Planet Nitobi

Jesse MacFadyen: New home for my blog

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:15:06 +0000

My blog is now located at http://www.risingj.com
Stay tuned for more dev insight for PhoneGap + iOS + WP7.

Andrew Lunny: Phonegap: Beginner's Guide

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:00:00 +0000

This past month my book on PhoneGap, PhoneGap: Beginner’s Guide, or PGBG, was published by Packt Publishing.

PGBG helps developers new to PhoneGap get up to speed with writing PhoneGap applications. The book focuses on practical examples, rather than reiterating the PhoneGap documentation, covering project structure and setup, HTML5/CSS3 techniques in modern mobile devices, and the PhoneGap APIs themselves. It should help you get PhoneGap apps up and running on all the major platforms.

Stay tuned to this blog and my twitter account for more updates - I’m hoping to get a dedicated site for the book up soon, with references for each chapters and notes on any changes to the PhoneGap APIs since publication.

Andre Charland: Nitobi and PhoneGap’s new home at Adobe

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:45:36 +0000

This is a very exciting time in the industry and for our team. However, it’s also a time of great change which is often met with skepticism and possibly some fear. Let’s get to the point: PhoneGap and all the code that makes it awesome is staying free and open source. Maybe more so than ever with our contribution to the Apache Software Foundation.

I feel the team at Nitobi and the rest of the of our contributors did a great job getting PhoneGap to where it is today. We shipped 1.0 this summer and have been making great progress since, in fact we just shipped PhoneGap 1.1 last week. It’s time to step on the gas and accelerate development of the platform, both from our team (now Adobe:)) and the wider community, which is why we’re putting PhoneGap in the Apache Software Foundation.

The issue of cross-platform app development is just now hitting mainstream attention and PhoneGap will come under increasing competitive threats. We think building on an open platform is essential to ensuring the web wins, and under Apache we can collaborate with all those who share this vision. No doubt we will compete with others and now we can do so with the support of Adobe, another company firmly committed to the web and cross platform tools and solutions.

We’ve built Nitobi on a bootstrap. We’ve built other great products over the years but now we’re on to something bigger and bolder. It’s really a movement around building apps and services with web technologies that run everywhere. We now need to focus our whole team on PhoneGap, PhoneGap Build and other tooling around HTML5 and JS development. The web and technologies that support it need fostering and support in an open manner. I’m excited to work on that!

We’re also launching PhoneGap Build with the help of a team that’s been building something awesome—cloud tools and infrastructure on top of Amazon Web Services. We’re committed to pushing forward with more cloud-based tooling and services that will help developers. We announced PhoneGap Build is in open beta last week and we’re getting ready to roll out for full on prime-time commercial use soon. We’ll be adding features and fixing bugs every day as usual. We’ll be honouring all existing client projects, support and training. We may be finding other partners and solutions to help deliver those services that are vital to the eco-system. Otherwise, it’s business as usual!

The whole team is moving to Adobe and this was very important to me. Some of us will move to SF to have more influence in the Adobe mothership and some of us will stay in Vancouver to continue to grow and foster the culture around the PhoneGap project that’s made it so great. I’m going to SF which is a great opportunity but I’ll miss the Vancouver office Kegerator. It’s really still just the beginning for PhoneGap and our team. The Nitobi team is amazing and they are some of the most talented, smart, creative, loyal and funny group of people I’ve ever worked with. I’m looking forward to continuing our journey together.

At Adobe, we will be able to focus and work together more closely than ever without the constraints and distractions you have when running a small business. I’m also excited to be joining some of the smartest minds in the industry at Adobe. Their contributions to open source and the web have largely flown under the radar. Adobe has 2 contributors to the WebKit project and have played a key role in the jQuery Mobile project. Now you tell me that WebKit + jQuery + PhoneGap don’t make up the most killer trio in the mobile web and app space. If you doubt Adobe’s intentions, it’s important to consider how Adobe makes money—it’s from tools, services and solutions not shipping runtimes.

Oh ya and given that I’m moving to California…I’ll probably learn how to surf too;-)

Andre Charland: Nitobi enters into Acquisition Agreement with Adobe

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:52:40 +0000

Today we’re excited to announce that we have entered into a definitive agreement with Adobe Systems Incoporated for Nitobi, including PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. Here’s the news:

Adobe Announces Agreement to Acquire Nitobi, Creator of PhoneGap

Open Source HTML5 Mobile App Platform Accelerates Adobe’s HTML5 and Web Standards Strategy

LOS ANGELES — Oct. 3, 2011 — At its MAX 2011 technology conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Nitobi Software, the creator of PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. PhoneGap is a popular open source platform for easily building fast, cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript. With PhoneGap, Adobe® will offer developers the choice of two powerful solutions for cross-platform development of native mobile apps, one using HTML5 and JavaScript with PhoneGap and the other using Adobe Flash® with Adobe AIR®. PhoneGap’s open source framework has been downloaded more than 600,000 times to date and thousands of applications built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores that span devices based on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems.

“PhoneGap has proven to be an industry-defining app solution for HTML5 developers,” said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager, Platform, Adobe. “PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver® CS5.5. It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”

“Adobe has always been a big supporter of the open source community and at the forefront of enabling rich, Web based applications across screens,” said Andre Charland, chief executive officer, Nitobi. “We share the same philosophy about enabling extraordinary mobile and Web applications. Becoming part of the Adobe family with its industry-leading tools and technologies opens up amazing new opportunities for PhoneGap and our customers.”

“We are also excited to announce our donation of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation,” said Dave Johnson, chief technology officer, Nitobi. “Adobe has been fully supportive of our decision, further demonstrating Adobe’s continued commitment to the developer and open source communities. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for contributors to collaborate on open source product development and Adobe and Nitobi look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the PhoneGap technology.”

Nitobi is based in Vancouver, Canada and Nitobi’s employees are expected to join Adobe. The acquisition is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of October 2011. Terms were not disclosed.

Adobe today also released its third public preview of Adobe Edge, the new HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that is bringing Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps using the latest capabilities of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The new release contains innovative interactivity features and other additions suggested by the development community, and enables content creators to easily deliver a new level of visual richness to HTML5-only websites and mobile apps.

Adobe has also extended existing tools like Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash Professional to bring the next generation of Web standards to designers and developers who rely on those tools. Adobe today released the new CSS3 Mobile Pack for Adobe Fireworks®, which will enable designers to easily extract CSS3 from their design elements in Fireworks and quickly add them to their HTML based websites and mobile applications.

Adobe continues to work closely with the HTML5 community to make important contributions to the W3C and key open source projects like WebKit and JQuery. Adobe has co-authored with Microsoft and submitted to the W3C a proposal for CSS Regions, which enables sophisticated magazine-like layouts using Web standards. Adobe has also contributed a preliminary implementation of CSS Regions to the open source WebKit layout engine, which is already available in the latest builds of Chromium and the WebKit browser. Microsoft has made an implementation available in the latest preview release of Internet Explorer 10. In addition, Adobe today introduced a new proposal to the W3C, co-edited with other W3C members, called CSS Shaders that brings cinematic visual effects to HTML. Finally, Adobe announced that jQuery Mobile 1.0, a popular touch-optimized open source JavaScript framework to which Adobe is a leading contributor, was just made available as a Release Candidate (RC1) this week. Concurrent with this release will be a new version of ThemeRoller, which Adobe has rebuilt from the ground up to enable users to design custom jQuery user interface themes for tight integration in mobile Web projects.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

FAQ:

What does Nitobi do?
Nitobi is the creator and primary contributor to the open source PhoneGap framework, which allows developers to create device native mobile applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They also operate a consulting business providing development, support, and training services for PhoneGap. You can find out more at the Nitobi and PhoneGap sites.

Why is Adobe acquiring Nitobi?
Adobe is committed to enabling efficient, expressive design and development across devices. PhoneGap is a leading solution for cross-platform mobile development using web standards, and we’re excited to support PhoneGap’s growth by committing resources to the
development of the open source project. We integrated support for PhoneGap in Dreamweaver CS5.5, and with this acquisition we will also be bringing PhoneGap’s capabilities to a much broader range of new and existing Adobe customers though a paid hosted service, PhoneGap Build, which is currently in prerelease.

This investment reinforces Adobe’s commitment to helping their customers be even more expressive, regardless of the technology and is in line with recent product releases such as Adobe Edge and Adobe Muse (code name), as well as all of the innovation with community driven projects including contributions to the jQuery mobile UI framework and Webkit for layout and typography functionality.

What underlying technology will Adobe acquire?
While the PhoneGap framework continues to be open source and is being contributed to the Apache Software Foundation, PhoneGap Build incorporates additional proprietary code allowing developers to build their apps from anywhere without installing mobile platform SDKs.

Why is Nitobi donating the PhoneGap code to Apache?
Nitobi is pursuing a contribution of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to ensure open stewardship of the project over the long term. As part of that process it will be renamed to a new Apache-branded name Callback. Adobe fully supports this contribution and will continue to host the PhoneGap community site with full participation from its contributors, as well as the PhoneGap Build service.

Where do I go to get support?
Customers should go through Nitobi’s existing support channels.

Shazron Abdullah: splash

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:26:22 +0000

Unfortunately a splash screen is still needed to hide the white flash that is visible just before the UIWebView loads its content. Previously before PhoneGap 1.0, you had no control over this – sometimes your content just takes an extra time to load and you want to control the duration of the splash screen.

There are two steps to enable this, firstly – in PhoneGap.plist, change the value for “AutoHideSplashScreen” to false (by default it is true for legacy code). This will not hide the splash screen, and it will remain on screen indefinitely.

Next, in your code, you will have to explicitly hide the splash screen.

After the deviceready event has been fired, you can call this function anytime you are ready:


navigator.splashscreen.hide();

If you want to just delay hiding the splash screen for 2 seconds for example, you can do this in your deviceready event handler:


setTimeout(function() {
    navigator.splashscreen.hide();
}, 2000);

Jesse MacFadyen: Announcing PhoneGap for Windows Phone Mango

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:42:55 +0000

Over the last month and a bit, Nitobi has been working closely with Microsoft to bring PhoneGap to WP7 devices. I am happy to say that it’s now here, and ready for beta exposure.

