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The approach can also be usedto sign reusable libraries, for example, to give them additional platformsecurity capabilities.6Releasing Your ApplicationThis chapter describes some of the common issues that you may facewhen you come to release your application. Regardless of whether youintend to charge for your application, release it as freeware or start anopen source project, there are some issues that you may wish to considerin order to ensure that it is of the best possible quality. Having discussedthose issues, we then move on to describe some of the ways to distributeyour application, and finish by directing you to some further resourcesthat may be helpful throughout the software development lifecycle.6.1 What To Do Before You Release Your ApplicationAs with all platforms, there are good C++ applications for Symbiansmartphones, and there are others that are not so good.
It is not just abouthow the application looks, but also about how the code performs underthe hood. There’s a lot you can do to make sure your application is notjust ‘good enough’, but is of great quality. This section discusses somethings to consider.6.1.1 Look At It!When you create an application, you have two choices:• You can use the controls provided by the platform UI, and integratewith the standard look and feel.• You can create your own UI code, perhaps because you want to retainthe look and feel of the application as it runs on another platform (thisis a standard technique used by games). The size of this task can besignificant if you need a number of controls for different kinds of userinteraction, such as list boxes, dialogs and progress bars.
Creating a330RELEASING YOUR APPLICATIONcustom UI may require the use of direct screen access to write to thescreen, which is discussed in Recipe 4.5.3.5.Most application developers take the first option, which is to use theUI controls provided by Avkon (for S60) or Qikon (for UIQ), so it is thisapproach that we examine in this section.If you are planning to use the standard platform look and feel, werecommend that you familiarize yourself with documentation about howto use the UI classes provided by the platform, which is availableon the developer community websites listed in Section 1.2.
For UIQdevelopment, the book UIQ 3: The Complete Guide is another usefulresource, and is available in printed form and online in the form of a wikiat books.uiq.com.Both S60 and UIQ publish style guides that describe the best practicefor designing an intuitive UI using the standard platform controls. Linksto these guides can be found on this book’s wiki page at developer.symbian.com/quickrecipesbook.Studying these is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with whatis in the ‘control toolbox’ for each UI platform and learn how they areexpected to be used, since they have been created and considered bythe designers of each UI platform.
Following the guidelines will giveyour application a degree of consistency with others running on thesmartphone and make it intuitive, which will give the user confidencethat they are able to use it easily.It is also worthwhile studying the layout of the applications suppliedon the phone, and the behavior of other popular products. The userexperience is, to some extent, subjective, so it is also important to gatherempirical evidence by performing usability testing on your application.Get user feedback on the design – from users who are new to theapplication, and those who have used it for some time, those whohave never used that type of application previously and those who areexperienced with a competing product, or a similar style of application.Your testers will be able to give you the best feedback on what ‘feelsright’ and what doesn’t.The user interface of a mobile device is significantly different to thatof a desktop machine and, if you’re new to S60 or UIQ, it’s worth takingsome time to research what works, according to the platform and theinput style of the target devices (for example, whether it has a touchscreenor uses softkey input, whether it has a keypad or a QWERTY keyboard,the style of input controller, if it has one, and the screen’s orientation,size and resolution).If you are targeting a range of devices, or working on both UI platforms,your design is constrained further, and testing becomes more complex.The Windows emulator is useful for preliminary testing, and can beset up with different screen resolutions, orientations and input modes,WHAT TO DO BEFORE YOU RELEASE YOUR APPLICATION331so you can ‘smoke test’ layouts and determine how the applicationworks when deployed on different form factors.
For UIQ 3 applications, make sure that you try out all the different screen layouts andinput types. For example, you should not assume that the phone willhave a 4-way controller (for up, down, left and right) because somephones, such as the Sony Ericsson M600i, do not. To assist you in this,you may find it useful to download some of the emulator skins fromdeveloper.uiq.com/devtools other.html#skins and use those to simulateeach of the UIQ smartphones you wish to test with. Each downloadcontains the image file, configuration file and an installation guide for theskin.A useful tool for S60 is the remote device access (RDA) servicefrom Forum Nokia, which allows you to test on different Nokia devicesremotely over the Internet, without the need to buy every Nokia S60 smartphone in the range.
