Appendix B. Glossary
This glossary provides the list of the terminologies used in this book:
Accelerometer: This is a component of the device that detects movement.
Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS): This is the cloud service offering from Appcelerator. This service is integrated into the Titanium SDK.
Alloy: This is a framework designed for rapid development of Titanium apps. Visit http://docs.appcelerator.com/titanium/3.0/#!/guide/Alloy_Framework for more details.
Android: This is the mobile phone operating system developed by Google. Its open source nature has lead to device manufacturers modifying the code to suit them.
Android software development kit (SDK): The Android SDK includes a comprehensive set of development tools including a debugger, libraries, and a handset emulator.
Apple Push Notification Service (APNS): This is the service provided by Apple that controls the sending of push notifications to iOS devices.
Appcelerator: This is the company that created Titanium.
app.js: This is a file that lives in the
Resourcesdirectory. It is the entry point to your app.AppStore: This is an online store where people can download your apps. Apps can be free or paid. There is a single store for iOS controlled by Apple. On Android there are several stores from companies such as Google, Samsung, and Amazon.
Augmented reality: This is the process of adding computer imagery to a real-world image. A mobile device can create an immersive augmented reality experience via the camera, and accelerometer.
BlackBerry 10: This is the latest version of the mobile phone operating system developed by BlackBerry. Full support for this platform is planned for 2013.
Cross-platform: This is an app that can be run on different platforms. Titanium allows you to run your app on both Android, iOS, and BlackBerry.
Foreign exchange market (Forex): This is a market for trading of international currencies.
GCM: This is a push notification system for Android that is more akin to APNS.
Geolocation: This has the components in the mobile device that can determine the phone’s location to a configurable accuracy.
iOS: This is the mobile phone operating system developed by Apple. iPhones and iPads use iOS.
JavaScript: This is an interpreted computer language that is implemented with almost all modern browsers. It is included with all modern smartphones. Titanium uses the JavaScript interpreter to run your app. If you need to learn more about JavaScript, visit http://javascript.crockford.com.
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON): This is a text-based format for data interchange. It is an alternative to XML. It can be used to transmit information from the Web to your app and can also be used to transmit and store information within your app. It is used extensively throughout the book.
Model-View-Controller (MVC): This is a design methodology that promotes the separation of the solution between model, view, and controller elements. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS is a service model of cloud computing. In this model, the consumer creates the software using tools and/or libraries from the provider. The consumer also controls software deployment and configuration settings. The provider provides the networks, servers, storage, and other services.
RSS: This is a standardized XML format for publishing content. It is often seen on blogs and news sites where the user can subscribe to the RSS feed to keep abreast of the latest content.
Software development kit (SDK): This contains the libraries and emulators that allow you to compile your app and deploy it to a device. You will need the SDK of every platform you want your application to release to; iOS, Android, and Windows 8 all have their own SDKs.
SQLite: This is a database system that is installed on most smartphones and tablets. It is ideally suited to these devices due to its small size.
Tiapp.xml: This is the file that contains all of your compilation settings for the app. It lives in the root directory of your Titanium project.
Titanium: This is the cross-platform language used to create apps for phones and tablets.
Unique device identifier (UDID): For iOS this is a 40-digit code unique to the device. Android devices don’t have the same concept.
Windows 8: This is the mobile phone operating system developed by Microsoft. Appcelerator plan to support this platform from mid 2013.
YQL: This is a service from Yahoo!, which allows users to query web content as though they were querying a database. If you wished to get the weather forecast for Sunnyvale, California, you could enter the query
select * from weather.forecast where woeid=2502265. You can test queries and see examples by accessing the YQL developer console at http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/.
