Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners (Wiley and SAS Business Series)

by Scott McQuiggan

Compatibility with other apps and operating systems is another factor to consider. App smashing has become a regular, often discussed phenomena in mobile-learning implementations. App smashing is made effective when apps are able to communicate with one another. This can be accomplished via the cloud, but more often through the operating system. For example, apps can now display a dialog to users that contains apps that can handle particular file types. The app developers don't really need to know anything about the other apps, other than it's possible for a particular file types to pass to the OS and the OS will hand it off to the other app on the user's behalf. The resulting behavior for users is successful app smashing. Multitasking is another feature that has proved useful in app smashing. Android and Windows mobile operating systems both allow split-screen behaviors so multiple apps can be viewed and interacted with simultaneously. Actions like transferring content from one app to another can occur seamlessly through the OS.