The service is free, and allows you to control a deviceremotely, to install and run applications, transfer files and analyze log filesin real-time, almost as if you had the device in your hand. You can find outmore about RDA from www.forum.nokia.com/main/technical services/testing/rda introduction.html.The usability section on the Forum Nokia website (found at www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/documentation/usability) maintains anumber of documents, guides and examples to illustrate how to create apositive user experience on S60.
You may also be interested in a bookabout the design of the original S60 interface, written by its designers in2003, which is called Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face ofthe Mobile Phone (please see www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071385142 on the publisher’s website for more information).6.1.2 Test It!This book has reinforced the message that, on mobile platforms, youneed to aim for code which is well-behaved – it shouldn’t leak or undulyconsume memory, disk space or other resources such as battery power.For example, running tight loops, writing code which continuously pollsfor a result, keeping the backlight on the phone constantly enabled oroverusing the vibra motor are all likely to degrade the battery life of thedevice. It’s important to consider where code can go wrong, and guardagainst the potential problems by testing, testing and more testing.Code reviews are a good way to share coding tips and learn fromyour colleagues.
Inspections can range from formal reviews when codereaches a particular milestone to informal checks whenever a defect fixis submitted into the code base. Find a way that works for your teamand review regularly, so everyone is familiar with the issues encounteredin the code, the solutions and any items still on the to-do list. We havepublished the set of coding standards used by developers within Symbian332RELEASING YOUR APPLICATIONon the Symbian Developer Network at developer.symbian.com/codingstandards wikipage.Having discovered the fundamentals of good Symbian C++, you willwant to test that your code meets your quality expectations as you writeit and as you prepare to deploy it.
Testing can be performed at all stagesof development, and you and your team will have your own preferencesand procedures. These could include writing a test case for every bugyou fix to build up a regression test suite, developing a test frameworkfor automated unit testing on your nightly builds, and designing out-ofmemory loop tests, out-of-disk-space tests, and those that deliberately tryto break the code by submitting illegal or invalid inputs to APIs or byrapidly firing random key presses at the UI.
The more you hit your codewith tests, the more confident you can be that it will be you that findsa problem – which is preferable to it being found by your ultimate user,the customer.But you know all this; it’s why you are still reading this book, to get themost out of developing C++ applications for Symbian OS. You’re herebecause you want to get it right.
So how does Symbian help you? Whattools are available?There are a number of commercial tools available for S60 and UIQplatforms:• AppTestPro from SysOpenDigia (www.sysopendigia.com) allowsautomated functional, integration and user interface testing.• SymbianOSUnit from Penrillian (www.penrillian.com) is a port ofthe popular C++ unit testing framework CxxUnit and allows fullyautomated building and testing of the project source.• TestQuest Pro from TestQuest (www.testquest.com) is another automated test tool to verify the system under by becoming a ‘virtual user’and replacing the need for manual testing.If you don’t have access to these tools, or they don’t meet your requirements, you can always roll your own test cases.
For example, SymbianOS provides a range of debug macros for checking the heap to ensurethat it is balanced before and after code executes. The __UHEAP_MARKand __UHEAP_MARKEND macros can be used to check for memory leaks,while the __UHEAP_FAILNEXT and __UHEAP_SETFAIL macros can beused to simulate out-of-memory conditions, to check that code behavescorrectly.One of the fundamental rules of mobile application development isthat you must test your code thoroughly on hardware. The Windowsemulator gives you a good idea of the application’s behavior whileyou are developing it, and it is invaluable when you are debugging.But it’s generally the case that subtle bugs, such as those associatedWHAT TO DO BEFORE YOU RELEASE YOUR APPLICATION333with performance, only manifest when you test the application on asmartphone.
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