Surgeworks Mobile

App submission changes

Brad Midgley — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:24:47 +0000

If you have an existing project and you try to resubmit to the app store, you are likely to run into a problem with the changes Apple has made.

Error: The binary you uploaded was invalid. The bundle did not contain an icon for iPad of exactly 72×72 pixels, in .png format.

Solution: Add a .png to your project of this size, then go to Info.plist, add a new key CFBundleIconFiles, rick-click it and change it to an array, and for values put the filename (without extension) for your 57×57 and 72×72 icons.

Error: The binary you uploaded was invalid. The application-identifier entitlement is not formatted correctly; it should contain your 10-character App ID Seed, followed by a dot, followed by your bundle identifier.

Solution: In Xcode, remove Entitlements.plist from your project. When you re-add it, you will see it is created from a template that has a prebuild application-identifier property.

The app store has really been a moving target lately… Good luck out there!

iPhone 4 reception issue: myth or fact? Design flaw or software issue?

Mauro Dalu — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:02:29 +0000

If you’re left handed like me, forget being able to use an iPhone 4 without a case. Here are the myths and facts about the iPhone 4 reception issues. I’ve been thinking of how Apple could resolve the issue with a software update: they could determine how you’re holding the phone, perhaps thanks to the new gyroscope, and prompt you to hold it properly… like in the picture.

If you haven’t followed the events lately, here is a brief summary for you…
Short after the iPhone 4 launch, users started reporting the iPhone 4 had a worse reception then the iPhone 3GS. Magazines did their tests, some agreed, some didn’t.

Then, Apple announced it’s just a software issue, but their report sounds weird. According to Apple the iPhone thinks the signal is “stronger” then it really is and therefore the user will expect to be able to make a phonecall in areas where it wouldn’t be possible. Too bad in the same areas iPhone 3GS and lots of other smartphones are able to make and receive calls instead.

Apple has also said that any mobile phone experiences reception issues when held improperly. Now either Apple thinks left-handed people like me were born and educated improperly, or they’re just climbing on mirrors!

Apple finally said that users can use any case that covers the metal exterior band of the phone, which also acts as its antennas, with a case to prevent conduction through the user’s skin. So they recognize the hardware design flaw, but only implicitly?

Consumer Reports announced on Monday that it cannot recommend the iPhone 4 to potential buyers due to reception problems that are a result of the design of the handset. The conclusion was reached after testing three of Apple’s iPhone 4 handsets purchased from three separate retailers in the New York area inside a controlled environment of a radio frequency isolation chamber.

“In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers,” the nonprofit organization wrote. “We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.”

They also suggest a solution — the video herebelow is worth watching. Now, Apple’s turn again. Will they do as everyone expects and start giving away the Apple branded case for free? Will it go on denying?

How to build and submit a Universal App for distribution on the App Store with the iOS 4 SDK

Mauro Dalu — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:13:09 +0000

Today I’ve been working on submitting an update to our popular Catholic Prayers database app: it’ll be our first Universal application to hit the App Store. Ever since we upgraded to the latest SDK we can only build for iOS 4, but we’ve set the iPhone OS Deployment Target to be 3.1.3. That way, our users should be able to run the app on devices running iPhone OS 3.x.

Xcode includes project templates for iPad apps and has a menu command (Project > Upgrade Current Target for iPad) that helps you get the project setup correctly when you want to add iPad support to your existing iPhone project. The Upgrade command gives you two options…

Upgrade your existing iPhone app to a universal application that runs on both iPhone and iPad. Customers buy Universal apps once and can install it on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Learn more reading Apple’s documentation.
Create a separate iPad target based on your existing iPhone target. Both targets will use much of the same codebase but in the end, you compile two separate apps. Customers who want to use both the iPhone and iPad-optimized apps have to buy both of them. Learn more reading Apple’s documentation.

The new Build > Build and Archive command builds your app, creates an .ipa file (the zip archive of your app bundle you need to create to submit your app to iTunes Connect) and then archives the app bundle in a subfolder of ~/Library/MobileDevice/Archived Applications. These archives also appear in the new Archived Applications view in the Organizer.