The Genesis of PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7

Our starting point was the excellent work of Matt Lacey, who created the initial project and did the initial exploration of device functionality. The upcoming Windows Phone Mango update to devices brings a rich set of HTML5 features and IE9 to the device.

Thanks to Microsoft sponsorship, Sergei Grebnov has been making contributions to the code and has implemented the MediaCapture and Camera APIs. This is Sergei’s first foray into PhoneGap, but he has proven to be a valuable asset to the project and was up to speed quickly.

Nitobi has dedicated two developers to the project, myself and Herm Wong. We’ve been busy dusting off our Sliverlight+C# skills and implementing the other APIs. ( the infamous Shazron has also jumped in just this week )

Here’s the outcome!

Some code here : https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-wp7

Some more info here: http://bit.ly/PhoneGapMangoIntro

What You’ll Need to Get Started

So you want to get on it, enough talk? You will need Visual Studio 2010 with the “WP7 SDK” : http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started installed (the free express version works fine )
Detailed instructions will be posted shortly as a getting started guide on PhoneGap.com, in the meantime :

fork/git or download/unzip the repo to your harddrive
copy the file GapAppStarter.zip to the folder : \My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\
Launch Visual Studio 2010 and select to create a new project ( PhoneGapAppStarter should be listed as an option, give it a name )
Right-Click on the solution and select Add->Existing Project, and add the project : framework\WP7GapClassLib.csproj from the downloaded repo
Right-Click your main project and “Add Reference” to the WP7GapClassLib project
build and run!

Where Are We ? What APIs Are Done?

Here’s an overview of where we’re at:

Accelerometer
Camera
Compass (unit testing is waiting on us having a device that supports compass)
Contacts
Events (partial, still underway)
GeoLocation
MediaCapture
Connection
Notification

These have all been implemented per the spec, and function as expected with some quirks being added to the documentation as you read this.

The ‘deviceready’ event is fired on startup, and like other device platforms, is the signal that you can begin making PhoneGap API calls.
The GeoLocation API did not require any work, as IE9 implements the spec as defined by W3C.

Still to come :

File
Storage

How Does it Work? A peek under the hood.

PhoneGap-WP7 includes a library project which contains the core functionality, and you reference this project from your own project. Your own project will include the www folder which is where your Gap html/js/css will live. All files in the www folder must be added to the project in Visual Studio and marked as content so they will be packaged with your app when it runs on the phone. We will be releasing a Visual Studio template to allow you to simple select NewProject->PhoneGap-WP7 project and auto-magically be on your way.

Packaging of applications is quite different on WP7. All resources (your PhoneGap js/html/css code in the www folder) are packaged into the XAP as resources but cannot be accessed directly at runtime, so an extra unpackaging step is required.
When the app is first run, all resources listed in the manifest are copied from the binary XAP to IsolatedStorage. IsolatedStorage is a per application File location, similar to a per app Documents folder in iOS. IsolatedStorage is managed per app, so separate applications cannot interact with the same document store. We are working to make this as transparent as possible, so your workflow does not have to change. Build scripts and tooling will eventually take care of the dirty work, but for now you will be building directly from Visual Studio.

After unpackaging the contents of the www folder, your www/index.html file is loaded into an embedded headless browser control. This is essentially the same paradigm as other platforms, except here it is an IE9 browser and not a webkit variant. IE9 is a much more standards-compliant browser than previous IEs, and implements commonly used html5 features like DOMContentLoaded events, addEventListener interfaces, and CSS3. Be sure to use to get the html5 implementation otherwise the browser may fallback to a compatibility mode, and your code will likely choke and die. You should also use in your html .

Gotchas + Known Issues

IE9 does not expose touch events, or even mouse events to JavaScript. The only UI event that is available to your code is the click event. This means that many interfaces that are based on scrolling libraries and a WebKit DOM will not function as expected. The browser control DOES appear to support the CSS value of overflow:scroll, however there is no momentum and the scrolling feels sticky. I have done some quick exploration into exposing mouse events to JavaScript via the container and they do look promising. I will be moving on to this after I completed the Events API so your code can override the back-button and search-button.

IE9 supports localStorage, and sessionStorage, however they are not available to pages that are loaded without a domain. We will be investigating implementing this API ourselves, and managing the storage in IsolatedStorage.

Reporting issues, tracking progress and keeping up to date.

The project code is maintained on github at https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-wp7, so you can follow it there. Any issues you come across can be filed in the Issue Tracker on github.
As with the other devices, general question can be directed to the PhoneGap mailing list, where the community is ready and waiting to help. For questions specific to Windows Phone 7, please include ‘WP7′ in the subject.

Will PhoneGap for WP7 support plugins?

This was a key focus, as keeping the architecture plug-able is a primary concern, and in my view, where the real power lies.
PhoneGap-WP7 maintains the plugability of other platforms via a command pattern, to allow developers to add functionality with minimal fuss, simply define your C# class in the WP7GapClassLib.PhoneGap.Commands namespace and derive your class from BaseCommand.

PhoneGap exec works in exactly the same way as other platforms :

PhoneGap.exec(callbackSuccessFunction,callbackErrorFunction, PLUGINNAME, PLUGINMETHODNAME, paramObj);

What is Left to Do? How can You Contribute?

Sergei has begun working on the File API, so you can expect full file access to create, modify, delete files as well as upload/download to/from a server.
I am busily trying to wrap up some of the life-cycle events (Events API) so your application can be notified when the app is pushed to the background. I will be looking into exposing mouse events to JavaScript shortly after that.

If you have expertise in any of the Native portions, or JavaScript, you are welcome to fork the repo on github.

Keep in mind: PhoneGap can only accept pull requests from contributors who have signed the CLA so we can make sure that PhoneGap remains open source and free. PhoneGap is dual licensed as defined here : http://www.phonegap.com/about/license

Even if you don’t contribute code back, I/we would love to hear about your experience building with PhoneGap for WP7, good, bad or indifferent. Please direct your kudos, or comments to the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/PhoneGap. You are also welcome to contribute to the documentation, and wiki pages, got a great getting started tutorial? Let us know! Want to tell the world about your WP7 PhoneGap app? Let us know!

We will be posting new information to the blog as updates are made, as well as on the mailing list, and PhoneGap.com.

Forever Endeavor

-jm

[Update]
here’s the twitter credits :
Matt Lacey : @mrlacey
Herm Wong : @hermwong
Shazron Abdullah : @shazron
Me : @purplecabbage
PhoneGap : @phonegap
Nitobi : @nitobi

Andre Charland: Get the New PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:33:54 +0000

Today we’re launching a new PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin. With more than 250 million people accessing Facebook on their phone each month, this is sure to be a popular plugin. Here’s the news:

PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin Polishes Log In Experience for Mobile Users

Vancouver, BC—August 30, 2011—Nitobi Inc., the creators of the popular PhoneGap mobile app development framework, announce today the launch of the PhoneGap Facebook Platform plugin. The new plugin makes it easy for developers building mobile apps with PhoneGap to simplify the log in process for apps that retrieve and use Facebook data.

The Facebook Platform lets users log in to a web page or mobile app using their Facebook login credentials. An example of a popular website that uses this single sign-on functionality is The New York Times. Users can log in to The New York Times website by using the “Login with Facebook” button, after which the application uses Facebook identity data to verify the user.

Facebook provides a JavaScript software development kit (SDK) that makes it possible for web developers to implement “Login with Facebook”. However, the SDK poses a challenge for PhoneGap developers because the Facebook sign on process uses the OAuth 2.0 standard, which doesn’t always translate gracefully for their apps.

“We got working on a Facebook plugin because we’re user experience advocates,” said Dave Johnson, CTO at Nitobi Inc. “The OAuth authentication workflow for a mobile app isn’t ideal so we created the PhoneGap Facebook plugin as a way to streamline that process and improve the experience for the end user.”

The plugin uses the same application programming interface (API) as Facebook’s JavaScript SDK. But, instead of replicating the workflow users are accustomed to in desktop web browsers it works with the native Facebook application installed on many iOS and Android smartphones. The end result is a more streamlined and graceful log in experience. Plus, it’s easy to implement. Developers wrap their web app in PhoneGap and this plugin, add one line of code, and single sign-on automatically works.

Creating a better user experience was the inspiration for the Facebook plugin, but the PhoneGap community’s enthusiasm for plugins drove the project. “The PhoneGap community is really behind plugins, which is why it was a major focus in the recent PhoneGap 1.0 release. Continuing to improve and expand PhoneGap plugins is a big part of the PhoneGap agenda,” said Brian LeRoux, Senior Vice President of Software Development and Director of Developer Relations at Nitobi, and PhoneGap Evangelist.

You can download the Facebook plugin for a PhoneGap app here.

About Nitobi
Nitobi is the creator of PhoneGap an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core features of Apple iOS, Google Android, HP webOS, Nokia Symbian, Samsung Bada and BlackBerry SDKs. The open source code has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.

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Jesse MacFadyen: My blog is moving

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:00:41 +0000

My Blog activity will now happen over at my own site, to relieve the overload on nitobi.com. Check it out at http://www.risingj.com Cheers!

Andre Charland: PhoneGap 1.0 Released Today at PhoneGap Day in Portland

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:00:23 +0000

Today we’re celebrating the launch of PhoneGap 1.0 at PhoneGap Day in Portland! Kudos to the PhoneGap community who has so generously contributed time and expertise to the project. We’ll be toasting you and all your efforts today!

PhoneGap 1.0 Released Today at First-Ever PhoneGap Day in Portland
Popular Open Source Mobile Development Framework Gets Upgrades Including More Access to Native Device APIs and Debugging Tools

Nitobi Inc., the creators of the popular PhoneGap mobile app development framework, releases PhoneGap 1.0 today at the first-ever PhoneGap Day in Portland, Oregon.

