Use BlueStacks To Test Your Android File

BlueStacks App Player is a great tool for allowing you to run your favorite mobile apps/games in full screen in your browser using a PC or Mac.

BlueStacks App Player Key Features

Fully customizable environment
Support for multiple OS configurations
Google Play integration
Once installed, BlueStacks App Player can be configured to work with your choice of popular social media platforms i.e. Facebook or Twitter. As the environment runs Android apps, you can configure BlueStacks App Player to work with your Google Play account, so you can access all your favourtite apps and games!

Read more at their main website: http://www.bluestacks.com/about-us/app-player.html

It is free:

Download:

http://www.bluestacks.com/download.html

http://fs41.filehippo.com/8749/1929f625f56b42e6905d8d15bd4cdd4c/BlueStacks2_native.exe
or
http://filehippo.com/download_bluestacks_app_player/

Mac OSX version:

http://filehippo.com/mac/download_bluestacks_appplayer_for_mac/61500/

Hello,

Are you tried to prepare the applications as webapps for the Firefox Marketplace? Then the applications can also be installed in every system in which Firefox works, and, also in Firefox OS devices. Take a look at the App Builder's Calculator sample into the Firefox Marketplace.

Hi,

At the moment not for Firefox. Could you make my first post sticky so that others can benefit from it?
Thanks.

Hello,

At the moment not for Firefox.

What I say is not that "BlueStacks App Player" can works or not in Firefox. What I say is than apparently the Firefox Marketplace offer to us a similar thing than the "BlueStacks App Player" (if I am not wrong), so I linked to the Firefox Marketplace as an alternative to deploy our applications, just like the Calculator sample. We can install the Calculator sample, in this case, into Windows, Android, Firefox OS and probably MacOS too.

Hi David,

Firefox marketplace is good testing without doubt.

But I am looking beyond Firefox marketplace for instance smart devices are becoming common used in our society therefore Mobile apps will the thing of the future.

Also look at the Windows OS users most of them prefer Windows default browser and Google chrome. Even Mac users still prefer Safari or chrome.

Although, Firefox browser is commonly among Web application developers and IT tech guys.

Thanks

Does Bluestack allow you to upload and run an app built by AppBuilder?

Hello Donald,

Maybe edunt can tell us. Right now I am not sure about.

Hello,

Well. I want to take a look so after downloading and installing the BlueStacks App Player I found we can install APK files inside. The program works well, except that my computer is apparently to old for him, due to the heavy resources the program requires. I am not sure if we can place our applications into some kind of "BlueStacks Store" or something like that.

Does Bluestack allow you to upload and run an app built by AppBuilder?

Hi,

There is no need to upload any file.

What to do:

0. Download and install Bluestacks App Player

1. Create *.apk file with Cordova apache CLI
like this image:

2. Have a look at *.apk created eg Calculator
like this image:

3. Create copy of android-debug.apk and rename it to your app name.

4. Double click your rename app to automatically install in Bluestacks App Player.
like this image:

5. Done.

Hello,

Thanks for the explanation edunt.

Ahh very easy. Thanks for that. Actualy, it is vey nice and pretty amazing. Everyone should try it.

Hi Guys,

This is another Android Player we can use to run our *.apk files.

DownloadLink:

http://en.bignox.com/en/download/fullPackage

Hi,

This is another Android Player we can use to run our *.apk files.

DownloadLink:

http://www.jide.com/en/remixos-for-pc#downloadNow

Hello,

Thanks for the links edunt!

BlueStack is good but it takes up lot of system resources. Plus, it ramdomly popups up a window asking us to download and install their "Friend Company APK files" in order to continue using BlueStack for free OR pay for the paid version to use it without advertising.

If you're familiar with Oracle Virtual Box then there are much better alternatives available for you. But believe me, nothing beats Live Testing; and what it takes really?! Just connect your Android phone to your PC via USB cable, transfer your APK to your SD Card, make sure you allow installation of Apps from "Unknown Sources" in your Android Settings and you're done.

Or... email yourself your apk fiile open you email on your phone or tablet and then click on the attachement. Easy install.

Hello,

Something I want to do as quickly as possible is to add the right stuff into the debug BAT file in order to directly run the application in our devices, if they are connected to an USB cable. Anyway, the idea of App Builder is we can test almost everything in the program's debugger browsers. Of course we can't use the Cordova Camera plugin in the debug browser, for example, but, we can act like if the plugin are ready to use, or simply know our application is running from the debugger and act in consecuence. Anyway, the point is we can do almost all the debug without leave App Builder and the system installed browsers, then we need to test it in our devices as little as possible.

@David, there is another platform that you must be aware of you: Basic4Android. They have B4A Bridge Android Application which we need to install on our Android Phone. This Bridge gets connected with the Debugger and then the application runs on SmartPhone device but the debugger shows errors, warnings on PC IDE.

I am not sure how they have built the Bridge Application, but this idea is surely worth to consider if you're thinking of making App Builder as a serious Hybrid App Building platform.

Let me tell you one thing though... testing application this way has a serious impact on phone. If you're developing an App that deals with the core Android Service, it can break the OS of your phone. So, personally I prefer to test application in Simulator and then have a final run on actual device.

Hello,

App Builder produces applications are HTML5 applications ready to be deployed in desktop and mobile browsers. This is why I recommend to use the App Builder's integrated debugger, and, also, the Firefox browser, since their developer console (just press "F12" when you are in Firefox) is absolutely amazing and can help us too much.

Apache Cordova, on the other hand, allow us to build such HTML5 applications in order to be deployed in various platforms, one of them Android, but also others like iOS, for example. But, in my opinion, we must debug and test the application before build for that possible platforms, using the integrated debugger and other browsers like Firefox.

Of course certain things cannot work in browsers. For example, if we plain to use the "Files" Cordova's plugin in order to write and read text files from our applications, the FileWrite, FileAppend and FileRead actions can't work until our application are build using Cordova. But we know (using the [App.Cordova] global variable) if our application is running in a browser or builded with Cordova.

Then we can prepare a "workaround" to that actions, again, in order to continue debugging our application using the integrated debugger and Firefox, for example. In few words, trying to made something like this can save our time since the integrated debugger is faster that any emulator nor bridge. Of course we must to test our application in a real device, but we must do that in any other environment.

That's the idea.