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The Health App was launched on iPhone and Apple watches on 17 September 2014, by Apple Inc. It is an application that is associated with health informatics, which holds information about blood pressure, blood glucose levels, exercise tracking data such as step counts, and more. The app stores four categories of data such as nutrition, activity, mindfulness, and sleep. The profile of users in the Health app is called the “Medical ID”.
Health app lacked certain features when released with iOS 8. They mainly include incompatibility with third-party apps, poor app performance, improper health information explanation, and more. Later, they were rectified by a software update. The app was made to improve its performance by providing upgrades in the upcoming years. They are,
To learn more about the recent updates on the Apple Health app kindly visit, iOS 13 which brings new features to Apple Health App.
Apple HealthKit
Apple HealthKit is an integrated healthcare API introduced in iOS SDK. The API is used by the software builders to develop apps that can coordinate with the health and fitness apps on iPhones and Apple watches. Its logo consists of a white-colored icon with a heart in its center. It enables the users to store data related to the medical, healthcare, and well-being of an individual on the iPhones and allows him/her to access it. It stores the users’ information such as blood pressure level, sleep level, body weight, glucose level, and more. It helps diagnose a user’s level of health and also assists in providing transparent communication between doctors and patients. With the permission of a user, apps on the iPhone communicate with it and access the user’s data while maintaining the security and privacy of the user’s sensitive information. With this app, you can select the task in which you are interested in doing. For example, you can select weight-tracking, pressure level checking, or step-counting from a bunch of tasks available on that app and start doing them. Since the app exchanges your data with your permission, you can easily customize the tasks according to your needs.
Benefits
The Health app makes it easier to keep everything about your health and fitness organized and can be accessed from one place. As it can integrate with the other fitness and healthcare apps, you can view your progress easily. The Healthkit app integrates with other fitness and healthcare apps such as beddit, breathometer, heartbeats, and more. There are so many benefits of using this Health App, both on a long-term basis and in your daily life. Some of them are,
HealthKit shares its data also with the fertility tracking apps such as Clue and Ovia.
Apple HealthKit works with numerous hospitals in the USA to improve the proper monitoring of patients’ records. Besides these, it integrates with multiple third-party health apps allowing users to get in touch with their health status. Some of them are,
Design
To know more about the HealthKit’s Design, please visit HealthKit – Human Interface Guidelines – Apple Developer.
Apple’s Ecosystem
Apple lets its users store and track their information in one platform and conveniently access them. For this purpose, it has three products- Healthkit, Researchkit, and Carekit. These three apps form an ecosystem to work with various types of data.
HealthKit DataTypes
HealthKit provides developers variety of data types which is identified by the HKObjectType subclasses. For a simpler understanding of data, they have been divided into vitamins, vital signs, body measurements, minerals, and hydration. The different data types are:
HKSeriesType Includes a series of data (for example, data of heartbeat series)
Privacy is a key
Apple aims to provide constant monitoring of the users’ health information via Apple devices in new ways and to connect directly to the EHRs. The app lets you access all your data from a single device. Your information is restricted under Apple’s privacy policy and is encrypted during their storage on iCloud. It is always recommended to review the policies before letting the apps access your sensitive data. iPhones provide Touch ID and Face ID to the users to ensure safe data transfer between the devices.
Future of the Fitness Apps
These fitness apps created a revolution in fitness and healthcare digitally. They eliminate the need for an individual to approach the hospital to give samples to identify their blood sugar levels, pressure levels and to wait for a long time to receive reports in this rapidly moving world.
These apps provide an accurate calculation of data that enables the reduction of risks related to health and life. These apps also provide benefits for the developers as they collect an enormous amount of data which can boost the functionality of future apps.
We nowadays use gadgets for most of our activities. We use them for social media, listening to music, and more. However using gadgets for our benefits, to improve our health, and to keep ourselves fit will be unavoidably compelling to lead a better life.
“We transform your idea into reality, reach out to us to discuss it.
Or wanna join our cool team email us at [email protected] or see careers at Startxlabs.”
Google fit is a platform for accumulating and tracking fitness-related information. It lets us develop apps and devices in which the data related to our health and fitness can be shared between them. It eliminates the need to manually transferring the data between apps and devices. Google fit mainly focuses on collecting fitness-related data. The Google Fit SDK was established in the year 2014. Later in 2019, it was also made to be available in 2019.
