Tag: iOS

5 Tips To Hire App Developers For Your Business

Read our article on 5 tips for choosing mobile app developers. Mobile is king these days and there’s an app for everything. By 2020, the mobile app market is predicted to be worth £150 billion!

Organisations the world over have increasingly recognised that an effective mobile presence is essential for success, but it can be difficult to know how to set about establishing your position in the mobile app world.
Once you’ve recognised a need to develop a mobile app, the next obvious step is to identify someone to develop it. In fact, the decision to hire app developers will be the most significant factor behind success or failure. So what should you be looking for in identifying a mobile app developer?
Software Development Company Solihull

Best Mobile Software Developers in Solihull

MatterOfSoftware BARK Certificate of Excellence winner 2019
We are proud to announce that BARK has awarded us a 2019 Excellence Award in recognition of us being the best Mobile Software Developers in Solihull.
The team has worked hard during 2018 to continue our growth whilst focusing on constant improvement in our key areas:
  • Highest Quality
  • Best Client Satisfaction
  • Improved Employee Engagement / Skills
  • Best Value for all Clients
We have continued to grow the team to accommodate our growth (including a new managing director and additional technical team members).  Our 2019 plans will focus on our core pillars to grow sustainably and deliver real value to our clients.
We have been using BARK as part of our advertising and marketing approach, we have been fortunate to meet a large number of local clients via BARK who share our vision for great value, quality and experiences.
If you are interested to hear more please contact us.

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Content Management Systems – Introduction to WordPress

A good content management system (CMS) can transform your digital presence in a number of positive ways. A CMS is a software you can use to create, develop, edit, store and publish content online. WordPress is reported to be the most popular and widely used CMS. It is claimed that WordPress powers 31% of all websites on the internet and is used by a whopping 59% of websites whose CMS is known.
This article aims to explain what WordPress is, how WordPress development works, and discusses the importance of WordPress maintenance.
What is WordPress?
At its simplest, WordPress is a software programme that users can use to create, design and maintain their websites. It is an open source software, which means it is not subject to any intellectual property restrictions like copyright and trademark, and can be accessed for free by the public and users can modify it as they require.
WordPress started out as a blogging tool, which bloggers used to create content and images for publication on their blogs. WordPress has evolved tremendously and now become far more than just a blogging. It is an immensely powerful software capable of creating the most simple website to more complex websites, online stores, and
other e-commerce online platforms.
WordPress now boasts a huge core and library with many advanced features. In order to fully maximise the many benefits of WordPress, it is vital that the software is developed by a top WordPress developer, which is where WordPress development comes in.
What does WordPress development involve?
One of the main benefits of WordPress is its simplicity, which is attractive to people with little or no coding skills, but there is more to running a website than just setting one up and getting on with using it for your business. Of all the available content management systems, WordPress has a particularly large range of functionalities which a user with basic technical skills may likely find intimidating. It is also easy to run into difficulties with security issues like viruses and hackers.
Good WordPress development requires detailed knowledge and expertise in PHP programming, at the very least. PHP, which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, is a scripting code which allows users to customise their WordPress websites to suit individual requirements. Expertise in HTML, JavaScript and databases like MySQL are also useful skills to have.
WordPress development starts with a thorough analysis of what your specific goals and objectives for a website are. Your WordPress developer will need to carefully consider how WordPress can be adapted and customised to fit your specific requirements, taking into account the particular themes and plugins you would need as part of your design. The developer then develops a code which feeds into your WordPress website design, and will need to make sure that the design does not clash with other databases or systems you may need to use alongside WordPress.
Where do themes and plugins fit in?
Themes and plugins are an essential design tool in WordPress you can use to greatly enhance the customer experience on your website.
Themes are a series of options that collectively generate the way your website looks. With themes, you can select design features such as colour, size of text within your site, how images and videos are displayed, how features like blog comments are laid out, the general layout of the site and many more.
Whether you are looking to achieve a formal look, an interactive site or one that is heavily led by images or videos, the possibilities with themes are endless.
Plugins, on the other hand, are usually used to develop your theme either by extending existing features or creating and adding new features to your site. With plugins, your website is able to evolve as your business and requirements change over time. This means that you are not stuck with the website you start out with, but can continuously update your themes, introduce new features or fix any performance issues you subsequently identify with your initial WordPress website design.
As with themes, the possibilities with plugins are endless and there are many types of plugins to choose from. To mention a few, there are search engine optimisation plugins that help improve your website’s ranking and drive traffic to your site, there are plugins that improve the speed by which pages on your site load, there are plugins you could use if you just want to introduce a minor feature like a news feed or set up payment options on your site.
WordPress maintenance and security
All the time and resources invested into developing and rolling out your website could be wasted if you don’t secure and maintain your site properly. Websites remain vulnerable to bugs and hackers, so it is important that you operate an efficient system for installing system updates to address any security issues.
We at Matter of Software are software developers with in-depth knowledge of WordPress, available to assist you when you contact us today.