PhoneGap, an HTML5 platform, allows developers to use foundation web technology (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) to create native mobile applications. Using PhoneGap, developers can write their app once and deploy it to six major mobile platforms and app stores, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, webOS, Bada and Symbian. PhoneGap has been widely recognized as a game-changer for mobile app development. The open source code is downloaded approximately 40,000 times every month, more than 600,000 times in total.

Today’s major release puts the focus on accessing native device APIs, which is new ground for the web. Other improvements include:

* Overall API stability and “pluggable” architecture
* W3C DAP API compatibility
* Contacts API
* Remove debugging tools

Today’s release also includes a new unifying bridge interface that makes adding platforms and platform extensions easy. Plus, developers will be pleased to see that the plugin development process has been simplified.

“Most of these new enhancements come from our community,” said Brian LeRoux, Senior Software Engineer at Nitobi and PhoneGap evangelist. “For instance, PhoneGap developers were calling for a consistent way to make plugins that would run on all major smartphone platforms and this release does that.”

“The community built up around PhoneGap is its greatest asset,” says Nitobi CEO Andre Charland. “The PhoneGap community identifies common pain points and works together to overcome them.” Contributors include Nitobi, hundreds of individual developers and a team of senior software engineers at IBM whose commitment and contributions to PhoneGap development has been a major benefit to the community.

IBM isn’t the only Fortune 500 to show interest in PhoneGap. Earlier this year, Adobe integrated PhoneGap into Dreamweaver so that developers can package apps with PhoneGap and launch iOS and Android emulators directly from within Dreamweaver. Other companies to adopt PhoneGap and its cross-platform philosophy include IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, Sabre, Cisco, Logitech and Time Warner.

About Nitobi Inc.
Nitobi is the creator of PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com) an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core features of Apple iOS, Google Android, HP webOS, Nokia Symbian, Samsung Bada and BlackBerry SDKs. The open source code has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.

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Steve Gill: PhoneGap Creator Nitobi and Worklight to Enable Mobile Apps for the Enterprise

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:47:20 +0000

Worklight mobile app platform and tools complement the PhoneGap development framework for smartphone and tablet applications

New York, NY and Vancouver, BC – July 13, 2011 - Worklight, the leading HTML5, hybrid and native platform and tools for smartphone and tablet applications, and Nitobi, creator of the popular PhoneGap, the only open source mobile framework that supports six platforms, today announced that technologies from the two companies now offer enhanced integration to enable mobile apps for enterprises.

“Companies launching mobile apps are constantly looking for ways to reach more devices while avoiding increased overhead,” said Shahar Kaminitz, CEO at Worklight. “PhoneGap reduces much of the complexity of cross-platform development, while we complement with additional tools, integration, security and management capabilities. Our joint mobile solutions are an excellent fit for enterprises looking to take advantage of HTML5.”

PhoneGap, created by Nitobi, is an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core native device features. Since 2008, the open source framework has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.

Worklight’s mobile app platform and tools provide an enterprise-grade solution that enables organizations to efficiently develop and deliver HTML5, hybrid and native smartphone and tablet applications. The Worklight Studio, Worklight Server, Worklight Console and Device Runtime Components provide a flexible and powerful IDE, mobile middleware, security and management.

“There is an immediate need in the enterprise not only to overcome cross-platform app development challenges but also streamline backend connectivity, security and meet additional IT requirements for mobile infrastructure,” said Andre Charland, CEO of Nitobi. “We’re pleased that Worklight is using PhoneGap to help their customers and further enterprise adoption in the enterprise.”

Worklight is a leading commercial mobile application platform that incorporates PhoneGap as part of its core technology. The company is a member of the PhoneGap community and will continue do make contributions to the project.
To learn more, please visit http://www.worklight.com/phonegap.

About Nitobi
Nitobi is the creator of PhoneGap (www.phonegap.com) an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core features in the iPhone, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and BlackBerry SDKs. The open source code has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.

About Worklight
Worklight provides open, complete and advanced mobile application platform and tools software for smartphones and tablets. Our award-winning products help organizations of all sizes to efficiently develop and deliver HTML5, hybrid and native applications with a powerful and flexible mobile IDE, next-generation mobile middleware, end-to-end security and integrated management and analytics. Worklight dramatically reduces time to market, cost and complexity while enabling better customer and employee user experiences across more devices. For more info, visit www.worklight.com.

###
Nitobi Press Contact:
Julie Szabo
Capulet Communications
604.726.6739
julie@capulet.com

Worklight Press Contact:
Yonni Harif
Senior Marketing Manager
604.696.8213
yonnih@worklight.com

Shazron Abdullah: apple-xcode-icon

Thu, 05 May 2011 23:57:23 +0000

UPDATE: PhoneGap 0.9.5.1 includes the Xcode 4 template now, download it from phonegap.com
View the screencast below (best in full-screen, in HD).
Also, you can read the wiki article.

Xcode 4 template specs are undocumented and buggy. So, there are issues:

We cannot automatically include the “www” folder in the template – the user has to add it in manually (a quick drag and drop). I added in checks and warnings if users try to run the app without adding this in.
Some files, like .h and the -Info.plist file, are included in the ‘Copy Bundle Resources’ build phase by the template. No biggie during run-time, but for those with OCD they will want to remove these from the Build Phase (if only to get rid of the warning).
Because Xcode 4 does not expand tildes (~), I cannot add a reference to the PhoneGap.framework in the user’s home folder, so I added it to a shared location /Users/Shared which has r+w permissions for everyone (the common folder /Library/Frameworks needs admin privileges). It was added here so users without admin privileges can still use PhoneGap.framework, and by extension, the Xcode 4 Template.

RELEASE NOTES

beta1 – Initial release
beta1.1 – Bug fix for issue #81 (moved framework from /Users/Shared/Library to /Users/Shared/PhoneGap)
beta1.2 – Made /Users/Shared/PhoneGap writable to everyone
beta1.3 – Fixed Template not copying over the ‘www’ directory from the framework location (happened only for users that only installed beta1.3 and didn’t migrate from an earlier beta version). This version was tested on a clean Mac OS X 10.7 Lion DP3 system running Xcode 4.1 DP5, and works great.
beta2 – (UPCOMING) add AppleScript in the project Run Script build phase to get Xcode to automatically add the ‘www’ folder for you

Joe Bowser: Conference Season

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:46:07 +0000

The Nitobi office right now is starting to empty out, and it’s not just because of the weather. It’s conference season and the other guys are at JSConf. However, I’m going to be going to some conferences this year. I’m going to be going down to the SF area Google IO this year. Feel free to ask me about PhoneGap and PhoneGap Android when I’m down there.

Also, I’m speaking at OSCON this year and if you follow this blog’s details about working on WebKit, it’s going to be more of the same, except with better slides, more detail and MUCH, MUCH more hunting for weird comments in WebKit.

I’ll probably be attending other conferences related to PhoneGap and Android Development at some point this year, but those are the ones that are confirmed. If I find out about any more, I’ll definitely be postng them here.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap Presentation at Under The Radar #17!

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:27:29 +0000

I just finished my talk at Under The Radar down in Mountain View. The 6min format was intense and I’m glad I did…good to sharpen the presentation skills once in a while.

Here’s the video:

Video streaming by Ustream

And here’s a video of the Q & A:

Video streaming by Ustream

And finally here’s my slides: (please note the mullet business model on slide 14)

Under The Radar – PhoneGap

View more presentations from AndreCharland.

And boy the Deal Maker Media crew our fast getting these videos and blogs out almost instantly.

Joe Bowser: Shame doesn’t work in Open Source

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:25:50 +0000

There was a fair amount of news about Android 3.0 coming out. There was tons of hype regarding the new Honeycomb release, and how it would be designed for tablets, how there is 3D Acceleration, and how the User Interface would be changed. Well, even though it’s rumoured that at Google IO, we’re all going to get tablets, we decided to go and get the Motorola Xoom so that we can have solid answers to our clients about Honeycomb tablets.

Unfortunately, we have answers, and they’re not very good with respect to Google.

First of all, the Honeycomb Emulator is so horrifically slow, we had to buy a device. The device we bought was the Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi Only model. After booting up the model, we put PhoneGap on it and ran tests. Most of the tests worked fine, however we did notice that the Native Storage (SQLite) does not work anymore and throws a security error. This is a serious problem for many PhoneGap applications that use this, and I plan on investigating the storage situation, and seeing what storage is used on the device.

Secondly, when we ran our mobile-spec test suite and ran it with no try/catch, this actually causes the browser to close. The browser shouldn’t close when a Javascript Error is thrown. The fact that you can force someone out of the browser by throwing an exception should be an indicator that this should not have been released,

Finally, this device is rumored to have 3D Acceleration, including in the browser with 3D Transforms. First, we tested the browser with the standard WebKit test here. When you test it in the actual Android Browser activity, you get the following:

Then, when you take the poster-circle.html file (which is nice and self-contained) and stick it in PhoneGap (which at this point is just an Android Webview), you get the following here:

Now, since we don’t have the source code, we have no idea why Android Webview has broken 3D CSS Transforms, but Android’s browser does. It’s clear that Android WebKit didn’t go through any sort of rigorous QA process, and was once again cobbled together. The thing that I don’t like about this situation is that I can’t see what they did to fix it on their browser. Many people would love to see 3D CSS Transforms on Android, Tablet OR Phone, but we don’t have either right now.

The thing that I don’t understand is this. If Google as a company isn’t proud enough to release this source code, then why were the proud enough to release a half-baked product? As many people know, I have been developing Android applications both with WebKit and with straight-up Java ever since I heard that the T-Mobile G1 was going to be released. I put up with flaky APIs, with WebKit bridges that would crash, and with the mess that the Android 2.0 release was. The fact that Google hasn’t learned from their mistakes with Android 2.0 was disappointing. It wasn’t too bad in 2009 when they did this, because not too many people were using Android yet, but now that we’re in 2011, and Android is on a ton of devices, and Android is in the tablet space, I’d expect there to be a little bit of consistency between the Android Browser and the WebView with respect to what is supported in WebKit.

