Monthly Archives: October 2015

UI frameworks for Angular.js

I recently had the opportunity to review a number of angular.js compatible UI frameworks. All of these frameworks are fairly new, and therefore they all give some thought to how they appear on phones and tablets.

Angular Material

angularmaterialAngular Material has been created by Google to follow the guidelines for Android’s Material UI. In my opinion this is the best UI for angular. Given its ties to Android it works great on mobile, but it also is designed to scale up to also look good on larger screens. Additionally, the flex box based layout system for Angular Material is more complete and more reliable than what is offered by the other frameworks.

Ionic

ionicThe Ionic framework by Drifty is a mobile focused UI that I have used before. Ionic has good looking controls, and mostly follows the design found in iOS 7. Compared to the other frameworks, the touch targets for Ionic are larger and better optimized for phones. By design, Ionic is meant to be used for creating Cordova apps, but can also be used for websites if you copy two files from their github.

UI Bootstrap

Unlike the other frameworks, Bootstrap does not include any JavaScript and is implemented strictly through css. While this lightweight approach is great, UI Bootstrap is also the least optimized for mobile and is the least integrated with angular.

LumX

lumxCreated by LumApps, Lumx is another framework that follows Android’s Material design guidelines. Unfortunately, when compared to Angular Material, it is not quite as good. Also LumX has the far more third party dependencies than the other frameworks, making it more difficult for set up. On the plus side, it has the best selection of built in colors for theming your app.

Using multiple frameworks

Additionally there is the option to use a number of these frameworks together at the same time. This is not always an option as the css for Bootstrap and Ionic conflict with one another. But sometimes it can work. In particular the components of Ionic make a good compliment to the layout and navigation of Material.

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Weather Beautiful updated

Q10cropThe Weather Beautiful app has been updated to version 2.2 for both Android and BlackBerry users. This update makes the app launch quicker. Additionally the app’s install size is 37% smaller on BlackBerry, and 23% smaller on Android.

About Weather Beautiful

This is a simple weather app that displays stunning photography of your surrounding area. In addition to the current temperature and weather conditions, the app also allows you to scroll for a full weekly forecast.

Links & Information

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Android, BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Weather Beautiful

Additional levels for Starbeams

phoneStarbeams has been updated to version 2.1 in order to add 10 new levels to the game. This gives the game a total of 210 levels.

About Starbeams

The object of the game is to assign colors to each star in order to ensure that none of the stars are connected to another star of the same color. The game starts off easy, but quickly gets more complex, adding more colors and seven pointed stars that can not be changed.

Starbeams can be downloaded for free for Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows 10, and BlackBerry 10 devices. A one time in-app purchase is required in order to play past level 25.

Links & Information

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BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Starbeams, Windows

Use of 10.3.2 increases while use of 10.3.X remains the same

The month of September saw large increases in the use of OS 10.3.2, the newest BlackBerry 10 operating system. However almost all of this increase came from users who were already using a prior version of OS 10.3 as the percentage of users running OS 10.2 and 10.1 remained steady from previous months.

2015Sept-Pixelated-BB10OSVersions

2015Sept-StuffINeed-BB10OSVersions

This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of September 2014 through the end of September 2015.

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Statistics

Z10 still the most used BlackBerry 10 phone

Two and a half years ago when BlackBerry 10 was first released the Z10 and the Q10 were the first two phones released. Today they are still the two most used BlackBerry 10 phones, combining for 56.5% of users.
Sept2015Devices
Just under half (47.6%) of BlackBerry 10 users have a physical keyboard on their phones.

All of these statistics are based off of the data collected by BlackBerry World in the month of February for downloads of the free check-list app Stuff I Need (which is also available for Windows Phone and Android users).

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Statistics