App development is becoming increasingly complex. Developers have to build for different platforms and a growing number of form factors. They have to meet more and more requirements for security and scalability, all while meeting growing customer expectations. To help developers handle it all, Google is rolling out a series of new updates to Firebase, its backend app development program.
"We're investing in helping developers solve problems that don't always necessarily differentiate their products, like building backend infrastructure and scaling it, things like security, or having to integrate with third-party APIs," Firebase Product Lead Francis Ma said to ZDNet. That way, he said, developers can stay focused on what they "need to do to keep pace with consumer expectations and to reach users where they are."
The updates, announced at the Google I/O conference on Wednesday, largely focus on making Firebase work better with some of Google's most popular developer products, as well as with a broader open ecosystem of tools. The updates will impact the ore than 3 million developers who use Firebase.
Here are some of the highlights:
Integrations with Android
To give developers a simpler workflow, Google is integrating the Firebase tool Crashlytics directly into Android Studio, Google's integrated development environment (IDE) for the Android operating system.
Crashlytics is a crash reporting tool within Firebase that helps developers track the performance of their app after it launches. Developers can track crashes, errors and feedback from users, so they can make improvements in the next release of their apps.
However, up to this point, developers would need to switch between Crashlytics and their IDE to fix those problems. Now, Google is bring the Crashlytics experience directly into Android Studio with a feature called the App Quality Insights Window. Developer will be able to automatically see crashes