That being said, I’d forgive flakiness in a x.0 version of Android if it came with the source code. Mainly because the community could fix the bugs and help create something kick-ass like the awesomness that Android 2.1+ was (Android 2.1 was the first solid Android version, everything else before it people liked because we were rooting for the underdog). However, today, as it stands, there’s two different versions of WebKit on the SAME DEVICE that operate differently. I think that this is a serious regression, and it’s unfortunate.

Update: I’m an idiot! The reason you don’t get 3D CSS Transforms is the fact that you have to enable 3D Acceleration for the app in the Android Manifest. A quick Google Search turned this up, and now I have it working. I still think the bug with the storage, and the fact that when you hit the back button you end up back at the First Use screen are still big reasons that Honeycomb is not ready for primetime, but WebKit has many problems, but 3D CSS Transforms aren’t one of them.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap Talk at Where 2.0 2011

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:06:14 +0000

Dave Johnson will be giving a talk on HTML5 and PhoneGap the Where 2.0 Conf April 19 2011 in Santa Clara.

HTML5 promises to pave the way for easy, device-neutral mobile app development. But, until HTML5 supports sophisticated cross-platform apps, developers are stuck building native apps for various mobile devices. Or are they?

In this session you’ll learn how combining HTML5 with the open source PhoneGap (www.phonegap.com) framework bridges the gap between what’s possible with HTML5 today and the engaging mobile apps developers want to build. See how HTML5 and PhoneGap work together and learn how to expose device features outside of the existing HTML5 spec, such as camera.

By learning to combine PhoneGap with HTML5, developers no longer have to commit to native development, nor do they need to wait for a mature HTML5 spec to build full-featured, cross-platform apps in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Track Dave and down to say hi or go for a beer if you have any burning PhoneGap questions:)

Anis Kadri: PhoneGap for Samsung Bada

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:34:19 +0000

These past few weeks I’ve been working on porting the PhoneGap framework to the Samsung Bada platform.

Bada ships with a default Webkit browser. It supports the W3C geolocation out of the box. The C++ SDK allows developers to instantiate a WebView (called Web Control in Bada) inside a Form (equivalent of a view in Bada). More info on Web control can be found here.

To port PhoneGap, I got most of my inspiration from the existing iPhone implementation. I use a similar technique on Bada.

From Web to native

document.location = "gap://com.phonegap.com.Accelerometer.getCurrentAcceleration"

The url gets intercepted by the WebControl and the command is then dispatched to the appropriate module (Accelerometer module in the case above).

From native to Web

It does not seem to be possible to set the web control URL to “javascript:code” but there is a method that comes with WebControl that not only executes javascript code but also returns its result! The method is:

Osp::Base::String * EvaluateJavascriptN (const Osp::Base::String &scriptCode) const

That is really helpful for sharing data between Native/Web without overloading the URL with JSON/XML data!

The only downside is that it doesn’t seem possible to stick an alert(); as it causes the Web control to hang. I still haven’t figured out a way to do this. So right now you can’t use alerts in your phonegap callbacks. I am still investigating the issue.

PhoneGap Bada supports: Accelerometer, GeoLocation (Browser and Native), Contacts, Device, Network, Notifications, Storage (provided by WebKit), Events
PhoneGap Bada does not yet support: Camera, File
PhoneGap Bada won’t support: Media

Below is a screenshot of mobile-spec running on PhoneGap Bada.

The Bada SDK is unfortunately Windows Only and there are no plans to port it to other platforms. However, you can run it just fine on a virtual machine.

Code and instructions are on github. Check it out! Let me know what you think! Feedback good or bad is always welcome!

Andre Charland: Adobe Dreamweaver 5.5 Supports PhoneGap

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:18:14 +0000

We’re very excited that Adobe has now announced their support for PhoneGap! The gist of is it is now you can package your apps with PhoneGap and launch the iOS and Android emulators directly from within Dreamweaver. This version of Dreamweaver also bakes in support for jQuery Mobile which is one of the most popular frameworks used inside PhoneGap. I think this is awesome! This a big move forward for Adobe embracing mobile, open standards (HTML5), the mobile web and open source!

Scott Fegette, Dreamweaver Product Manager, has the most in depth write up on it. Here’s a snipit.

For Android, the complex process of installing, configuring, and verifying the Android SDK has always been a bit of a chore. Dreamweaver CS5.5 takes all the pain out of this process by providing an “easy install” option, which will do all of the above for you in the background. Although the Apple iOS SDK tools are subject to a different licensing model (and only available on the Mac platform), once you’ve installed the Apple iOS SDK (or Xcode from the Mac App Store), you simply point Dreamweaver CS5.5 to the /Developer directory on your hard drive and you’re ready to go.

Greg Rewis senior evangelist at Adobe also has a great post on the topic and video explaining how it all works:

PhoneGap is all about making mobile app development easier and more accessible to broad audience of web developers out there do getting in bed with Dreamweaver is a great step in that direction.

One thing the Adobe folk don’t promote as much as I think they should is the fact that web developers can call native apis like camera, contacts, notifications etc from PhoneGap now within Dreamweaver. That’s at least as exciting as packaging for app stores:)

If this blog post seems a day late and a dollar short I apologize. I obviously new this functionality was coming out in Dreamweaver, but no one at Adobe told us they were launching yesterday:P Next time!

Be sure to check out the official Adobe blog post for more info on new features in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5.

PS. Please excuse their typo on the opening slide of video. It’s PhoneGap not Phone Gap. I’m sure it was just video production company who just didn’t know what’s up! :)

Andre Charland: PhoneGap Talk at IBM Impact 2011 Conference

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:46:23 +0000

Bryce Curtis (aka PhoneGap super contributor) and Todd E. Kaplinger are giving a talk at the IBM Impact2011 conference this week. “TDD-1852A : Building Mobile Applications with PhoneGap”

Here’s the description:

“With mobile applications, one of the first choices is which technology direction a developer should take. Developers may choose to develop native applications, or develop browser-based applications using HTML and CSS to give an appearance similar to native devices. With native applications, the programming model and languages are not common across all devices; with browser-based applications, you can’t access all of the capabilities included on mobile devices. This is where PhoneGap comes in. PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Build apps in HTML and JavaScript and still take advantage of core features in iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs.”

Details:
When: Mon, 11/Apr, 05:15 PM – 06:30 PM
Where: Venetian – Marcello 4403

If you go please say hi and a big THANK YOU to Bryce from everyone at Nitobi and the PhoneGap team.

IBM’s uber friendly website won’t actually let me link to it. But if you go here and search ‘phonegap’ you’ll find it no problem.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap at CTIA Wireless

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 05:37:34 +0000

I’m speaking at CTIA as part of the of the Mobile Web and Apps event. I’m going to be giving a quick overview of HTML5 and the open web community and trying to make the case for folks to build their dev stack on top top of it. That’s the short version…here’s the long winded conference abstract version:

Mobile apps are a must-have for any Fortune 500, Internet start-up or enterprising hacker. That being said these developers all have different interests needs. It’s important to help them all but it’s important understand what they’re looking for.
So, how can you add mobile to your mix and build out an app ecosystem in an effortless, economical way? By using the most flexible, open and cost-effective technologies available — HTML5 and open source.
There’s a lot more to HTM5 than a spec from W3C there’s a growing movement of HTML and JavaScripts developers working on building a better mobile world for users. We just have to enable them.
In this session, open source pundit and PhoneGap creator Andre Charland will demonstrate how building apps using open standards and open source produces better apps at a lower cost than native development. You’ll learn how HTML5 can be combined with free development frameworks and tools to build fully functional,
platform-neutral apps that are future-proofed for what’s to come in
phones, tablets and beyond.

Update here’s my presentation:

.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }

HTML5 and Open Source on Prezi

My talk is at 3:20pm but there’s a tonne of interesting presentations and panels before and after. Come on by and hang out.

If you know of any other PhoneGap talks please let me know. The best is probably twitter @andrecharland. Failing that just come find me at SeaWorld!

Joe Bowser: Rabbits, Robots, Holes and Things like that

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:25:55 +0000

I finally got some free time to do something that has been nagging me for quite some time, which is attempt to actually debug WebKit. Note that I said WebKit, and not PhoneGap. The main motivation for this was the fact that everyone at Nitobi depends on WebKit to work, and sadly on certain Android devices, certain things like the Android WebKit bridge don’t quite work as expected. Now, I understand that this bug doesn’t affect the top-of-the line phones like the Nexus One, the Nexus S, the Motorola Droid/Milestone, but could show up on budget devices, such as the Motorola Spice, the HTC MyTouch4G (that cheap thing with the Keyboard from T-Mobile that looks like an HTC Magic), or pretty much every Android device that has a screen smaller than 480×800, since they seem to have the weaker processors and a smaller memory footprint.

So, while we have worked around it, it’d be good to actually fix this problem for everyone, not just for us, so I decided to take a look into this issue. Now, since this is a WebKit failure, I decided that I’m going to have to hook up an Emulator to this process. This is easier said than done, since WebKit is written in C, the build is done on an Ubuntu machine, and this is leading into gdb territory. Furthermore, WebKit is a shared library, NOT an exectuable, and PhoneGap Android is written in Java! How do we go about doing this.

I decided to ask Google, and I found this entry on the Android Platform group that details the process. Unfortunately, email isn’t the clearest way of communicating things, so I’m going to start at the beginning. The first thing you need to do is fetch the Android source, to do this, follow the steps here.

