Need To Speed Up Your App Development?

In this article, we have a look at 5 different tools that can use to speed up your app development process. Building a mobile app is an expensive and intensive process, both in time and financial resources. In sometimes we just don’t have the budget to build a costly app, or you need to get to market quickly to seize an opportunity. By seeing this article that cuts both the ways, you can reduce the cost of app building and at the same time release the app quicker.

Should you hack app features, or look elsewhere to speed up the app development process?
Many of the tools we will check out also help you speed up your projects iterations. Take the fast lane, for instance, that automates manual app deployment tasks you can spend more time on fixing bugs and implementing features and makes shorten your release cycle also.

1. Parse Server:

The first tool that we are going to take a look at is Parse Server. It is one of the open source cloud back-end having a ton of additional services like push notifications, file storage, databases and user management. This tool helps for app developers because it connects with a number of back-end tools. such as file storage and push notifications. It is open source, and you can set up your Parse Server instance on a number of infrastructure providers like Google App Engine, AWS, Heroku, Azure and Digital Ocean.

This is the reincarnation of the late Parse.com service that shut down early 2017. Instead of providing a done-for-you service like Parse.com, this server lets you roll your own custom cloud-based back-end.

 How it works :

• Creating an instance of Parse Server on a popular Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) like Heroku
• Connect your Parse Server instance to a popular Database-as-a-Service (DaaS) like mLab
• Integrate your app with your new Parse Server instance, and start using some of its tools
• Profit! You now have a full-fledged cloud-based back-end service at your disposal.

2. Fastlane :

Fastlane focuses on continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). The fancy way: Fastlane supports your workflow with automated tools and processes. whenever you create a new app version, it’s automatically pushed and published to end-users or beta testers.

Here’s what Fastlane does:

• Automate the creation of app screenshots, for multiple device models and languages
• Automatically setting the build version, distributing app beta builds, managing code signing, uploading the app, and logging app changes
• Automate the app publishing workflow, like setting metadata, uploading screenshots, and submitting the app for review
• Automate code signing in your team, i.e. sharing development keys and certificates privately between the developers on your team

3. App Design Templates :

Mobile app users care about a good user experience, more than ever. We spend more time in the apps which are familiar to us by installing fewer apps. To design your app it matters, period. With the store rankings of an app that you can see consistently designed apps rank better than poorly designed apps and equivalent. On one side the users are less willing to take risks with an app they don’t know. And in other hand, app developers have an opportunity to stand out with impeccable design, UI/UX and branding.

Designing an app it is not that easy and quick, need to design from scratch takes more time, money and resources. The designer does not have that much experience in designing mobile apps, or the cost of the app the budget for your lean and mean app prototype only accounted for a modest graphic design. A design template is nothing than ready-made pre-designed graphics for your app. We can also adopt components and styles you like, or simply copy-and-paste the entire graphic design.
Our favourite design templates include:

• NOW, TETHR and Do by InVision
• iOS 11 iPhone GUI from Facebook
• Stark UI Kit by Baianat
• Stitch by Lina Seleznyova
• Phoenix by Adrian Chiran
• Apply Pixels by Michael Flarup

4. PaintCode :

It is a simple and effective tool, and it does one thing very well i.e., generating programming code for visually designed UI components. This tool exports its drawings to a single file, so you can simply re-import that file whenever the UI components are updated. You can also use parametric variables and expressions, for instance, to update colour shading to a new colour scheme in one go.
Developers and designers often have to mediate between the designer’s wishes, and the degree a developer can recreate those designs in code. By using this PaintCode, a designer can create superb-looking UI components, and see those designs come to life in the app.
PaintCode has a popular graphic design tool plugin for Sketch. With this plugin, directly you can export Sketch drawings to Swift or Objective-C. You don’t have to recreate drawings in PaintCode, but export them directly from Sketch!
How it works:

• You design a UI component, like a button, visually in PaintCode
• PaintCode generates its Swift, Objective-C, Java, C#, JavaScript or SVG code
• You use the code in your app, and the UI component appears on screen

5. Awesome iOS and Android :

The awesome tool is one of the lists of resources, frameworks, libraries, courses, tools, podcasts, books, blogs and templates for app development. Awesome is technically not a tool, but a resource. And it’s a resource worth sharing. There are some awesome lists for pretty much anything, ranging from iOS to Swift to Android to JavaScript.
Our most favourite awesome lists are:

• Awesome iOS by Vinicius Souza
• Awesome Android by Jürgen Stumpp
• List of awesome lists by Sindre Sorhus

Always remember to discover and understand how these tools work on the inside. Building on top of a cloud-based back-end service is convenient, but in some cases, it’s smarter to build your own web service. A wiser developer knows when to use which tool, and has a diverse set of tools in his toolkit. As we have seen a quick and smart development process has plenty of benefits.