Big screen viewing is booming worldwide, but developing a cohesive, user-centric user experience that works on multiple different devices can be a real challenge. You want users to feel they’re getting a consistent experience whether they’re watching on mobile. PC or Smart TV, but you also want your apps to be optimized for each of these device types. Balancing compatibility, performance and user engagement is complex but essential for success in video application development.
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With over a decade of expertise in designing and developing beautiful and performant TV user interfaces, Wiztivi’s specialists understand better than anyone how to achieve these goals. We have shipped hundreds of successful applications and we’ve developed our DANA Framework to address the challenges of TV app development.
So, let’s look at what makes DANA so useful:
The DANA Framework is the only SaaS Framework for cross-platform native video application development. Its built-in test and benchmark suite enables developers to create high-quality apps for all platforms, so you can benefit from Wiztivi’s years of cross-platform development experience while still building your apps in-house.
There’s no need to delve into a new esoteric language to build an application with the DANA Framework. If your developers are proficient in creating websites, they can seamlessly implement your application with DANA: JavaScript is all you need. We've simplified the process by using specific JavaScript runtimes (such as node, v8, JSC, Chakra, etc.) for each platform, allowing developers to leverage their JS existing skills. Additionally, we've developed modules on top of these engines to accelerate application development and grant access to platform-specific information. On a Samsung Smart TV, developers can use the Samsung API. Similarly, on Android TV, access to Android system information is available, all within the realm of JavaScript.
In addition to the engine, the DANA Framework provides a renderer for each platform, intended to display elements on the screen. Our concept is straightforward: on TV, every visual element consists of text, images and shapes (more precisely, rectangles). We refer to these three basic elements as "primitives." If you understand how to render these primitives on a device, you can display a user interface. The DANA Framework uses the rendering technology of the platform to maximize efficiency.
4. DANA Framework: one codebase, 10+ platform deployment
What is the biggest benefit of using a cross-platform framework? Reduced complexity. If you develop an application with the DANA Framework, you can deploy it across all supported platforms (see below) using just one JavaScript codebase. With this approach, you can reuse up to 95% of your code between platforms, saving time and effort in development.
For each platform, you just need to declare a specific profile and run the command. The DANA Framework will take care of the rest for you.
And if you ever need a specific behaviour for a device, you can create a dedicated vendor to meet your needs.
A TV application will always need to integrate a video player, which can be a challenging and time-consuming part of the development process. Each platform has its own specific player, each with its own unique behaviours and complexity. The DANA Framework simplifies this process by offering presets for your players and a unified API to manage all different players simultaneously.
Desktop UIs are mouse-driven, mobile UIs are touch-driven, and TV UIs are remote control-driven. You’ll want all the components in your app to be controllable in all three scenarios. The DANA Framework offers all the necessary user interface components to build your TV application: lists, rails, long text, tiles, marquee, and more, with easy management of user input. It also provides hooks to manage device-specific remotes, such as LG's magic remote. And if all of this is not enough, you can build your own components on top of those provided by DANA.
Nothing in the TV world stands still for long, and you’ll want the flexibility to enhance the user experience in the future or develop custom native components that make your UI stand out from the competition. You will undoubtedly also want to support new platforms as they emerge. It’s easy to achieve these goals by extending the DANA platform to incorporate native code that meets your feature requirements. But it’s worth knowing that the DANA Framework also grants access to native components such as rails and input, ensuring users feel right at home.
Ready to elevate your TV application development? The DANA Framework offers a streamlined, powerful solution for building applications across various platforms. To fully appreciate the capabilities and advantages of DANA, we invite you to schedule a demo today. Experience firsthand how DANA can transform your development process and help you deliver outstanding TV applications tailored to your needs. Contact us to discover more and take the first step towards optimizing your development strategy with the DANA Framework.