Once you have the source code, the next step in the process is setting the debug flags. To do this, first it’s a good idea to run lunch and pick which platform you want to debug this on. Once you do this, you need to copy from build buildspec.mk.default to the root directory of your android repo. Then rename it to buildspec.mk, and add two lines to it:

DEBUG_MODULE_libwebcore:=true
DEBUG_MODULE_libxml2:=true
TARGET_CUSTOM_DEBUG_CFLAGS:=-O0 -mlong-calls
ADDITIONAL_BUILD_PROPERTIES += debug.db.uid=100000

Then, since we’re doing a debug build, you need to go to external/webkit and edit Android.mk. Uncomment this line:

LOCAL_PRELINK_MODULE := false

This will allow you to have HUGE webkit files that won’t break your build. Webkit will be extra large due to the fact that you now have debugging symbols included in the libraries. Once this is done, then make the app, and go home. A debug build of WebKit in the AOSP seems to take at least three times as long as a regular Android build. Once it has built, assuming that you picked the Engineering Image for the Android Emulator, you need to specify the the ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT, then you will be able to start the emulator and get the device going. Once you start the emulator, you need to setup port forwarding:

adb forward tcp:5039 tcp:5039

The next step is pretty important, since this is frustrating. To debug WebKit, start a WebKit process, then attach the Java Debugger to that process. I chose to do this in Eclipse, where it’s just like debugging a regular Android app. Once the Java Debugger is attached, then attach gdb to it. It’s important to run Android’s GDB, and you have a copy of this located in the AOSP tree. Due to the fact that I hate using Eclipse for anything other than Java development, I decided to go and use a tool that I haven’t used since my university days, namely DDD, which is a brutally old front-end to GDB, but it works well enough, and gives you access to the GDB command line.

Anyway, to connect GDB up you need to do the following on the device:

gdbserver 10.0.2.2:5039 --attach pid

And in GDB/DDD/whatever, you need to run these commands:

set solib-absolute-prefix /home/(yourdir)/aosp-official/out/target/product/generic/symbols
set solib-search-path /home/(yourdir)/aosp-official/out/target/product/generic/symbols/system/lib
file /home/(yourdir)/aosp-official/out/target/product/generic/symbols/system/app_process

Once you have both debuggers, you need to run cont! Then the app will work until you crash it, where it will show you where it crashed. This is as far as I got with this process. I think it’s pretty ridiculous that you need to run two different debuggers with this, but it makes sense, since there’s WebKit and there’s the Dalvik/Android stuff above WebKit. It’s funny listening to people talk about Native vs Web on Android, since in Android’s case, the Web Apps are FAR more low-level than things running in Dalvik Virtual Machine. This also may explain the extremely broken nature of WebKit on Android, and why there’s so much divergence of WebKit across these platforms.

I’m going to keep working on this. If you know anyone who’s actually patched WebKit on Android, or works on this at HTC, Motorola, Google, Samsung or another company, please let me know what your workflow looks like, since it’d be good to get ramped up on this to fix some of the extreme brokenness and quirks that are causing Android’s browser to quickly become one of the worst browsers for the web. Given how pro-Android I’ve been in the past, that should be a sign that things are really broken.

Shazron Abdullah: apple-xcode-icon

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:06:37 +0000

UPDATE: PhoneGap 0.9.5.1 includes the Xcode 4 template now, download it from phonegap.com

Currently the PhoneGap installer for iOS does not create an Xcode 4 template. The issue is tracked here.

I’ve created a shell script to create a PhoneGap project from the command line. You will still need PhoneGapLib installed – download the installer from http://phonegap.com and run it first.

Instructions are in the shell script itself (open it up in a text editor). View the script, then File -> Save As… to save it.

Cameron Perry has a good post about using PhoneGap with Xcode 4 that might solve some problems users might have.

UPDATE:
Nitobi is providing a web service to generate Xcode templates for PhoneGap-based projects.

Filip Maj: PhoneGap Build Icon Support for Android

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:04:51 +0000

Recently, I’ve been doing more and more work on the build service that Nitobi has in beta, which allows users to submit PhoneGap application assets and download built binaries of their app for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and webOS.

This week, Andrew and I are working on delivering full icon support for the supported PhoneGap Build platforms. Today we released Android support. Now, if the config.xml bundled in your application contains <icon> elements with different specified sizes, Build will make sure to use the appropriately-sized ones for Android devices with high, medium and low resolution screens.

Here’s a quick example config.xml from a static page I am running called the John Garrett Drinking Game (Canucks fans, you know what I’m talking about) – the code for this is also available on GitHub:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<widget xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" xmlns:gap="http://phonegap.com/ns/1.0" id="com.nitobi.johngarrett" version="1.0">
<name>John Garrett Drinking Game</name> 
<description>
If you're watching a Canucks game, you need play this.
</description> 
<author href="http://www.nitobi.com" email="support@nitobi.com">
Tim Kim, Ryan Betts, Fil Maj
</author> 
<icon src="img/beer_72.png" width="72" height="72" />
<icon src="img/beer_48.png" width="48" height="48" />
<icon src="img/beer_36.png" width="36" height="36" />
</widget>

The three specified sizes you see for the <icon> elements correlate to the three resolution levels supported on Android: 72 by 72 (or above) will be used for HDPI screens, 48 by 48 for MDPI, and 36 by 36 for LDPI.

Later this week we are hoping to land icon support for the rest of the platforms. Stay tuned!

Andre Charland: PhoneGap at SXSW

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:48:00 +0000

If you’re interest in learning more about PhoneGap at SXSW 2011 be sure to check out the following sessions:

Building Native Apps Across Platforms
Brian LeRoux, David Kaneda, Jonathan Stark

One Codebase, Endless Possibilities: Real HTML5 Hacking
Joe Mccann

Cross-Platform Multi-Screen Development
Brian Leroux, Daniel Dura, Christian Cantrell, Jonathan Campos, Mark Miller

Of course Brian Leroux will be kicking around for a few days so track him down and pick his brain or buy him a beer.

Andre Charland: Performance Tips for PhoneGap Apps

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:45:07 +0000

Well you can really tell the PhoneGap community is starting to mature when a post like this comes out. Daniel Pfeiffer and the crew at Float must be really sharp guys and we’re stoked they’re using PhoneGap and sharing a bit of their knowlege. I don’t want to steal their thunder so here’s just outline of their

-Test on a device early
-Listen for ‘touchstart’ instead of ‘click’
-CSS Animations
-Optimize your JavaScript
-Try a different JavaScript library
-Concatenate and minify
-JSLint
-Update the OS
-Split up the work
-Disable the multi-tasking

Please let me know if you have any other tips to share with the rest of the PhoneGap community.

Jesse MacFadyen: Supporting Custom URLs in PhoneGap-iPhone apps pt 2 of 2

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:52:46 +0000

My previous post explained how to get custom launch params so you can respond to different calling conditions, including a call from another app, or Mobile Safari. There is also a very good chance that your app may already be running, so what then?

Handle Open URL

With multitasking, this actually becomes quite likely, because users no longer kill your app, they simply move away from it. Your app is essentially suspended, so you should probably handle the non-launch option as well.

The ApplicationDelegate class defines a method just for this use, all you have to do is override it and hook it into your webView.

Copy the following to your AppDelegate.m and add the function to your js code:

Also, note that you can name your javascript function whatever you want, as long it is the same name that your AppDelegate passes into the webView. I chose to simply keep things clear and called the function "handleOpenURL(urlStr)", but it could just as easily be "appController.handleUrl(urlStr)". As in the previous post, this url is UrlEncoded, so you may need to decode it, depending on your needs.

One cool thing about the handleOpenURL function is that it is easily testable. You can put a link right inside your html to make the call using your protocol and it will be processed by the OS and passed right back to your app. This may not seem useful, but I can foresee situations where it might make sense, like passing info from a ChildBrowser control back to your main app, or completely decoupling your view from your app-controller. … Any other ideas?

I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. buy my single =>

Jesse MacFadyen: Supporting Custom URLs in PhoneGap-iPhone apps pt 1 of 2

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:09:29 +0000

I recently reworked some of the launchOption / handleOpenURL code in PhoneGap iPhone.
The commit is here.

You can expect these changes to be included in the next official release 0.9.5 later this month, however these are not considered PhoneGap functions, so I thought I would explain how this all works and save anyone having to wait for the next release.

The custom url schemes are an iOS thing, so it did not make sense to me to include them in the core of PhoneGap, but they are definitely useful, so they needed to be included somewhere.

When you create a new PhoneGap project in XCode, the template spits out a new XCode project containing a subclass of PhoneGapAppDelegate where you can choose to implement whatever you want without worrying about breaking the base classes. I chose to modify the template to make it easier for users to use custom urls. You can also add this functionality to an existing project quite simply.

For a very good description of how to set up the custom url, check out this post.

Once you have set up the plist and added your custom url, you can turn your attention to your app delegate files. First we will look at launchOptions.

Launch Options

In your MYPROJECT_AppDelegate.h add a variable to store the invoked url like this.

Now turning your attention to the implementation file, MYPROJECT_AppDelegate.m, you will need to respond to the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: message. If you were previously handling applicationDidFinishLaunching: you can safely remove this call, and handle things in the withOptions variant. This is the way the baseClass ( PhoneGapDelegate.m/.h ) functions now, but the template was not updated to reflect the change.

Your didFinishLaunchingWithOptions should look like this:

The above stores the launchOptions url as a string for later use.
Next we will pass it into the UIWebView where our JS app loads, we have to wait for the page to load to do this, but we add it before we call super, so the value will be available when the deviceready event fires in our page.

Now moving to the html/js

Awesome, we have received the launchOptions in our Javascript code, and we can continue on and do something relevant with them.

To test this, open Mobile Safari on your device or simulator ( after having installed your app, and making sure it is not running in the background. )

In Mobile Safari’s address bar enter your customUrl scheme and verify that it launches your app and you see an alert with the freaking launchOptions.

Next up : handleOpenURL

Andre Charland: Looking for a browser based emulator for PhoneGap? Try Ripple.

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:10:17 +0000

The guys over at Tiny Hippos have been kicking ass on their mobile dev emulator Ripple. It’s a Chrome Extension that helps develop PhoneGap apps by simulating data from PhoneGap APIs.

