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A few weeks ago I promised to publish a tutorial on how to build a mobile app and connect it to Parse backend.

You can get the full tutorial here.

You really have to try it yourself building a mobile app in Tiggzi app builder and connecting it to Parse mobile backend is amazingly easy. You can literally build a real mobile app in about 30 minutes. Creating the actual backend is fast as well, takes about 2 minutes. Any backend object is instantly available via REST API and then used in the mobile app.

Here is a general outline of the tutorial:

1. Sign up for Parse and create the mobile backend. The mobile backend object (class) is a list of text messages
2. Build the mobile UI with jQuery Mobile and HTML5 (see screen shot below)
3. Create and use REST service to load text messages (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words, GET request)
4. Create and use REST service to create a new texg message, (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words, POST request)
5. Update the mobile UI to include a Delete button (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words/objectId, DELETE request)
6. Create and use REST service to delete a text message
7. At any step in the tutorial, you can test the actual app in Web browser
8. Optionally, update the look and feel of the app

The final app looks like this:

In mid January we have released an update to Tiggzi mobile app builder and now every app (new or old) is based on jQuery Mobile version 1.0.

Now that there is a Free plan, nothing should stop you from building your mobile app.

Last week we have we have renamed our cloud-based mobile app builder to Tiggzi (from Tiggr). Tiggzi is the most powerful and easy to use cloud-based mobile app builder.

Free Plan!

But, even more interesting news (for you) is that now we have a Free plan. No credit card nothing, just sign up and start building your mobile app.

All the gotiggr.com links work and will continue working and we will be updating all the social media links. For now, use the links below to get help.

Email
Forum
Docs and Getting Started
Blog
Twitter
Facebook

Tiggzi is a Web-based platform for building mobile apps for iPhone, Android, or HTML5. We recently launched Tiggzi for Musicians to extend Tiggzi and showcased it at the recent NAMM show. Tiggzi for Musicians customizes and further simplifies the mobile development process for musician apps. It guides you through a series of steps to grab [...]

My reply to this Cross-Platform Mobile Visual Development – a Tool Comparison. I tried posting this in the comments but that didn’t work. Tiggzi: the cloud-based mobile app builder should definitely be there.

Home page: http://tiggzi.com
Genesis: The cloud-based HTML5 and hybrid mobile app builder.
Version: Cloud (and white label)
Licensing: Free and premium — http://tiggzi.com/pricing
Download: Nothing to download, cloud-based
Documentation: http://help.gotiggr.com/videos
Sample application: http://tiggzi.com/common/showcase/browse.seam
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_application_development
Additional: The app is built with jQuery Mobile/HTML5. Connected to any REST API, tested, and exported as mobile Web, Android or iOS. PhoneGap is used for access to native device features.
Article on how to use: http://help.tiggzi.com/getting-started, Tiggzi and PhoneGap.

NAMM — A wild ride. As we speak, Michael Ruiz, Murietta Valley Unified School District, is talking about Tiggzi for Musicians at NAMM’s “Best Tools for Schools” session. A couple days ago, he watched Alexa Weber Morales build her fan app with Tiggzi for Musicians (http://musicians.tiggzi.com). He was super-impressed and is happy to spread the [...]

NAMM Days 2 and 3: A blur of ‘Tiggzi for Musicians’ activity. Meeting the artists, engineers, educators, investors, technologists, media, and promoters who make music happen. We attended the TEC awards last night, with Steve Vai receiving an award, and playing along with Jeff Baxter, Billy Sheehan, and other greats. Very cool! Heads up on [...]

NAMM Day 1 report (for Thursday, 1/19): Well, the musicians showed up today, and the music biz people, beyond the media folks we met yesterday. There were industry veterans and newbies – keyboards, bass, guitar, singers, developers and webmasters, producers, audio engineers, and booking agents. Alexa (Alexa Weber Morales, our endorsing artist) has been charming [...]

The NAMM Show is an annual gathering organized by the National Association of Music Merchants to support and grow the music products industry. Since our brand-new Tiggzi for Musicians is all about giving musicians the mobile tools to support their passions, we thought this would be a good place to unveil it. Exadel’s David Schoenbach [...]

This time, instead of just adding many new improvements and a whole new approach to customizing Tiggr for specific users…like musicians (more about this later), we’ve changed the name of Tiggr to Tiggzi or Tiggzi by Exadel if you want to be really formal. It takes some effort to switch over all the name references, [...]

