Development done right, with an extra touch
WebGL is a developing standard for delivering 3D content inside an HTML5 canvas.
The spec hasn’t reached a 1.0 version yet, but Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome have support we can try out in their nightly builds for the draft version. I had the best luck on both Linux and OSX in trying out WebGL by using firefox nightly builds. There are several documents out there to help you try it… see here,
Many people don’t give a second thought to the idea that you can upgrade your laptop or desktop computer to a newer operating system, even an OS from a different vendor, down the road. It’s a completely different story for mobiles. The roots of the problem are in the specialized hardware that mobiles have. The hardware manufacturer has to be on board when you want to release new firmware specifically for that mobile.
Apple’s consolidated mobile product line and tight control
Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement was updated in the iPhone 4.0 SDK to specifically prohibit the development of apps using “an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool,” which would include Adobe’s Flash, Sun’s Java, Microsoft’s Silverlight/Mono, Unity 3D games engine, and most Cross-platform development frameworks such as Rhomobile Rhodes and Appcelerator Titanium.
An existing clause in the developer license only prohibited the use of private APIs (that is, development features that Apple has not completed, documented, and disclosed as being available for public use). That has now been expanded to include prohibitions on developing iPhone apps in other languages or in other development environments that are then translated or cross-compiled into native iPhone apps. What does this mean for all these frameworks?
In the first article in this series I described a way to redirect iPhone clients to our mobile application. Now I will describe how to build a registration application using JQTouch.
A typical web application sends the content of each page, but in this model we deliver the whole application and only parts of the document are active at one time. To start, install JQTouch. I put it in js/
I wrote an introductory post a while back that gave a brief overview of the three main cross-platform mobile development frameworks. At that time, Rhodes was definitely the leading solution in terms of features and support of several different platforms, while Titanium was still in a pre-release state and presented an uncertain future in terms of licensing. PhoneGap was a nice solution, but didn’t feel ready for prime time.
Our platform of choice has been Rhodes.
Things are changing very fast though, and nowadays we’re considering the best approach on a project-by-project basis.
JQTouch is a web framework built on JQuery and intended to make mobile sites render through a webview and operate like a native mobile application.
We’ve used JQTouch in a couple of different scenarios, such as a web site interface for iPhone and running on top of phonegap to build a standalone application. I’ll describe how we used it to provide a mobile interface for sneakonthelot.com.
Rhodes allows you to create and use helpers, short methods you typically use to DRY your views. Very much the same as the ones you encounter in Rails. There are a number of caveats though.
If your Google Chrome browser is acting awkward with fonts like in the picture (displays all “A” characters) instead of serif fonts or of all fonts, you may need to clean your Mac OS X Font Cache.
Here’s how to do it.
Dose provide dosing calculators for use with products by Seachem Laboratories. Surgeworks developed this free application called Dose ordered by Seachem Laboratories. We’ve taken online dosing calculators and put them in your pocket.
App submission changes
iPhone 4 reception issue: myth or fact? Design flaw or software issue?
How to build and submit a Universal App for distribution on the App Store with the iOS 4 SDKDevelop your WebGL strategy now
Microsoft Pink smartphone project: KIN gets killed
Recent Comments