Check out this PhoneGap Geo demo in Ripple:

Can’t wait to see what this crew does next! Check out their blog post on it here.

Andre Charland: ComputerWorld on Facebook, HTML5 and PhoneGap at WebStock

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:59:00 +0000

Just caught this ComputerWorld article on New Zealand’s famous WebStock conference. Looks like one of the themes this year was HTML5 and cross platform development. Although no one from Nitobi from the PhoneGap team was there to speak it looks like Facebook’s open source guru David Recordon (@daveman692) gave PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build a nice little plug in his presentation.

“Fortunately, development environments are evolving to ease multiple builds. Facebook’s David Recordon, in a presentation centered on HTML5, spoke of PhoneGap, a service for developers to “write your app using HTML, CSS or JavaScript, upload it to the PhoneGap Build service and get back app-store ready apps for Apple iOS, Google Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry and more”.”

Thanks Dave! Feels nice to get a mention from person and company who’s clearly kicking ass in the mobile space!

I did just want to clear up that the name PhoneGap has nothing to the clothing chain. As was maybe implied by “The name alludes to the economical-products-for-everyone approach of the Gap clothing chain.” We’re trying to bridge the gap between native and web technologies that’s all:)

Hopefully I can head down to New Zealand and WebStock next year!

Andre Charland: “Just One More” – PhoneGap based iPad App featured by Apple

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:49:10 +0000

Our friends across the pond at Ribot have just had their killer movie browsing app Just One More featured by Apple as New and Noteworthy in the App Store.

You can see it featured here:

Nice work Ribot crew!

Shazron Abdullah: no_xcode

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:16:41 +0000

I started writing this shell script because Xcode 4 keeps crashing, so I ended up editing my code in TextMate, and had iTerm open so I can build, then deploy the app automatically in iPhone Simulator.

The script takes three arguments, the first is the name of the project (here the limitation is that it has to be the name of the .xcodeproj and the .app name), and the second is the configuration (Debug/Release – defaults to Debug), and the third is an optional argument, the name of the log file that the log will be written to (defaults to stderror.log).

Also, you will need the latest code of ios-sim. I could have added a step to check whether you have it installed and download, build and install it for you, but maybe next time Make sure you download the latest source, and not one of the packages.

One you download it and build it, copy the ios-sim binary to somewhere in your path – /usr/bin is a good location.

Download the script. It is WTFPL licensed. Run it without arguments to see the help text.

Run chmod 755 sim-run.sh on the script to give it exec privileges.

The script builds your project, launches the project in the iPhone Simulator, activates the iPhone Simulator (brings it to front), logs the output to a file, and also displays the contents of the logfile as it is written to. On each run, it writes to a fresh log file, and the previous log file is backed up.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap in Mashable Article on HTML5 and Cross Platform Dev

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:03:00 +0000

Christina Warren just posted a good high level overview of how HTML5 is addressing cross platform dev for devices.

On PhoneGap:

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that lets developers build native apps using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. What really sets PhoneGap apart is that it lets developers create a full-functioning mobile web app but place that app in a native wrapper, so that it can use native device APIs and get submitted to the App Store or Android Market.

In essence, it enables mobile developers to create an app just as if they were targeting the mobile browser but with the benefit of being able to get into the App Store.

PhoneGap Build is a new service (still in beta) that lets developers quickly and easily create app-store ready versions of their apps for various platforms. It does all the work of compiling the code for various platforms and gives the developer a final build suitable for submission to the app market of their choice.

I don’t really consider Titanium as an HTML5 solution but it does tackle cross platform dev.

Andre Charland: Brian Leroux’s Interview About PhoneGap on RIA Radio

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:02:52 +0000

Listen to Brian’s recent interview on PhoneGap, Nitobi, PhoneGap and the mobile web in general.

Brian LeRoux, spacelord!1!! at Nitobi, joined us to discuss PhoneGap, an open source project to enable mobile application development with web development tools. We also discuss Nitobi itself and the organization that enables the development of a project like PhoneGap.

Here’s the mp3.

Andre Charland: NS Basic/App Studio Now Supports PhoneGap

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:00:28 +0000

NS BASIC Corporation announced that it now supports PhoneGap. That means apps created with NS Basic/App Studio get more power under the hood and additional APIs and functionality including compass, contacts, camera, files and notifications. These apps also become portable to platforms that support JavaScript, HTML5 and Webkit.

Find out more about NS Basic/App Studio and PhoneGap.

Jesse MacFadyen: ekiben

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:29:46 +0000

I posted a simple view swapper demo for webkit mobile using XUI + GloveBox.

Want a quick layout for your PhoneGap app? Go and get the code:

https://github.com/purplecabbage/ekiben

Joe Bowser: Android: Your JS Engine is not always V8

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:59:54 +0000

Recently, I watched some Mobile Web training, and I noticed that people overlook many things about Android. Namely these facts:

WebKit is different on every phone
The Browser and the WebKit engine are different things.
WebKit can have a different engine

So, as usual I will talk about how the source to Android is OPEN, and how with the source code, I can look at the build scripts and find out what Android ACTUALLY supports instead of doing feature detection or the other things people in turtlenecks use to decide what Android can and can’t do very well. Below is the applicable Makefile for WebKit:

# Two ways to control which JS engine is used: # 1. use JS_ENGINE environment variable, value can be either 'jsc' or 'v8' # This is the preferred way. # 2. if JS_ENGINE is not set, or is not 'jsc' or 'v8', this makefile picks # up a default engine to build. # To help setup buildbot, a new environment variable, USE_ALT_JS_ENGINE, # can be set to true, so that two builds can be different but without # specifying which JS engine to use.

# To enable JIT in Android's JSC, please set ENABLE_JSC_JIT environment
# variable to true.

# Read JS_ENGINE environment variable
JAVASCRIPT_ENGINE = $(JS_ENGINE)

# The default / alternative engine depends on the device class.
# On devices with a lot of memory (e.g. Passion/Sholes), the
# default is V8. On everything else, the only choice is JSC.
# TODO: use ARCH_ARM_HAVE_ARMV7 once that variable is added to
# the build system.
ifeq ($(ARCH_ARM_HAVE_VFP),true)
DEFAULT_ENGINE = v8
ALT_ENGINE = jsc
else
DEFAULT_ENGINE = jsc
ALT_ENGINE = jsc
endif

ifneq ($(JAVASCRIPT_ENGINE),jsc)
ifneq ($(JAVASCRIPT_ENGINE),v8)
# No JS engine is specified, pickup the one we want as default.
ifeq ($(USE_ALT_JS_ENGINE),true)
JAVASCRIPT_ENGINE = $(ALT_ENGINE)
else
JAVASCRIPT_ENGINE = $(DEFAULT_ENGINE)
endif
endif
endif

So, if you’re running a low-end Android device, like a Motorola Quench, your Javascript Engine will be different from the Nexus S, HTC EVO with CM7, the Motorola Droid, the Nexus One, etc. Since nobody has seen the official Android 2.3 on anything other than the Nexus S, I can only really do experiments with Cyanogen on an HTC Dream, which isn’t really accurate.

Recently, there was an issue with the emulator image on Android 2.3 that directly affected PhoneGap. Because I have no idea what Javascript Engine is on the emulators, I suspect that this image may creep up again on low-end phones and cause even more fragmentation than before. This is a REALLY bad thing, since it makes web development on Android even more frustrating, and will chase developers away from that platform. Like everything else in Android, things are always changing, so if any phone manufacturers are reading this and can test PhoneGap on their low-end line and get back to me, that would be greatly appreciated.

Filip Maj: BlackBerry (Legacy) Browser and GPS

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:19:39 +0000

I have been working on a BlackBerry mobile web application recently at Nitobi. It’s fairly complex in that it really pushes the abilities of the BlackBerry browser, and on top of this supports a lot of legacy BlackBerries. I’ve never been too fond of developing for this platform, just because of how hard it is to do common tasks like debugging, testing and reproducing issues. This project has taught me a lot: from being more strict with my JavaScript writing style and syntax, to finding workarounds for rendering issues, to getting better at testing on the extremely fragmented BlackBerry platform. However, one thing that stood out for me above all else was how poorly the BlackBerry JavaScript geolocation API behaved – thus, the birth of this post!

Before I begin, I want to say that my experience is based almost entirely off the older BlackBerry browser, not the new WebKit-based (Torch Mobile) browser. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if these issues existed on the Torch as it supports both the W3C Geolocation API and the BlackBerry Geolocation API simultaneously.

First, I’ve noticed that the browser will generally return 0 for both latitude and longitude when you request a location under certain circumstances:

If the BlackBerry is in a building or has no clear access to the sky (this is a given)
If you restart a device and do not access a Java-based application that queries for a GPS location, the browser will indefinitely return 0/0 as the location. What this means is that you have to open up, for example, the native Maps application, get a fix via it, before the BlackBerry JavaScript geo API will return meaningful data. Counter-intuitive, not obvious at all, not documented, but colloquial reports from other developers confirm these suspicions.

Second, some BlackBerry models do not ship with built-in GPS hardware. For an example, see this Wikipedia article and look at the 8520 (no GPS) vs. 8530 (GPS). Both 8520 and 8530 run similar BlackBerry OS versions, and thus, similar browsers. However, the BlackBerry JavaScript location API will return true when you query:

blackberry.location.GPSSupported

even for a device that has no GPS hardware! Furthermore, the location API methods will also appear to function (the location callbacks get fired, for example). To compound this problem further, the native browser application on BlackBerry allows the user to toggle JavaScript-based geolocation support on and off. What I’ve noticed on some of these models like the 8520/8530 is that this GPSSupported property returns true – even after I went in and specifically disabled JavaScript Geolocation support in the browser options.

Finally, some carriers actually disable location services on their devices (apparently Verizon does this – see last reply on first page of the linked forum post) and force you to
purchase a location-enabling add-on. No way to programmatically check for this in-browser, and also super dirty on Verizon’s part if true!

