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Month: January 2019

Design & Develop Samsung SMART TV App

How To Design and Develop Samsung SMART TV App?

Generic, SMART TV APP DEVELOPMENT / By

The Samsung Smart TV Applications can be easily created with the tools provided by them. All the tools are provided by Samsung in order to manage the created application’s entire lifecycle. The step-by-step process includes the product conception, then the development process, and the release of the application. 

The developers need to have good knowledge of the JavaScript language, means of creating, customizing, and calling the components. As a first step, they should understand the requirements from the users, the purpose of the Samsung TV app development, and how it should serve the targeted end-users.

This blog will walk you through the designing and developing process of Samsung SMART TV apps.

Table of Content
1. Introduction
2. Planning and Designing of the Samsung SMART TV Application
3. JavaScript
4. The latest UI concept for the development of Samsung SMART TV application
4.1 Initialization of the UI Components
4.2 Customizing the UI Components
4.3 Implementation of the Code
5. Designing and the creation of the UI of the application followed by coding of applications
6. Debugging and Testing of the designed application
6.1 Debugging of the application
6.2 Testing of the application
7. The Packaging and Launching of the applications
8. Conclusion

Introduction

The following are the major steps involved in the development of the Samsung TV application:

  • The planning and designing of the application with its intuitive User Interface.
  • Implementation of the Code.
  • Debugging and testing of the application.
  • Packaging and finally launching the application.

This article is an introduction to the developing applications for the Samsung TV. You will need to enable the developer mode on your Samsung Smart TV. This can be done by switching on the TV, opening the smart hub, and then the apps panel.

So, let’s hop in!

Planning and Designing of the Samsung SMART TV Application

How to Create Smart TV App

The foremost step in developing the Samsung Smart TV application involves deep planning with regard to the purpose of the application and the targeted end-users. It is necessary for the developers to design the application with an extensive set of features with an intriguing UI. 

Samsung provides the developers with the tools needed to develop the SmartTV application’s UI and navigation. Once the SDK (Software Development Kit) is downloaded and set up initially, the environment is completely set up for creating the Samsung TV Application.

Samsung TV App Development

Developers need to consider the following during the planning and development of the application. This will ensure a steady process during the development of the application:

  • A clear interpretation of the requirements and needs of the users in the environment of the  Smart TV.
  • The extensive set of features and the capabilities of the Samsung TV APIs (Application Programming Interface). The development of the app starts with the creation of the JavaScript application.

JavaScript

There are plenty of (JavaScript) APIs that help the users in providing complete control over the application processes while developing the web-based apps for the SmartTV. The JavaScript APIs includes an extensive range of features including:

  • Input Control.
  • All Share.
  • The Convergence.
  • Smart Interaction.
  • UI and Accessory.
  • The use of Input Method Editor (IME).
  • Advertisement and the managing of the applications.

Developers can develop a simple Samsung Smart TV application using JavaScript, CSS ( Cascading Style Sheets), and HTML. The general files required to develop the application would be as follows:

  • Writing the configuration for the application, config.xml file.
  • Writing the index file for the application, index.html file.
  • Writing the JavaScript file for the Samsung SmartTV application.
  • Writing a CSS file and ensuring the application responds perfectly to the behaviors of the remote control.

The latest UI concept for the development of Samsung SMART TV application

The developers must remember that an intuitive and intriguing user interface is very much required for excellent user experience during the usage of the Samsung SmartTV application. The developer must consider the following while designing the user interface:

Initialization of the UI Components:

Generally, if the first parameter is of an object type, then the UI component must be initialized. In this step, the UI components get initialized. The UI API helps in achieving a good user experience easily.  

The various UI components use the JQuery library and many related UI plugins. In order to use the UI components, the HTML elements must be chosen on which the UI component must be created. 

The next step would be to call the UI component API method. The basic structure and design of the UI components involve HTML and CSS. You could notice how the structure and style of the component are designed along with the initialization code. 

