Development Resources

This section presents some resources useful for software development that may be relevant for (final) interactive prototypes. Moreover, it lists the software applications and libraries used during the course.

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Software In Use

• PHP and Apache server: XAMPP (or equivalent)
• JetBrains PhpStorm
  • apply here, with your student e-mail address, for a free licence: https://www.jetbrains.com/student/
• Composer - a dependency manager for PHP (easy to "install" through PhpStorm)
• Dialogflow PHP Client Library
• git
• ngrok

Web Design and Development Resources

• Fonts: Google Fonts is a great resource of easy-to-use fonts
• Icons: Font Awesome is a good free icons package
• Subtle Patterns is useful if you want to add some light patterns to any plain background color
• Sample images: Wunderstock is a good starting point to find Creative Commons photos
• Simulate a mobile device from a desktop browser (e.g., with Chrome's Device Mode)
• Geolocation:
  • HTML5 Geolocation API
  • Google Maps Javascript API
• Device orientation: you can access the device gyroscope/accelerometer through dedicate HTML5 API
  • Step-by-step tutorial
• Camera and camera roll: take (and read) photos with the HTML5 Media Capture API
• Notifications: HTML5 Notifications API allows the generatio of notifications from the browser
  • useful read: Web Workers and PWA