Healthcare projects
Google also focuses on working with healthcare projects such as Google Health and Cloud Healthcare API, which are aimed to provide healthcare facilities. Google Health project involves the use of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning techniques to help medical workers. It was also successful in predicting lung and breast cancer by its accurate diagnosis with the help of AI. Data transfer between the healthcare apps built on Google Cloud is ensured by the Cloud HealthCare API. It also assists in managing input data and provides efficient analysis through Machine learning.
Benefits
To know more about the benefits of Google Fit, please visit A guide to Google’s versatile fitness-tracking app.
Partnerships
Google Fit integrates with other third-party apps that provide healthcare facilities.
Google Fit integrates with more than 75 popular apps that are related to nutrition, sleep, and fitness. Some of the apps that are benefited using Google Fit include,
By 2018, WHO also made itself a partner to Google Fit and launched a global action plan for physical activities.
Visit Connect other apps with Google Fit to learn more about connecting other apps with Google Fit.
The Google Fit Platform
Google Fit platform offers an effective user interface to the users and gives a user-friendly experience. It uses sensors to track the user’s activities such as biking, walking, or running through the device. It helps to keep track of your weight-loss plan and fitness goals over days, weeks, and months. The app can also be accessed from Android watches and the Google website. It needs your permission to access your location and activity information to track your progress. In this app, you can set your goal according to your wish by tapping on the Daily Goals. It is an interactive app that integrates with third-party fitness apps such as Strava, Runtastic, Runkeeper, Withings to get your data in one place.
The SDK provides different components for building mobile and web applications. They are:
Read our article on Apple Healthkit – Everything you need to know about
Google Fit App
You can follow your walks, runs, bicycle rides, and more on Google Fit. Check the number of steps you took and perceive how long you rode your bicycle, played soccer, or went skiing. Few of the features mentioned below –
Fitness Data
Google Fit stores four categories of data. They need the user’s permission to store and access these data. They are:
Some of the other data known as restricted health data types are sensitive data and need API verification to be accessed. They are
Privacy and Security
Google Fit ensures both the privacy and security of users’ sensitive personal information while enabling the users to track their progress accurately. It ensures privacy by letting the user decide whether the app can access their particular information.
It also lets you delete your entire history in the app if you’re not comfortable with the app. Google Fit API lets you find users’ new insights that are shared with you. These insights are helpful in building useful features to have a healthier life.
“We transform your idea into reality, reach out to us to discuss it.
Or wanna join our cool team email us at [email protected] or see careers at Startxlabs.”
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language that has many applications in web development, data science, software development, and more. It was initially released in the year 1991. Programming in Python involves simple syntax and it works on different platforms such as Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. In this article, we will discuss the Python functions.
Python Functions
A function is a set of related statements written to perform a specific task when it is called. It can take parameters and return a result. It is efficient to use several functions inside a program to perform specific tasks rather than merely writing a large program that performs the entire tasks. Functions are reusable and make the program easy to understand.
Syntax of Python Functions
A simple python function appears like
def func_name(parameters):
/* function statements */
return result
The syntax of a Python function can be defined as follows:
For example
def my_name(name):
" " " This function displays my name" " "
print("My name is" +name)
Function call
A function can be called in any part of the program or inside another function, by passing appropriate parameters to it.
>>>my_name('John')
My name is John
If you want to print the docstring of the function, you can print it by using,
>>>print(my_name._doc_)
This function displays my name
Return Statement
The ‘return’ statement is placed at the end of the function that returns either data of a specific type or the evaluated result of an expression. If there is no return statement specified as in the above example function, it returns nothing, or to be more precise, a none object is returned.
def sum(num1, num2):
" " " This function adds two numbers " " "
return num1+num2
print(sum(2,3))
Scope of variables and Lifetime
The availability of a variable whether inside or outside of a function is called its scope. A variable declared inside a function has recognition only inside the function and has no scope outside the function. Such variables are called the local variable. A variable declared on the python program (outside a function) is called a global variable and has a scope on the entire code and also inside the functions. You can also make a local variable global by adding the keyword “global” before the variable name.
Lifetime is the period of a variable that has its existence in memory. Variables declared within the function get destroyed when the function completes its execution. However, the global variables persist as long as the entire program is in execution.