In this fas­ci­nating hands-on we­binar, a real mo­bile app will be built, con­nected to a REST ser­vice, and tested. Attendees will be be able to test the app as it’s being built. Beyond that, we will also cover some of the ex­citing fea­tures of the new ver­sion of Tiggr that will have been re­leased by then (under a new name…).

Learn How to Build Mobile Apps in the Cloud with HTML5, jQuery Mobile, REST, and PhoneGap
January 19, Thursday
11am US Pacific Time
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/486123896

The first Tiggr webinar of the new year is coming soon! Tune in next week to discover more about our cloud service for building mobile apps on January 19 at 11am. In this fascinating hands-on webinar, a real mobile app will be built, connected to a REST service, and tested. Attendees will be be able [...]

I’m not sure whether there is any other way to describe it but building a mobile app in Tiggr Mobile Apps Builder and connecting to Parse mobile back end is super easy and fast!

Here is how the app look in design time in Tiggr:

There are three REST services on the right which connect to Parse mobile back end. The services are for loading the current list items, creating new list item and deleting a list item. For example, this is how the service URL to get all List items looks:

https://{username}:{password}@api.parse.com/1/classes/List

List – is a class I created in Parse.

This is how the service URL looks for deleting an item:

https://{username}:{password}@api.parse.com/1/classes/List/{objectId}

objectId – is the class Id to delete.

Parse mobile back end is very easy to use and is very elegant.

Here is how the actual app look when running:

I’ll publishing the actual tutorial on how to build this app.

It’s almost funny how fast a mobile app can be build using Tiggr and Parse. The app was built in about 30 minutes, with nothing to download or install, all the tools are in the cloud.

Happy New Year!

Exadel is lucky to have David Schoenbach join its management team as Vice President – Product Management. In this role, he leads product definition, marketing, and sales for the Tiggr family of cloud-based tools for app and mobile Web development. Previously David was Vice President, Business Development, at MobiHand, where he was responsible for growing [...]

Tiggr Mobile Apps Builder is constantly adding features, but next year, in January, Tiggr will be making some major qualitative leaps. To help roll out these changes, we’ll be hosting a series of webinars to educate our community. The details will come into focus more as we go into the next year, but here are [...]

Tiggr – the easiest platform for building mobile apps in the cloud

Tiggr is a cloud-based mobile apps builder. It lets developers build HTML5/JavaScript and native apps very quickly, entirely in the cloud. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, and nothing to configure. Just create a new project, and you are ready to start building your mobile app with HTML5/JavaScript and PhoneGap.

Building mobile UI with jQuery Mobile

To build the mobile UI, there is a visual editor and jQuery Mobile components, as shown below. You simply drag and drop components into the phone area.

You can create multiple screens, navigate between screens, store data in Local Storage, and write custom JavaScript. This means you can create the complete UI for your mobile app and also test in a Web browser.

Testing the mobile app

Testing is one of the most innovative features in Tiggr. There is a big Test button at the top. Clicking that button opens up a browser window with the mobile app in it. Need to test the app on the actual device? Scan the QR code, and e-mail the URL to your device. Don’t forget to make the app public. (More about testing native apps a little bit later.)

Consuming any cloud service

Once the UI is ready, the next step is connecting to cloud services. In Tiggr, you can connect to any cloud REST service. Below is an example of using the service editor to define a connection to Twitter’s search REST service:

Once the service is defined, it is mapped to the UI. A service usually has inputs and outputs. Mapping specifies how different UI components are related to different service parameters for input and output. There is even a visual data mapping editor available (service output is shown on the left, screen components are shown on the right:

The JavaScript column (on the left) allows you to write custom JavaScript to give you more power and flexibility when mapping service to UI (custom JavaScript is also available when mapping UI to service).

One last step is adding an event to invoke the service. For example, on a specific button click (HTML click event) the service could be invoked. You can of course use any other HTML events. With Tiggr this is easy.

Native apps with PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an awesome mobile app platform. It takes advantage of Web technologies developers already know: HTML and JavaScript. PhoneGap makes it super easy to wrap any mobile Web app as native, but also provide access to device native features via its elegant and easy-to-use API.

