Facebook Offers New Tool for Mobile Application Development

The social network Facebook has worked out the internal tool for HTML 5 mobile application development. The new development should considerably simplify the realization of mobile Facebook functions on various portable platforms. Now the above mentioned software, known as Faceweb, is available for the Facebook employees only.

Erik Tseng, Head of Facebook mobile products, says the official debut of the new tool for mobile developers will take place at the next conference Mobilize. “The reason for our promoting Faceweb is in the fact that mobile apps development here is based only on the HTML 5 programming language and IT development companies don’t have to write native apps under each individual platform”, says Erik Tseng. “At the same time the opportunities of HTML 5 allow realizing many traditional options for low level applications”.

The analytics say that the social network Facebook is positioning itself not only as a social network but also as the platform for interacting many users and many technical devices. For example, many smartphone manufacturers already use the API-function of Facebook for integrating social network functions directly into their own apps or the operating system.

New Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

Microsoft has released the new tool for mobile application development companies that allows using the possibilities of the cloud platform Windows Azure and the software Windows 8 Metro.

The new set of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 has been designed for the simplified apps development under Windows Metro which is able to work with the cloud operation system Windows Azure. The new tool is reported to let using the remote Azure storage as well as its computational capabilities.

The new tool includes the Windows 8 Cloud Application templates for Visual Studio, which allows working with it from the common environment for software developers.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 supports JavaScript and HTML5, as well as .NET, C#, C++ and Visual Basic. Among the additional options there are tools for checking dependency, Windows Push Notification Service libraries and Visual Studio 2010 templates.

Dart: New Programming Language from Google

Recently the Internet has been buzzing on the news that Google is going to present the new programming language Dart in October. Google is developing Dart as an alternative to Javascript. In general, software developers agree that Javascript programming language has a number of ‘fundamental’ drawbacks which can’t be corrected by means of evolutionary development.

There are two solutions to the problem. The first one is to correct, if possible, the drawbacks of Javacript (Harmony project). The second variant is creating the new programming language Dart which will keep the dynamic nature of Javascript but will ensure better productivity and will be suitable for applying in big projects. At that, Google will provide the language openness and will contribute to its support by other browsers. Moreover, IT development companies will get a cross- compiler so as the Dart code can be transformed to Javascript for browsers which don’t support Dart natively.

Dart is developed with due account for three main goals: productivity, convenience, and code editors and additional tools support. Dart will also have to provide maximum security where this task isn’t in conflict with the three main goals.

The author of the new programming language is the famous programmer Lars Bak and his software development team. The additional sets of tools are being developed by Bruce Johnson’s team in Atlanta and the support of the Web Inspector level for Dart and Harmony is carried out by Pavel Feldman and his developers from the Google office in St. Petersburg.

Content Development Platform Oracle UPK 11.0

Oracle Corporation has announced the release of solutions Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.0 and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional 11.0, which ensures faster deployment and implementation of business applications as well as the payback of the investments.

Oracle User Productivity Kit (UPK) and Oracle UPK Professional are simple in use and fully functional platforms for the development of content in the process of implementation and training. Created with the aim of increasing the working productivity and speeding up the process of using the product by end users, they support such applications as Oracle and the applications from other providers as well as the specialized clients’ applications.

Using Oracle UPK Professional, IT development companies are able to create, use jointly and exchange the content at all stages of the software project lifecycle. According to software developers, it will lead to considerable reduction in time expenses on deployment and implementation and in many ways will contribute to the success of an IT-project.

Oracle UPK Professional 11.0 contains the following new features and options:
•    Enablement Content that provides a quick start-up for projects and their successful advancement from the very beginning due to the innovative methods of documentation and instruction formation;
•    Web-based Knowledge Center that increases the efficiency, evaluates the organizational readiness and contributes to the growth of professional skills and knowledge using the platform for centralized deployment and following the content, as well as for preparing reports;
•    improved deployment that accelerates the procedure of content publication using the reviewed publishing wizard.

Moreover, pre-adjusted content for most Oracle Apps included into Oracle UPK and Oracle UPK Professional allows speeding up the development of user’s content since now organizations can easily modify the ready-made library according to their specific requirements. In this case, customers can expect business software development with the account of their needs and, of course, budget.