Using DropBox for Faster Mobile Development

[Scott Rossi]

This may already be old news, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case
this helps someone...  If you're already using your DropBox account to help
speed up your mobile development process, read no farther.

I've been developing stacks for iOS use on and off over the last year, and
have been annoyed with the bottleneck process of building standalones,
uploading them to the device, launching the test app on the device, finding
everything that doesn't work, and then starting the whole process over every
time I make a change.  Even using the simulator just takes too long and is
sometimes inaccurate compared to running on a real device.  So I wondered if
I could save some time using LC's "go url xyz..." ability to access a stack
remotely with DropBox.  And it actually works perfectly.

First I loaded my dev stack to my Public DropBox folder, and right-clicked
on the stack to get its DropBox address.

Then I built a simple mobile standalone that contains a single button with
the script:
 go url "http://dl.dropbox.com/path_to_my_stack.livecode"

After uploading the simple standalone *one time* to my mobile device, I
launch the simple standalone, press the button, and my dev stack appears on
my device within a couple of seconds.  With the original stack open on my
desktop system (saved in DropBox), I save any changes, relaunch the simple
standalone on the mobile device, and press the button to immediately see my
changes.  No uploading or file transfers are needed.  I do this for all the
mobile devices I want to test on -- as soon as I save the dev stack in my
DropBox, all my testing devices have immediate access to it.

I haven't tried this on Android yet, but I assume it will wok the same.
This process has saved me a significant amount of time and sanity -- maybe
it will for you.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX Design