Exporting native app

Every app (native) in Tiggr comes with PhoneGap installed. To export the app as native is as simple as clicking the big Export button:

If you are targeting for Android, then you can download Android Release binary (.apk). This file is ready for the Android Market. Tiggr has a Android .apk file editor for you to enter all the necessary information.

If you are targeting iOS, then export iOS xCode project (Eclipse). You can then build the app on your machine or use cloud-based PhoneGap Build service to build for iOS.

As an alternative, for both Android, iOS or any other platform you can download the mobile Web version (Web resources, HTML/CSS/JS) and use PhoneGap Build service to build for the platform.

For example, if you need to build for BlackBerry, then simply download the mobile Web version and upload to PhoneGap Build. It’s that simple.

Using PhoneGap API

What if you need to invoke PhoneGap API to access device features? Well, that’s very simple too. Tiggr comes with Run Custom JavaScript action, which can be invoked on any HTML event.
As an example, we will implement a Vibrate button.

First, we add the click HTML event to the button:

Add an action – Run Custom JavaScript:

and finally add the PhoneGap JavaScript call:

Another option is to create a JavaScript file (Project > JavaScript), write all the custom code in functions in the file, and then invoke any function via the Run Custom JavaScript action.

Note that you can also import an existing JavaScript file (from a URL or via uploading).

Invoking a function from the custom JavaScript file is done via Run Custom JavaScript action:

Testing native apps

Once you use a native API, testing in Web browser is no longer as useful. To test native apps, you can use Tiggr Mobile Tester. It’s a native app (Android, iOS) that lists all your mobile app in Tiggr. You simply tap any app in the list to launch the native app for testing. It’s the easiest and fasted way to test a native app without having to install it. The tester app looks like this:

Device components

Being able to invoke custom JavaScript (and PhoneGap API) almost from anywhere makes Tiggr and PhoneGap so powerful. But, that’s not all. Tiggr now has components in the Device palette which are based on PhoneGap API:

This is even simpler than using the API. More components are planned to be added such as Camera and others.

Tiggr and PhoneGap – The ULTIMATE mobile app development combo?

We think so.

You have Tiggr, a cloud-based mobile apps builder. There is nothing to install or configure. Tiggr uses jQuery Mobile, HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to build mobile apps. The app’s UI is built inside a visual editor, the app can easily be connected to any cloud service, and the app can be tested at any point in a browser or on a device. At the end, you can export the app source.

Then, you have PhoneGap, a powerful framework that uses HTML5 and JavaScript to build native mobile apps and makes it super easy to access native features in an app, such as contacts and camera. PhoneGap’s cloud-based build service allows you to build quickly for multiple platforms.

When you combine the two, Tiggr and PhoneGap, you get powerful cloud-based HTML5 mobile apps builder with an easy way to incorporate native device features and build for multiple mobile platforms.

Sign up for Tiggr and build your mobile app today.

Originally posted on PhoneGap blog: http://phonegap.com/2011/12/15/building-mobile-apps-in-the-cloud-with-tiggr-and-phonegap/

A lot of the height attained by Tiggr Mobile Apps Builder as a mobile development platform comes from “standing on the shoulders of Giants.” One of those Giants is PhoneGap. So, when the people at PhoneGap asked Exadel’s Max Katz to post an article on their blog about how Exadel’s Tiggr works with PhoneGap, he [...]

Mapping mobile UI to service is one of the most basic tasks in any mobile app (or a standard Web application). Input data entered by the user is sent to the service (input), the service is invoked, returns data (result) is sent back to the app for displaying results. Tiggr Mobile Apps Builder makes it super easy to map UI to service. Let’s look at an example.

REST service settings:

REST service input parameters:

REST service output parameters:

To open the standard mapping editor, there are two buttons in properties for a service:

Mapping UI to service look like this:

The service input parameters are on the left and are mapped to input components and properties on the right.

Mapping service back to UI for displaying the result looks like this:

The service output parameters are on the left and are mapped to output components and properties on the right.

Now there is even a more visual way to do the same. There is a new Data Mapping tab in the main editor, clicking the tab will open a visual data mapping editor:

That’s a pretty cool way to do mobile UI to REST service mapping.

Slides from my talk at AppsWorld conference in London (Nov 29-30) on building mobile apps in the cloud with Tiggr.

Learn How to Build Mobile Apps Using Cloud Services View more presentations from Max Katz

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