While developing an app, you encounter multiple issues that need an observing eye.

What can be those issues?

And how you can resolve them?

Let’s learn some common issues of mobile app development with their possible solutions below:

Common Issues

Element Flicker

Noted Behavior:

An interface element abruptly alters its style and content, overwhelming the user and leading to a poor user experience.

Potential Reasons:

There are several factors that might induce this flickering interface element, such as:

Quick Switches in Screen Status

Flickering can happen when the data being fetched is linked to a screen widget or a condition that dictates the visibility or style of that widget. In addition, frequent updates to the data can also produce a flickering effect.

Delayed or Dynamic CSS Styling

The ongoing computations that occur after the screen rendering can have an impact on the widget’s style. Additionally, if the CSS specific to a particular screen is slow to load, it can cause flickering. This occurs when some screen-level CSS gets applied to the screen components.

Potential Remedies:

If data alterations result in flickering:

• Review and analyze the conditional logic employed in the screen and its components.
• Investigate the timing and data actions during runtime (for example, understanding when the final data will be available and the impact it has on the implemented logic).
• Utilize buffer data (keeping the old data state while figuring out the new one) during transitions to ensure smooth changeovers. 

For flickering related to style:

• Avoid displaying elements until style calculations are completed.
• For each element, display a placeholder. Avoid placing your CSS defining part on the screen, instead, place it in the theme to ensure it stays loaded throughout the transition process.
• Use selectors to specify a particular screen when defining CSS at the theme level, protecting your other screens from being overridden.

Sluggish Transition Between Screens

Noted Behavior:

The shift between two specified screens is taking an excessively long time.

Potential Reasons:

The cause for this slow transition is:

Long-drawn-out tasks being performed in the On Initialize screen event handler

Tasks like invoking server actions or calling native plugin actions are executed in the On Initialize event handler of the target screen. Since this event occurs before the screen loads, it can significantly slow down the screen load time.

Potential Remedies:

• Avoid conducting any time-consuming task in the On Initialize screen event handler. Execute these tasks in another event handler like On Ready, which happens after the page is displayed. After implementing your changes, thoroughly test your app as these alterations may affect the app’s functionality.
• If the aforementioned advice doesn’t alleviate the issue, utilize the Performance Tab in Chrome’s Developer Tools for further performance troubleshooting.

Data Absence on Device

Noted Behavior:

A mobile app fails to display certain data on the screen.

Potential Reasons:

Synchronization Complications

There might be errors in your application’s offline synchronization, resulting in an incomplete transfer of data to the device.

Poorly Configured Aggregates

Although the data has been synchronized, the aggregate set up for querying local storage entities might be filtering out essential data.

Potential Remedies:

• Ensure that the missing data is available in the server database. If it is, the error might be in the synchronization process implementation between the device and server.
• Verify if the missing data is in the device’s local storage. For instance, navigate to your app and create a screen to view the data of a local storage entity on your device.
• If the data is present in the local storage of the device, review your application’s queries and aggregate definitions, focusing on the JOINS and their configurations.
• If the data isn’t in the local storage of the device, examine the synchronization process of your data to find potential errors in filters like User ID, date range, or any other filters used in the synchronization process.