dan's suggestion I took a look at GWT. I'd heard of it before but never looked at it that closely and it seems pretty interesting. Certainly it takes away the annoyance of pixel pushing and making things work in multiple browsers. I also tried searching for "gwt rad tools" and came up with a couple of results:
Instantiations GWT Designer (commercial, $59/year)
Wirelexsoft Vistafei (still in beta but will have a free and a commercial version)
I'll take a look at these but if anyone's used something else let me know.

Is there a good Fogbugz client for Mac OS X?

And/or: do I need one?
I've recently started using FogBugz for my hobby projects, and I'm very happy with things so far. Having read more about it, especially the evidence-based scheduling, I'd like to start using it for my PhD as well. (Heh; something tells me my supervisors won't be opening tickets for me, though.)
Last night I stumbled onto TimePost, which looks like a tidy app that doesn't do much but could be a real bonus to logging my time in FogBugz effectively. I tried looking around for similar apps but came up a little empty-handed. Are there any other FogBugz clients that you've used and recommend for Mac OS X? Or are you happy with the web interface?
The official answer is no, there is not a dedicated Mac client, other than Safari :)
There's a command line version that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
There are also plans for an iPhone version although I'm not technically supposed to announce features before they are done or even spec'd so pretend I didn't say that.
I recently spotted this one which looks quite nice for additions:
http://manicwave.com/products/tickets
I'm happy with using the web interface. I've used Fluid to create a custom browser for it, and even gotten some help making a pretty icon.
We recently released a new Fogbugz client software for Mac, maybe you are interested to give it a try, http://lithoglyph.com/ladybugz/
I remember reading that there was a client in development, and I believe they're still looking for beta testers. See this URL
http://support.fogcreek.com/default.asp?fogbugz.4.24403.0
Shameless plug here, but you might wanna check out QuickBugz --- it is a lightweight program that integrates into your status menu. http://www.quickbugzapp.com
I have been very happily using the Tickets program from Manic Wave for a few weeks now. it provides a very fluid experience. I am using it in a pressure cooker of doing a competition entry in my odd hours around my day job.
Tickets makes it incredibly easy to create lots of small cases and juggle them between different milestones. I particularly like its outline view which helps when doing task breakdowns into sub-tasks.
Being a long way from the Fogbugz servers, in Western Australia, the speed of a searchable local interface is very much appreciated.
The UI has a lot of nice little Macisms such as mouse over a milestone and see the hours summarized.
Support has also been very prompt and comprehensive.
I don't think there is any other such Mac tool. I've never found the web interface too bad personally.
I don't know of any native tool, but like Matt I am pretty happy with the web interface.
The beta of Safari 4 and SSB feature is a pretty good option...
I found using a Mac browser w/ the screen snapshot and search engine add-on to be very useful. I think what you are saying is that it can be hard to edit your timesheets, but that is part of the web design.
I've just released Bee, which is a Mac client for FogBugz. (It also pulls in your tasks from GitHub and JIRA.)
It offers several benefits over the web interface and is designed to be simple, fast and elegant. You can check it out at: http://www.neat.io/bee/fogbugz.html

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