The developer needs to ensure that the UI component methods are called only if the type of the first parameter is of String type. You can also notice a range of UI Components API methods.

Customizing the UI Components:

The UI components can be easily customized by ensuring the following steps are done. They include rendering an HTML from the UI components, customization of all components present in the application. The next step would be to define the class for the customization of the components.

Implementation of the Code

Developers must ensure the following two steps are done before beginning with the implementation of the Samsung Smart TV application.

  • The Samsung Smart TV must be connected to a stable Internet connection.

    A stable internet connection is compulsorily required for the designed SmartTV applications to run successfully with all the functionalities destined by the developers.
  • The presence of the Samsung Smart TV Apps SDK along with the text editor for the creation of the HTML, CSS as well as JavaScript files. 

    The SDK provided by Samsung is equipped with a multi-functional emulator by means of which the application can be tested easily. With the help of the emulator, the app can be tested before installing it on the TV, making the development of the SmartTV applications much easier with the help of the SDK.

Designing and the creation of the UI of the application followed by coding of applications

The JavaScript API, as well as the UI Component API, can be used for developing a very interesting user interface. The SDK provided by Samsung would consist of the ‘WYSIWYG’ tool for the designing of the UI components. ( i.e the ‘What You See is What You Get’ tool).

The coding of the application will involve the writing of the code needed to run the application. The entire structure and the code format would be completely dependent upon the purpose of the application and the type of the application required by the end-users. 

You will need to have a very deep understanding of the JavaScript language to get a stronghold on the methods available and the components that can be called. Flash is also widely used while creating applications. You can also know more about how the JavaScript Application can be created.

Debugging and Testing of the designed application

Debugging of the application

The debugging of the application can be involved by using the JS debugger tool that is provided along with the SDK. With the help of this, the developers can easily set the breakpoints and track the performance of the code at the various breakpoints. The general debugging process of the designed SmartTV application involves the following process.

  • The developer needs to debug the application with the help of the JS debugger tool and the emulator provided with the SDK. The application designed generally tends to perform much better on the actual TV, but the execution control is provided to the developer by the emulator.
  • Once you are done debugging your designed application with the emulator, you can proceed with the debugging on the actual TV.

Testing of the Application

The testing of the designed SmartTV application can be done first with the help of the SDK emulator and then the Samsung TV. 

The emulator enables the developers to witness the changes to the results of the code then and then as the change to the code is done. This greatly helps in the enabling of the incremental development of the designed application. 

You will have to remember that the emulator will not be providing an exact simulation of the television set.

Running the designed application on the television set will help the developers to get the feel of how the application runs in a real-time environment thereby enabling easy testing means. 

In the TV environment, you will be noticing a wide set of differences from the emulator that includes, less memory in TV, certain remote actions only get allocated to the application, the different behaviors of the video and audio playback, and the browser behaviors. You can also know more about the step-by-step process involved in testing the application on the television.

The Packaging and Launching of the applications

Once the application is successfully debugged and tested on both the emulator and the television set, developers then need to wrap the application and make it ready for launch. 

The packaging of the application can be done easily with the help of the SDK. Once the developed application is packaged well, you will need to register it and launch it on the Samsung Apps. 

It is a boon that the Samsung Apps provides all types of really convenient tools in order to manage the application along with its functionalities successfully. The registration and the launch of the application use the Samsung Apps Seller Office.

Once the developer has successfully launched their Samsung TV application, they are provided with the ability to upgrade the application as well as completely remove the application they developed. 

There might be situations where the developer will have to remove the application entirely from the Samsung Apps which can be done by means of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.

Conclusion

After going through this blog, we hope you will find it helpful. Now, you, as a Samsung SMART TV app developer, can now design and develop your own intuitive applications. Smart TV users are growing at a rapid velocity and this would be the ideal time for you to hop into the Samsung SMART TV app development process. Please provide your valuable feedback in the comment section below.

How to Design and Develop Roku Application

How to Design and Develop Roku Application

Generic, SMART TV APP DEVELOPMENT / By

Development for Roku TV Applications are very challenging, and each development company typically uses its own unique way of application development, It depends on the developer how highly experienced he or she is.