So in conclusion: although RIM’s documentation and API makes it seem like this is a reliable API to leverage in BlackBerry-targeted web apps, I find it’s hard to trust the BlackBerry JS location API in these cases, and that is a shame because this is our only avenue into GPS-aware functionality on websites targeting BlackBerries (especially older ones).

If you’ve noticed similar issues, I’d love to hear about it – drop me a line!

Steve Gill: PhoneGap Getting Started Screencasts

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:02:43 +0000

So I have decided to make a series of getting started screencasts helping people setup their environment for developing phonegap apps for specific platforms and making a quick hello world app or loading up the sample app. I was hoping to get some feedback on if you find these screencasts useful, how to improve on them, if you want more and what I should discuss in future screencasts.

I recommend watching these videos in 720p.

iPhone

Android

webOS

BlackBerry Widgets

Shazron Abdullah: xcode

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:00:05 +0000

Found this useful information, regarding Xcode error reporting for shell build phases. For example, if we were to include JSLint in PhoneGap iPhone, we could format the errors this way below so code where the errors occur are easily editable:

In shell build phases you can write to stderr using the following format:
<filename>:<linenumber>: error | warn | note : <message>\n
It’s the same format gcc uses to show errors. The filename:linenumber part can be omitted. Depending on the mode (error, warn, note), Xcode will show your message with a red or yellow badge.
If you include an absolute file path and a line number (if the error occurred in a file), double clicking the error in the build log lets Xcode open the file and jumps to the line, even if it is not part of the project. Very handy.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap at Android Only in Sweden

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:57:15 +0000

Check out Brian Leroux’s great preso at Android Only in Sweden earlier this fall.

Android Only 2010 – PhoneGap: Not only Android from Peter Svensson on Vimeo.

We’re stoked to see more interest from Europe! Brian will be back in Stockholm in February for jFokus. Let us know if you’d like to meetup!

Andrew Lunny: Introducing Sleight

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Some time in October I threw together Sleight - a tiny little node.js server for use in developing PhoneGap apps (it’s not coupled with PhoneGap, but PhoneGap’s the ideal use case).

Sleight is basically just an if statement: for each request to the server, if the resource is a file on the server, then serve it as the response. If it’s not there, proxy a response back from some remote server. This lets you develop as though you’re working on a PhoneGap app (on the file:// protocol, where cross-origin XHRs are allowed) from an HTTP server. You can then run your app from a server locally and open it in a mobile browser, while keeping the cross-origin requests working.

Let’s get a quick demo going. Create a sleight-demo directory, and create an index.html file with this text:

    <body>
    <div id="latest-tweet"></div>
</body>
<script>
  var server = window.location.protocol == "file:" ?
      "http://search.twitter.com" : "";

  window.addEventListener('load', function () {
      function handleResponse(text) {
          var match = JSON.parse(text).results[0].text;
          document.getElementById('latest-tweet').innerHTML = match;
      }

      var url = server + "/search.json?q=phonegap";
      var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
      req.onreadystatechange = function () {
          if (this.readyState == 4) {
              if (this.status == 200 || this.status == 0) {
                  handleResponse(this.responseText);
              } else {
                  console.log('something went wrong');
              }
          }
      }

      req.open('GET', url, true);
      req.send();
  })
</script>

Open that in Safari or the like from your hard drive; ensure the file is run from the file:// protocol. Good.

Now, assuming you’ve installed Sleight, enter the following command in your sleight-demo directory:

    $ sleight target=search.twitter.com
Listening on port 8088 @ ${insert your current timestamp here}

Now navigate to http://localhost:8088/ in Safari. The tweet should still be present (or maybe there’ll be a new tweet by this point). And check your Sleight log:

    Static file served from: / @ timestamp
Remote request to search.twitter.com:80/search.json?q=phonegap @ timestamp
Remote request to search.twitter.com:80/favicon.ico @ timestamp

Much success and joy ensues. And since you’re now running an HTTP server, you can easily access the page form your mobile device, so all of you PhoneGap testing can be done without any installation, or re-installation.

Right now this is all Sleight does, but there are some other, PhoneGap-specific features we’d like to add in the future - hooks for logging, debugging, and testing in particular.

Oh yeah, and you can get the Sleight source code at Github, as ever.

p.s. If you were hoping Sleight, in reference to sleight of hand, meant there would be any magic, I sincerely apologize. Here is the best I can manage:

Andre Charland: A VC: HTML5 Mobile Apps – Fred Wilson Gets It!

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:40:37 +0000

Fred Wilson a very well respected investor just came to a realization about HTML5 apps that is going to send fan boys screaming!

I saw two HTML5 apps yesterday. One running in my Android browser. The other running in the iPad browser. They looked and worked exactly like their mobile app counterparts. It was a mind opening moment.

via A VC: HTML5 Mobile Apps. So how much money is Fred going to be putting in companies building multiple native apps per platform? This is going to be more an more the case as HTML/JS technologies evolve and devices get faster. Fred’s not even talking about PhoneGap apps which could give you even more features that makes you HTML5 equal to a native app, yet cross platform. Although a large number of technologists have understand this for a long time it’s nice to see non tech focused folks starting to realize that HTML5 can be on par with native apps…so don’t through your money away!

For insights from Fred I’d have a look at the recent interview from Fred at O’reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit. Fred calls it like he sees it and doesn’t get wrapped up in hype that other folks in the echo chamber might.

FYI. Fred’s an investor in Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr and others you may have heard of via Union Square Ventures.

Andre Charland: Ars Technica iPad App w/ PhoneGap

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 01:50:56 +0000

A couple weeks ago Ars Technica released their iPad App. It’s certainly one of the nicer PhoneGap apps I’ve seen today. It’s very simple and feels like a native in look and in feel. Scrolling through the articles is great. IBM built the app for them, which is very exciting to us at Nitobi and for the rest of the PhoneGap project. It’s a great example of what can be achieved with HTML5, JS and CSS. They have a full write up on how they built it on their blog.

Here’s a quick video of me interacting with the app:

Download it from iTunes here. Let me know what you think and if you have any feedback. There’s also an update on the Ars blog about how they’re planning to improve scrolling and navigation in a future release of the app. Kudos to them on a job well done and being very transparent about that!

Andre Charland: More HTML5 features now in iOS 4.2

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:38:05 +0000

HTML5 and the future are coming to a mobile browser near you and faster than we may have expected. Over on Maximiliano Firtman’s blog he talks in detail about some of the new features available in Safari in iOS 4.2.

*Accelerometer
*Gyroscope support through the DeviceOrientation API
*WebSockets API from HTML5
*Updated HTML5 Form Support
*Partial XHR-2 Support
*Print Support
*New JavaScript data types
*New DOM events
*Enhanced SVG and Canvas support

via Safari on iPhone & iPad 4.2: Accelerometer, WebSockets & better HTML5 support | Mobile Web Programming.

Here’s a demo of the Accelerometer working on an iPhone in Safari that I found on the ReadWriteWeb’s write up on the new HTML5 features.

See from a 4.2 iOS device here

Obviously since PhoneGap leverages webkit on the device your PhoneGap based apps will get acces to these great new features too. Quit doubting web technologies and start thinking cross platform!

Andre Charland: Cross Platform Apps Panel at HP/Palm Developer Days

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:42:21 +0000

Our very own Brian Leroux of inappropriate presentation fame holds it together on this great panel over the weekend.

Moderators: Ben Galbraith, Founder, Set Direction
Dion Almaer, Founder, Set Direction Panelists: Brian LeRoux, PhoneGap
Charles Jolly, Strobe Dave Balmer, Jo Project Greg Avola, Untappd LLC
Description: Building a mobile app usually involves using one proprietary SDK that targets one platform. This ensures a native look and feel as well as full access to features specific to that device or operating system. Sometimes, however, you don’t need full device access. Sometimes you might want to code at a very high level using just web standards and be able to run the application on multiple operating systems. This is similar to coding a mobile website, except that as a local application your app can launch faster, work offline, and have access to local resources. This session presents unique insights into solutions to cross-platform fragmentation

Andre Charland: PhoneGap Build on ReadWriteWeb

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:56:23 +0000

Just wanted to point out a great post on PhoneGap Build on the ReadWriteWeb:

PhoneGap&aposs newly launched service, PhoneGap Build, the compilation of native apps using standard Web technologies is done in the cloud. Also, unlike many competitors, PhoneGap Build is free – at least for now, while in beta. And it will remain free for any open source projects in the future.

PhoneGap Build eliminates the complexities involved with building mobile applications for the increasingly diverse mobile OS landscape, where each operating system requires the use of its own SDK (software development kit) and programming languages.

via PhoneGap Build: Cross-Platform Mobile App Creation Using Web Technology.

Andre Charland: PhoneGap and Sony Ericsson Mentioned in PC World

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:17:39 +0000

Sony Ericsson released their WebSDK Packager this week as an open source project on Github. We’re really excited about this obviously because it’s built on top of PhoneGap. Our new Build service also got a little plug in the PC World coverage:

“Earlier this month, Nitobi announced the beta of PhoneGap Build, a cloud-based tool that allows developers to write applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, upload their apps to PhoneGap Build, and get back applications that work natively on smartphones based on Android, webOS, Symbian and the BlackBerry OS, and soon on iOS, Windows Mobile, MeeGo and Bada.”

via Phone Makers, Software Vendors Push Web-based Apps – PCWorld Business Center.

Nice to see the mainstream tech media picking up on the issues and tooling around cross platform mobile apps.

Anis Kadri: PhoneGap TextMate Bundle

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:55:35 +0000

Dear TextMate users/PhoneGap developers,

I put together a little bundle for your favorite editor. You should now be able to easily get code snippets right in your editor.