We can see an example for local and global variables
def func1():
a=5 //local variable
return a
b=10 //global variable
c=func1()+b //function call
print("Value=" +c)
Output
15
def func1():
a=5 //local variable
return a
b=10 //global variable
c=func1()+b+a //function call
print("Value=" +c)
If you try executing this function it will show an error message like “name ‘a’ is not defined” as we used the variable outside its scope.
There is also another variable called non-local variables that are used within the nested functions. The non-local variables are declared using the ‘nonlocal’ keyword.
There are two types of functions available in Python. They are:
Types of Function Arguments
The values passed to the function as parameters are called the function arguments. There are two types of arguments. They are
For example,
def func1(num1,num2):
return num1+num2
func1(4) /* throws an error as the number of parameters during the function call is not equal to the number of parameters in the declaration */
def func1(num1=5,num2):
return num1+num2
func1(4)
func1(4,10)
Output
9
14
The function func1 has two arguments, one with the default value and another without any default value. It is mandatory to pass value to the num2 during every function call but passing a value to num1 is optional as it already has a default value and both the function calls will not throw any error here.
def func1(num1,num2):
return num1-num2
func1(num1=7,num2=6)
func1(num2=10,num1=17)
Output
1
7
def students(*stud_names):
print("The students are:")
for name in stud_names
print(name)
students("John","Mary","Harry")
Output
The students are:
John
Mary
Harry
Here we don’t know the number of arguments we are going to pass during the function call, so we use a for loop for retrieval of the values of arguments.
Python Recursive Functions
A recursive function is a function which calls itself during execution.
for example,
def factorial(num):
if num == 1:
return 1
else:
return (num * factorial(num-1))
number = 5
print("The factorial of", number, "is", factorial(number))
Sometimes it is hard to write a function only using iterations. There we can use recursive functions which are comparatively easier than iterative functions. However, sometimes for complex operations, recursive logic may be hard to understand.
Anonymous Function (Lambda Functions)
So far we have seen functions declared with a name followed by the def keyword. It is also possible to declare functions without a function name by using the lambda keyword and such functions are called the anonymous functions or the lambda functions. They are also used with some of the python built-in functions such as filter() and map().
The syntax of an anonymous function is
lambda arguments: expression
Arguments can be of any number, but there should be only one expression
int = lambda a: a + 5
print(int(10))
Output
15
In this article, we’ve learned about the functions in python, how to declare them, how to define them, the variables’ scope, their lifetime, types of arguments, and also the anonymous functions.
“We transform your idea into reality, reach out to us to discuss it.
Or wanna join our cool team email us at [email protected] or see careers at Startxlabs.”
A website you build will be browsed using different types of browsers by different people across the world. Each browser has its different versions. So if you need your website to be successfully browsed by people without any inconvenience, it should be compatible with different versions of the different browsers. What makes the website incompatible? There are so many issues every developer faces while developing a website that makes it incompatible with the browsers. In this article, we will discuss the 7 common cross-browser issues faced by the developers.
HTML or CSS Code Specific Errors
Cross-browser testing involves the proper validation of HTML and CSS codes. Invalid codes can be a major problem during the testing. Cross-browser testing expects valid codes since different browsers are going to read and handle them. Developers may have a possibility of making very negligible errors as simple as not closing the tags. Some browsers may auto-correct this, but some browsers cannot. Browsers such as Firefox and Chrome can detect such issues and can resolve them, but some other browsers cannot resolve such issues by themselves.
There are certain issues that are not considered errors, but they behave differently with different browsers. That’s why we should be careful while writing our code. Such kind of issues is discussed below.
<object data="smiley.svg"></object>
Validation of HTML involves ensuring whether all the tags are properly closed, whether the tags are used correctly according to their purpose, whether DOCTYPE is used, and more. CSS Validation is also the same, whether property names and values are properly spelled, whether curly braces are correctly matched, and so on. To resolve this issue, it is always recommended to use HTML and CSS code validating tools such as W3C HTML Validator and Jigsaw CSS Validator.