4 Way Technologies has the most highly experienced Roku TV application developers worldwide, This is the main reason behind the success of 4 Way Technologies in Roku TV application Development.

Roku is easily considered as the leading streaming player that is available to people. Many people find Roku to be very interesting owing to its extensive range of cool features. It enables people to stream any audio or video content by means of the Internet.

While developing the Roku application one must ensure that there is easy navigation for the people with an extensive set of interesting functionalities provided. Roku Developers must take care of the intuitive user interfaces and the other features that would eventually make the Roku application look awesome.

Table of Contents
1. Quick Summary
2. Roku TV Application Design and Development
2.1. Writing the BrightScript Application
2.2. Development of Screens
2.3. Packaging the code content to ZIP file and working on the UI functionalities
2.4. Deploying the Roku application
2.5. Debugging the Roku application
3. Conclusion

Quick Summary

The Roku Software Development Kit (SDK) will be using the BrightScript programming language for development purposes. The Roku applications are designed to serve as standalone entities. The Roku SDK services include networking, user interface, video playback as well as data management. Many built-in elements are present for people to develop their Roku application from the BrightScript language.

In this article, we have explained the designing and development process of Roku applications.

Here we go!

Roku TV Application Design and Development

The objects that are present in the Roku SDK can be classified into two different types of Objects:

  • The Core Objects: These core objects can be considered as the most primary basic objects present on all of the Roku platforms and are completely independent of the device.
  • Platform Objects: These objects are platform-dependent like the famous Roku Streaming player.

The basic architecture of a Roku application would be a stack-like structure as shown below which depicts more about the BrightScript virtual machine, engine as well as components.

Roku Application shell

The major steps involved in developing the applications for Roku includes the following:

  1. Writing the BrightScript Application.
  2. Packaging the written BrightScript Application and all the related resource files.
  3. Finally deploying the packaged content.
  4. Debugging the Roku application.

Writing the BrightScript Application

The root level of the Roku application would be its manifest file. The manifest file must contain the important attributes. This file must be UTF-8 encoded. Some information required in the manifest file includes the Roku channels icon, splash screen photo file, the name as well as the version number of the application.

You will have to know more about the structure, required, and optional attributes for the manifest file here. There are certain rules for the manifest files, some of the most important are as follows:

  1. Compulsorily the last line must end with a newline character and the comment lines are ignored. The attribute provided in the manifest file must be in the form of name=value.
  2. The graphics or the image files provided in the manifest file must be present in the images directory for sure.
  3. The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) needed to set the path to the files must use the format- pkg: resource prefix.

A Sample for the channel manifest would be as follows:

Development of roku screen

Development of Screens

During the development of the Roku application, you will have the need to develop different screens for the app. A lot of built-in type screens are made available like the Springboard Screen or the roPosterScreen. The Screen is created by CreateObject(), then you will have to define the contents and use the Show() method to display the contents.

You can create any number of screens for your applications. The screen that is created for display gets placed at the top of the screen stack. All the other lower screens are hidden from the users. Once this concept of screen stack is understood well you could design the screen very well. A screen gets closed when the object of the screen gets totally unreferenced.

The below is a sample of how the BrightScript project is created.

The Code Structure: The best way to code using the BrightScript application for developing your Roku application is to have a neat code structure. The best practice would be to have separate functions for each screen of the Roku application. These functions will have to create a new screen, a message port, setting up and displaying the screen. It should also drive the event loop. The screens can also be explicitly closed by calling the method Close().