You can find it here

Installation instructions are here

How to use:

Type accel.wa and press Tab and you should get:


function onSuccess(acceleration) {
    alert('Acceleration X: ' + acceleration.x + '\n' +
          'Acceleration Y: ' + acceleration.y + '\n' +
          'Acceleration Z: ' + acceleration.z + '\n' +
          'Timestamp: '      + acceleration.timestamp + '\n');
};

function onError() {
    alert('onError!');
};

var options = { frequency: 3000 };  // Update every 3 seconds

var watchID = navigator.accelerometer.watchAcceleration(onSuccess, onError, options);

Now all you have to do is modify the callbacks to suit your needs! Almost every API method should be present.

Feedback always welcome!

Andre Charland: PhoneGap and Sencha Conf

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:56:01 +0000

This week Andrew Lunny gave an overview of PhoneGap and HTML/JS development for mobile at Sencha Conf in SF. He also gave a sneak peak of some of new feature he’s working on in PhoneGap Build. Check out his awesome slide deck:

PhoneGap Talk @ Sencha Con 2010

View more presentations from alunny.

A bigger theme that people should pay attention to is that PhoneGap plays nicely with almost any HTML/JS library that’s optimized for the mobile web, Sencha Touch included. These include jQuery Mobile, Zepto.js, Wink Toolkit, Sproutcore, GloveBox, XUI and more…we’re currently tracking them and going put together a page on the PhoneGap wiki where we can catalogue and showcase them. Together we can all make better mobile apps and sites with web technologies! So no need for the PhoneGap vs (insert JS lib here) nonsense. Cool. Up up and away!

Andre Charland: PhoneGap Build Presentation at Deploy2010

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:38:46 +0000

Yesterday I gave a presentation at Deploy 2010 in Seattle on cross platform dev with PhoneGap and our new service Build.PhoneGap.com. Here are my slides:

PhoneGap Build Presentation at Deploy2010

View more presentations from AndreCharland.

It was a great event with an amazing venue! Thanks to the all the attendees and organizers!

Andre Charland: Build.PhoneGap.com – Private Beta Opening!

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:57:53 +0000

I’m very exciting to be finally sending out beta invites to a lucky few folks to kick the tires on our new baby. It’s been a long time coming! PhoneGap Build our new service that let’s developers compile or build their PhoneGap based apps in the cloud. Our goal is to eliminate the need to download and configure the half dozen or so different SDKs requited to build native/installable for today’s world of smartphones. In a nutshell you upload HTML/JS/CSS as zip or from a Github project for your app to Build.PhoneGap.com, wait a couple minutes and then download the appropriate apps for your phones. From there you can test on your device or distribute into an app store. Something like this:

This is just the very early alpha beta blah blah thing startups do. We’re going to be letting folks bit by bit to keep an eye on performance and work on addressing bugs and scaling for the next while. So if you don’t get a beta right away I apologize. Our goal is to have broader access to the app by the end of the month. Although, this cloud compile service has been our plan from the beginning…yes we wanted to do this back in 2008 when we launched we had a lot of work to do on the PhoneGap framework itself to get to this point. It feels like good timing in our industry where cross platform mobile is an acknowledged significant issue and cloud based development tools are quickly gaining traction.

We’ve had a few nice words by folks like Jonathan Stark, Jeffrey Hammond, Michael Mahemoff and James Governor. Thanks it’s encouraging!

We’re always happy to hear feature requests and ideas so fire them our way. Be sure to stay tuned on Twitter: @phonegap. Big shout out to Andrew Lunny and the rest of the team working on PhoneGap.

Shazron Abdullah: keychain.jpg

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 01:56:26 +0000

So what is the Keychain? It’s a framework to store data (particularly passwords) securely on Mac OS X and iOS. You really don’t want to store passwords and other sensitive information in HTML5 local or web storage. This is a PhoneGap plugin for iOS that provides access to the Keychain through Javascript. Based on Buzz Andersen’s work – namely SFHFKeychainUtils

View the README and check out the sample app’s index.html for usage. Play around with the Get, Set, and Remove examples, should be self-explanatory.

Joe Bowser: Android Testing: The Emulator is your friend

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:44:02 +0000

A while ago, I broke my Nexus One, and because I switched from Rogers to Telus back in February, I was unable to use my other Nexus One and I had to go back to using the Motorola Milestone as my phone. Now, I’m trying to look at the bright side of this is that I was forced to live like most users of Android, which is that I’m stuck using Android 2.1 (and while I’ll happily root a Nexus One and void it’s warranty, I’m a bit more sketched out by the Milestone’s Signed Bootloader, and would like a backup phone before going through the rooting process.)

This isn’t a huge deal with PhoneGap, except that I found a bug that was only in Android Webkit. The issue is that Motorola’s Webkit behaves differently than the stock Emulator Webkit, and that each phone Motorola implements has a unique firmware. That’s where the Motorola Developer Add-Ons came to the rescue. I was able to get Emulator Images that were roughly similar to my phone’s build, and was able to confirm the bug. Motorola really stands out with this tool, and it seems that after doing some initial checking, it seems that Samsung only has an emulator for the Galaxy Tab, and not for their other Android devices, HTC doesn’t even have an emulator and just offers source so you can patch the Android Open Source Project and generate your own images. Sony Ericsson has an Emulator for their Android 1.6 devices so if you need to test on the Xperia line, you can test on that as well.

The downside is that the Emulator is painfully slow in comparison to the device. Furthermore, most Emulator Images are still very unfinished, and others have annoying side features. They may be a custom boot animation, or random resolutions that aren’t supported. The Android Emulator is definitely the weakest link, and it would be great if we could rely on Android Webkit to be the same across all devices, and behaviours (like proxies) to work across all devices as intended. Unfortunately, life is not that simple.

Anis Kadri: How to launch an Android app from the command prompt

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:23:02 +0000

We want to pretty much do what Eclipse does when we build&run an Android app:
Compile, Build Package, Uninstall package, Run the app in the emulator/device

function run_emulator {
  package="com.package.name" # replace this with your package name
  class=$1
  ant debug && \
   adb -e uninstall $package && \
   adb -e install -r bin/$class-debug.apk && \
   adb -e shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN \
   -n $package/.$class
}

If you want the same thing to run on a device:

function run_device {
  package="com.package.name" # replace this with your package name
  class=$1
  ant debug && \
   adb -d uninstall $package && \
   adb -d install -r bin/$class-debug.apk && \
   adb -d shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN \
   -n $package/.$class
}

Add these two functions to your shell profile. It works with Bash and I haven’t tried with other shells.

Here is how to run the app:

$ cd /path/to/your/android_app_root
$ run_emulator ClassName # replace this with the main activity class name

If you deal with different package names you can also specify the package name as a command line argument.

Happy Android Coding!

Ryan Willoughby

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:20:48 +0000

Shazron Abdullah: paypal_phonegap_plugin_2.jpg

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:01:09 +0000

First release of the PayPal Plugin for PhoneGap iPhone. Right now it handles static payments only (no dynamic changes to include shipping etc). Thanks to Chris Booth of Signature Digital in the UK for sponsoring development and also allowing it to be released to the PhoneGap community.

Nothing much to look at in the first screenshot, but with CSS styling and using PayPal’s official web button images it can look better. View the README and check out the sample app’s index.html for usage. Triggering the “Pay” button will launch the native workflow in the second screenshot.

Andre Charland: BlackBerry DEVCON Bound

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:09:29 +0000

We’re globetrotting this month, taking PhoneGap to various conferences in Europe and the US. I’m headed to BlackBerry DEVCON September 27-30 in San Francisco.

BlackBerry DEVCON is a great opportunity to see what’s new with BlackBerry apps and check out some new technologies for the first time. The conference is all about sharpening skills, meeting peers and learning about the latest developer tools, which is why we’ll be showcasing PhoneGap at the conference.

If you want to be there, you can get a $150 discount off the current registration price when you use the code DD6SSC when registering.

Conferences are also a great chance for us to meet more of the PhoneGap developer community. If you’re going to DEVCON, I hope you’ll come say hello. We’ll be demoing PhoneGap at a booth on the showroom floor. Hope to see you there!

Andrew Lunny: iOSDevCamp Seattle

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0000

View more presentations from alunny.

I had a really great time at iOSDevCamp Seattle this weekend, put on by Brian Fling and the guys from pinch/zoom. I was fortunate enough to speak there about PhoneGap - you can see my slides above and the video here.

Yohei Shimomae: Dreamweaver CS5 – HTML5 Pack

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:31:30 +0000

Adobe recently released HTML5 Pack extension for Dreamweaver CS5. It adds initial support for HTML5 and CSS3 in Dreamweaver’s Live View mode as well as code hinting for HTML5/CSS3 exclusive properties. I just put together a quick test page and it’s pleasant to know that CSS animation is also supported within the Live View screen. Another [...]

Andre Charland: It’s Easier Than Ever for Symbian Developers to Build Mobile Apps with PhoneGap

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:00:57 +0000

Here at Nitobi we’re excited to be contributing PhoneGap to the Symbian Web Runtime. PhoneGap will now be included as part of the web extensions package in the Symbian^3 platform.

By contributing code that converts PhoneGap APIs to the Symbian WRT API, we’ve made it easier for Symbian developers to write applications using PhoneGap. You no longer need to include any extra code which, of course, makes deployment faster.

PhoneGap developers benefit by getting even better support for the Symbian WRT platform.

PhoneGap supports WRT 1.1 and implements these APIs: geolocation, accelerometer, camera, vibration, contacts, SMS, sounds, orientation change and storage. The network availability API is under development.

If you’re new to PhoneGap, it’s worth checking out. PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps that run on Symbian as well as iPhone/iTouch/iPad, Google Android, Palm and Blackberry. The PhoneGap open source code has been downloaded more than 250K times and there are thousands of PhoneGap apps in app stores and directories.

Shazron Abdullah: iadbottom

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:25:55 +0000

Hey its a new plugin for PhoneGap. I call it the “PhoneGap AdPlugin”, and even though it only supports iAds currently, there is potential for supporting the other ad networks as a backup to iAds. Make sure you read the RELEASE NOTES in the README for limitations.

Get the source and view the README

Below are screenshots from the test app included, called ‘iAdHost’