Today’s Mobile App Platforms – iOS, Android, Windows App Development


In the modern day, our smart phone can be as common to us as our house keys or wallet. One of the things we value them for is apps, which can give us all sorts of ways to stay informed, entertained and in touch. But behind the screen and the flashy wallpaper, how does the mobile app development magic happen?

In this blog, we take a look at some of the leading operating systems which mobile apps can be deployed on, and examine their characteristics:

Android

According to research, Android has a 44 per cent market share of smart phone users in the UK, underlining its popularity. The Android operating system is widely used on a wide variety of smart phones – from Samsung to Sony. Source code for Android app development is made available via the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This is an initiative which is led by Google. Android apps are commonly written with the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Java programming language. Java can be used in tandem with C/C++. Android is now up to operating system 9.0, which includes a raft of updates including a new user interface for the quick settings menu, the moving of the clock to the left of the notification bar, and the possibility of an NFC unlock. Among the handsets to have already adopted Android 9.0 are Essential Phone, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Nokia 7 Plus, OnePlus 6, Sony Xperia XZ2, Vivo X21UD and Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S.

iOS

Figures show that iOS has a market share of 49 per cent in the UK, making it the most popular operating system for smart phones. iOS is used on the Apple range of smart phones known as the iPhone – the latest versions of which are the iPhone XS and the iPhone XR. It is also used on iPad tablets. iOS app development is done using the iOS SDK, which was released in March 2008 – Apple had reportedly originally not intended to permit third party development of applications, but changed this decision. Developers can combine the iOS SDK with Xcode when it comes to writing apps. The programming languages which are typically supported by iOS include Objective-C and Swift.

The latest version of the iOS operating system is 12, which includes many updates in the areas of security, battery life and performance. These include; the speeding up of common tasks including keyboard and camera activation; screen time usage information which allows users to measure exactly what they do on their smart phone; new shortcuts and automated actions; a feature (ARKit 2) which allows screens to be shared with other iPhone users; and some gestures for iPhone can now be used on
iPads.

Windows

Windows Mobile has a relatively small market share of 0.8 per cent in the UK, but given its parent company’s Microsoft’s dominant position in the computer world, this could feasibly change in the future. The latest version of Windows Mobile is Windows 10 Mobile, which was released in 2015. Windows 10 Mobile app developers can use the Windows Bridge for iOS. This provides a toolchain which allows developers to port Objective-C software used for building apps for the iOS operating system for mobile application development with Universal Windows Apps. Visual Studio 15 is also capable of converting Xcode projects into those which can be used for the building of Universal Windows Apps.

Among the enhancements which were unveiled as part of Windows 10 Mobile are the harmonisation of user experiences and functionality, which opens up new possibilities for those running Windows 10 on a PC. This includes the settings menu and Action Center. It is now possible for notifications to be synced between devices. There is now a messaging app with Skype support, and there is also an input button dedicated to voice on the on-screen keyboard. Windows 10 Mobile is used on handsets such as the Acer Liquid M320, Cherry Mobile Alpha Prime 4 and 5, Freetel Katana 01 and 02, and Microsoft Lumia 550, and 950.

At present iOS and Android have an overwhelmingly dominant share of the market. So if you are looking for the largest choice of apps available on an operating system, the main choice is between devices running these two operating systems. However Windows 10 Mobile does present some interesting possibilities for those who use Windows 10 on their PC, so should not be discounted.

Rely on Matter of Software for Mobile App Development, Custom Software, and Web Development which helps you achieve your business objectives. Call us today on 0330 223 3891.