Events

We will need to design the operations or the functionalities that have to take place after an event happens. In Roku, the most common events include the remote button press, on-screen press, say a video that has completed playing back. You will have to code the event loop for the event interactions which is of the below format in the BrightScript Language.

while true

‘ wait for an event

‘ process the event

end while

You will have to develop the scripts for the Roku application. The script developed must have a structure like below:

  1. Most importantly, the script creates a BrightScript Component of type “roMessagePort”.
  2. The message port SetMessagePort() gets the events by the various BrightScript components. These components are instructed by the script to send the events to the port.
  3. Script also does the waiting functionality, you will have to write the function for ifMessagePort.WaitMessage() to handle this waiting process for the events to be sent to the message port

Packaging the code content to ZIP file and working on the UI functionalities

While developing the Roku application, packaging involves having a structured ZIP file. The various functionalities of the user interface present in the SDK include the following:

  1. The top-level menu for the launch screen of the applications.
  2. The PIN Entry screen for the verification screen.
  3. Username or the password screen.
  4. Search screen for searching through the Roku application.

Some of the other user interface functionalities include the filter widget for filtering out choices, the error dialog boxes and the springboard for screens with detailed instructions.

Additionally, the Roku SDK helps the Roku developers by providing a completely separate event model for the interaction to take place.

The best part is that the UI elements will be handling all of the navigation commands. For example, the scrolling or the screen to screen navigation gets completely handled by the UI objects which eventually makes it easier for the users while handling the Roku application.

Deploying the Roku application

The next step would be to load and run the Rokku application that you have developed. For the deployment process, tools are provided to ensure that the BrightScript application and the resource files are completely signed and encrypted. These tools ensure that during the deployment process, the Roku developers find the encrypted application package. 

The application developed gets loaded during the runtime. On selection of the application by the user, the scripts get loaded and the entire control gets transferred to the application. When the user exits the application, the scripts get paused and the control is pushed to the user interface.

In order to run the application on your Roku streaming device, you will have to enable the Development mode on the device. This can be only a linked device. The linking can be done by either performing the factory reset or jumping to the streaming channels on the device. You can enter the Roku TV Application development mode on your Roku device by pressing the following remote sequence:

Home button 3x, Up arrow 2x, Right arrow, Left arrow, Right arrow, Left arrow, Right arrow

These buttons must be pressed on your remote as many times it is mentioned within 10 seconds. Once you enable the development mode on the developer settings pages, you will be able to access the Application Installer page.

The developed Roku application gets loaded to the Roku device with the help of the web browser. You will have to perform the below steps to get access to the installer page for the developed Roku application:

  1. Navigate to your ‘Roku player settings’ menu, then reach out to the ‘player info’ tab. Here you will find the IP address of the Roku device.
  2. Open the web browser and type in the URL http: //rokuPlayer-ip-address and then click the browse button.
  3. Now you will need to navigate to the location where the application in the form of the ZIP file is present. The entire path to the application ZIP file present on your development machine must be present.
  4. You should then press the Install button in order to deploy the developed Roku application to your Roku device.
  5. You can now run the application with the debug console option. Only applications with the ZIP file format (.zip) are allowed.
Roku App deployment

Debugging the Roku application

Debugging the developed Roku application is very crucial. This can be made possible with the help of the debug console. The console will be providing more information into the runtime development environment. One can know about the general logs and stack traces.

If the BrightScript code for the application is written in the eclipse, you can easily access the debug console. The most famous Roku Plugin for Eclipse contains an easy-to-use built-in console that has access to the various ports. 

The important debug ports are 8080, 8085, 8087. Port 8080 is the debug server that contains lots of utilities; the 8085 is the BrightScript console for the runtime environment. The port 8087 would serve as the starting point for screensavers.

It is very crucial for the Roku developers to possess in-depth knowledge about the development of the Roku application. They should foremost ensure that the developer mode is turned ‘on’ on the Roku streaming device. The entire application must be only in ZIP file format. With the proper resources and the presence of a debug console one can easily develop a very good Roku application.

Conclusion

After going through the above article, we hope this has been helpful to you for building your own Roku application. This guide will lead you to develop and design a robust Roku app even if you are on a beginner-level. Still, if you need any help, get in touch with 4 Way Technologies. We have worked with a number of top media brands across the world. We better know video inside and out, and glad to share our knowledge.

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