The great thing is that the new Organized feature simplifies the painful interaction with iTunes Connect: the Organizer allows to setup your app for Ad Hoc distribution and to upload the final version to iTunes Connect.

On top of that, the “Validate Application” button will, in Apple’s words, “run all of the validation tests that will be run upon submission to the App Store so that you can fix any problems before submitting your app.”

The “Submit Application” button will upload the binary to iTunes Connect. Before you do this, you must have set up the application with all its metadata (screenshots, 512×512 icon, keywords) in iTunes Connect (this also true for the Validate Application step).

Make sure that all your keywords are correct because you cannot change them afterwards unless you reject the binary.

These new features are a time saver and are very handy, however there’s no progress indication in the Organizer window, and nothing is shown in the Activity window as well, so it will look just like Xcode is hanging. Have faith though, it’s really working :)

Develop your WebGL strategy now

Brad Midgley — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:04:06 +0000

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, here, etc.

WebGL, along with HTML5, will open up doors for you technically and strategically. I want to go over some of the ways you can best make use of it.

Build interactive content using WebGL since simply making a movie users can’t interact with won’t impress. Users see awesome video content all the time using youtube–you are investing in new technology, so you should have results that aren’t possible using established technology
Think about the mobile browsing experience that scales down to the “small screen”. WebGL will soon make its appearance on iPhone and Android. It’s already shown up on Nokia’s N900.
Form a mobile app strategy since standalone apps will be able to use the same software to do 3D. Using WebGL inside a native app means rendering your 3D content inside an html viewer. On iPhone this is done using a UIWebView. This approach has advantages (code reuse) and drawbacks (flexibility, user experience complexity).
Use a few advanced features like directional light sources, curved surfaces, shadows. Not just another flat cube.
Make it obviously interactive by illustrating controls or even just status like the current viewing angle. Make the controls fade in after rendering the scene if you can. I’ve found most of the interactive WebGL content out there doesn’t make it obvious you can click and drag in the scene to manipulate it.
Remember to help people who are easing into the tech with a useful message for pre-WebGL browsers, possibly a preview of the feature that runs in a flash video. (Don’t depend on HTML5 or Flash 10.x for this since you want to cover old setups)
Consider your audience when planning your content. For example, Google built a fully operational Quake demo for WebGL. This hits home for developers–many of us saw Quake show up on the scene the first time and we’re impressed to see it in a browser.

Check out a few of the background and demos.

Google’s Quake demo (codebase)
3D tic-tac-toe
Kronos list of demos (my favorite visually is the shiny teapot)
SceneJS renders collabra files in the browser
Several demos that use Processing.js library with WebGL extensions

In the followup articles I will build some demo content using Processing.js and a few of the javascript WebGL frameworks. Game on!

Microsoft Pink smartphone project: KIN gets killed

Mauro Dalu — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:49:11 +0000

After HP acquired and killed the WebOS Smartphone platform, another one bites the dust. As we reported in march, the Danger group Microsoft acquired — a Java-based smartphone platform that pioneered messaging-oriented phones targeted at younger people — has been working for two years on “Pink,” a top secret project operating independently from Windows Mobile, released as the “KIN” platform.

KIN was pulled off the market in just 48 days after only selling a reported 500 units.

The company wrote in an official statement, “We have made the decision to focus on our Windows Phone 7 launch and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones”.

The Verizon Wireless network charged users $70 per month for voice and data service, despite the device lacking any support for basic smartphone services such as calendar sync, instant messages, or even any email accounts other than Microsoft’s own.

How to: unable to build for iPhone OS 3.1.3 after iPhone SDK iOS 4 upgrade

Mauro Dalu — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:44:23 +0000

If you upgraded your iPhone SDK to the final version supporting iOS 4, you have noticed that everything older then SDK 3.2 vanished. After some research, I found out you can build with 4.0 SDK and still run on devices with earlier versions of the firmware.