Unavailable CSS Resets
Every browser possesses a specific design layout or some basic styles of CSS that is imposed on the website when opened in it, by default. So, if a website wants to use its specific layout, then it has to override the already available, default layout. Otherwise, the website will be rendered in a different way that depends upon the currently used browser. So, to avoid this a CSS reset style sheet can be used on your web page to ensure whether the browser you are using starts its rendering with the same set of basic rules. Some of the commonly used CSS reset style sheets are HTML5Reset, Eric Meyers CSS Reset, and Normalize.css. Twitter Bootstrapped and many other famous front-end frameworks don’t need an external reset as they already have a reset with them.
Read our article on Getting started with React Native Flexbox Layout
Vendor-Specific Styles
Each browser has its specific CSS style based on the vendor. Whenever the browser tries to introduce a new CSS feature, it will be coded based on the vendor-specific style. It is essential to avoid the issues of cross-browser compatibility. Different prefixes are used for different browsers to enable the browser vendors to apply their version of the CSS feature. Some of the prefixes are,
Production websites are never supposed to use prefixed features and they can change or remove without giving any warning and thus results in cross-browser issues. Always be careful while using the prefixed features and make sure whether you are using the correct prefix for a particular browser. You can check the specified prefixes for the browsers on websites like caniuse.com. A simple way to solve this issue is by attaching a prefix-free JavaScript Library to your webpage as it will automatically detect the browsers and add the prefixes accordingly. It can also be resolved by adding prefixes automatically in the process of development, by using tools like PostCSS and Autoprefixer.
Incompatible Layouts
By implementing CSS Resets, it is possible to remove the default browser designs and to apply our designs. However, this can result in compatibility issues because of adding a non-responsive design (doesn’t looking good in mobile browsers) or because of the inability of certain browsers or their versions to support certain layouts. Layout features don’t provide efficient fallbacks because of simple colors, gradients, or shadows. However, ignoring them completely will make your entire design fall down. It is suggested to use tools like CSS grids and Flexbox when you are working with modern layouts for your website. Most of the modern browsers of today’s age extend their support to these tools and are most effective to use by developers.
It is always recommended to use feature detection as it can detect whether a browser can support the layout features you are going to use. You should be careful while selecting the layout features according to the result you are expecting. For implementing feature detection tests, we can use @supports, a newly introduced feature in CSS.
DOCTYPE Error
As we know, the very first line in every HTML document will be the Doctype-!DOCTYPE HTML. Missing this single line can determine your entire website. This line determines whether your website will be cleanly rendered or strangely rendered. Whenever a browser behaves differently, make sure to check your Doctype, because missing it may result in faulty rendering.
Generally, a browser operates in two ways or modes. They are Strict Mode and Quirks Mode. Strict Mode performs stricter code checks according to the W3C standards and Quirks Mode doesn’t perform such stricter error checks. Whenever an HTML document misses the doctype line, the browser will go into Quirks Mode. For example, Internet Explorer will go into Quirks mode when it fails to encounter the DOCTYPE and it would have its own web standards in a quite different way. This results in making the webpage display incorrectly and makes some of the tags become unresponsive.
These are the five most common cross-browser issues every developer faces. Apart from these issues, always make sure to check whether the browser is outdated.
Cross-browser Testing
Cross-browser testing is essential to check whether your web apps and websites run efficiently on different browsers. Websites have to undergo cross-browser testing, in order to be browsed without any compatibility issues on different browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Edge, and Safari and on different OS combinations.
Cross-browser testing enables you to specifically find out the errors and issues on your website and let you debug those errors quickly. There are two ways of performing cross-browser testing. They are manual testing and online testing. Manual testing involves testing the websites manually on all browsers. For that, you need different browsers to be installed on your device. This process consumes a lot of time and sometimes it is inefficient because of different versions of the browsers.
Another yet powerful method is testing through tools available online. This method involves testing the website on an online testing tool that has different browsers along with different versions on their servers. This method saves your time as well your effort and money and makes the testing process simple. There are some tools available online to test your website for cross-browser compatibility. One such tool is the Lambda test.
LambdaTest is an online cross-browser compatibility testing tool, that allows your website to be tested across locally or publicly hosted websites and on more than 2000 mobiles and browsers running on a real OS. It also lets you debug codes using the integrated debug tools in real-time. LambdaTest provides a lot of features along with browser testing such as,
LambdaTest also allows integration with third-party apps. This tool remains helpful for many to test their websites and to improve the performance of their websites and web applications.
TestingBot is another online tool that provides testing on more than 2300 browsers and devices in the cloud. This tool allows both manual and automated testing to test your websites and applications. TestingBot provides features such as
Testing on Real Devices
The last and essential thing to do is to test your website on real machines for compatibility issues. The website should be tested on real devices with real browsers by real users. Your website will be tested using the native features of a device only by testing it on the real devices and also provides a realistic environment for testing.
Features such as screen resolutions, hardware features like Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, and push notifications can be tested quickly as the testing is performed in real-time using the real devices.
“We transform your idea into reality, reach out to us to discuss it.
Or wanna join our cool team email us at [email protected] or see careers at Startxlabs.”
Building a mobile app for your business is essential in this modern era, right? Then what next? Developing an app on your budget is doubtful. It’s never cheap! However, it is critical to promote your business to the next level by creating a mobile app. So, what can we do to develop an app that best fits your business, at the same time on a limited budget? In this article, we will discuss some important tips that help you develop a mobile app that is cost-effective, and on your estimated budget.
Clear objectives and Resources
You can have a variety of reasons to build an app for your brand. However, you should clear with them. There may be different features and strategies you can have or use in your application. What am I going to build an application for? What is my plan for implementing this? What are my and my user’s expectations about this app? Be clear about all these questions before starting to developing your app. If you’re strong with your plan, then developing the app within the estimated time and budget will be a less constrained job for you.
Always have a well-defined plan for your app and start working according to that. Have a clear estimate on the expenses for both development and marketing. Make sure you allocate your time and budget for advertising and linking on social media, to make your application stand unique in the crowd!
Try an MVP
One of the best things to do before developing a fully functional app is to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It is the best alternative product, which offers minimal features essential for release and testing, and lets your targeted audience provide your feedback, suggestions, and reviews before going to develop your main application. MVP is a cost-effective prototype and can be built within a short span of time.
The main purpose of creating an MVP is to learn about the functionalities of your fully-featured app and gain knowledge about your final product. Applying the necessary changes you learned from analyzing your MVP to your final product results in a better functioning app with enhanced performance and with a limited budget. It is necessary to have a clear objective and understanding of the requirements of your business application. This will help you to efficiently utilize the MVP to get a great application for your business.
Read our blog on Why is React Native the best for Mobile App Development?
Selecting the Right Platform
If you’re aiming to release a mobile application on a limited budget, it is always good to go with a single platform. Aiming to build an app for all platforms at the first stage itself, will be too expensive for all. Without knowing how your main application will look like, how it will perform, it is not a good thing to develop it for all platforms. You should be clear about which platform you’re going to develop your app for. Developing an app for androids will be expensive as there are plenty of Android devices available nowadays, with different screen sizes and versions.
However, iOS has a limited number of devices with a specific range. For example, successful apps like Instagram, Foursquare aimed in building for only platform iOS, and after achieving huge success, they transformed their apps to be also available on the Android platform. Pick a platform, develop an app specifically for that platform, analyze your app’s performance, features and flaws, then transform it to be available on multiple platforms in the future.
Make a simple design
Keep your app’s design simple and hassle-free to navigate, attract users, and save your money. Your app should be more clear for the users to understand what you’re offering for them. Simpler apps save your time, and won’t require much graphics and animation. However, try to give a neat and decent UI for your clients. If you aim to build a cost-effective app and also to achieve user satisfaction, keep your app less complicated to interact with.
Read our blog Top 8 products benefited by using React Native
Team and Partnership
Creating an app individually for your business doesn’t sound right. You will need a team to work towards developing an efficient app for your business. Either hiring experienced app developers or giving your project to an app development company will help you achieve this. Again, hiring experienced developers will not be a cost-effective option for development. Be smart and choose according to your business requirements.
A partner who offers the best support while app development is appreciable. Partnerships with a freelancer, an organization, or an entrepreneur can be made to get support for your app development process. Getting support from people who are already well-established or experienced in your field will definitely help you in achieving success.
These are some of the useful tips you can follow while developing a cost-effective app for your business. It is always recommended to hire a mobile application developing company that best suits your requirements and budget. Always be clear about your financial restrictions to the company and your business needs.
“We transform your idea into reality, reach out to us to discuss it.
Or wanna join our cool team email us at [email protected] or see careers at Startxlabs.”