If you want to be compatible with iPhone OS 3.x you still compile for SDK 4.0, but set the target settings to tell that yout iPhone app can run on 3.x (iPhone OS Deployment Target). If you did not use any iOS 4.0 specific APIs then your app will run smoothly on 3.x and 4.x… Read on to learn more.

If you go to the Project Info screen and click Build, you can choose what Base SDK to use (4.0) and then scroll down to iPhone OS Deployment Target version and set it to 3.1.3. However, you also have to go to the Targets section under Groups & Files (red bullseye) select your target, get the Info build page, and set your iPhone OS Deployment Target there too.

Once that’s done, you should be able to test it with a device running iOS 3.x.

Summarizing:

Set your Deployment Target to the earliest version you want to be able to run with, ie: 3.0.
You set your Base SDK to the latest version that you are compiling with, ie: 4.0. This way you can reference the newer definitions and symbols in your code.
Weak link to the libraries/frameworks with symbols that are only available in the newer iOS. This is so your app will run on a device that doesn’t have the newer symbols.
You must check to see that a newer method is available before calling it. You have to make sure not to call a method that is 4.0 only when your app is on a 3.x device.
You will have to handle working on older versions by either using older methods or not supporting particular features that need newer SDK support.

Sources:

iPhone: How to import photos, screenshots, movies and video without iPhoto

Mauro Dalu — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 09:47:28 +0000

If you need to quickly import movies, photos or screenshots to your Mac and want to avoid iPhoto, here’s a quick tip for you.

Introducing “Image Capture”, a very simple utility bundled with Mac OS X that will allow you to move media files from any device to your hard disk or to another supported app.

You can select what files you want to import and see a bunch of informations on your files, including the location (latitude and longitude) and view thumbnails exactly like in iPhoto.

You can also delete the images after you imported them or selectively remove images on the device directly from within Image Capture.

iPhone iOS 4: watch out designers! Apps icons display changes: no more transparency.

Mauro Dalu — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 09:25:00 +0000

I was so busy checking out the new iOS 4 features like folders and wallpapers, it took me a while to realize that the icons that used to be transparent now draw a black rounded-corners square behind the icon.

This is most certainly because the new wallpapers implementation draws shadows and glows around the icons to increase the readability and make the icons “pop out” independently of the image you set as your background.

So watch out while designing your next app icon!

WebGL delivers 3D everywhere

Brad Midgley — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:21:22 +0000

WebGL is a developing standard for delivering 3D content inside an HTML5 canvas.

WebGL is not only highly anticipated on these desktop browsers. It has the potential to provide the first means to make 3D content that runs on the desktop and across the spectrum of high-end mobiles. Nokia was the first to introduce early support in its N900 mobile. We expect Apple and Google to add support before long.

There are a lot of libraries out there for making WebGL easier to work with. I went about asking the authors of a few of the packages how they might scale down to mobile use and where they fit in the big picture. I’ll summarize some of the discussion here and build some examples in the followup article.

Paul Brunt, working on GLGE, commented on where it fits in.

“I would have said that the best fit would be web developer type interested in making games, although GLGE can be used to make any application, the original code base was for a game I was intent on making. As a result I’ve abstracted quite far from the low level stuff and the library now handles creating GLSL shaders, animations, and other stuff commonly needed when dealing with 3D. Unlike say O3D/SpiderGL which are much more useful for more unusual applications as they are friendlier when lower level access to the GPU is required, but it does mean a lot more ground work to get an application going… As for mobile stuff, I’m hopping GLGE will deal okay. At the moment there are probably a few shader issues I’ve not spotted, but fingers crossed it should rapidly get sorted when the mobile devices start to appear with webGL and I get some bug reports in.”

Benjamin Delillo contrasts WebGLU. He penned a response characteristic to the minimal library I think:

“WebGLU would be quite appropriate for mobiles as its design allows applications written with it to be exceedingly simple. This is also its advantage over other frameworks.”

SpiderGL has possibly the coolest name and has as a goal to make it possible to use WebGL primitives mixed with its own calls so you don’t lose any of the flexibility of direct WebGL. Marco Di Benedetto explains:

“We had our paper on SpiderGL accepted at the Web3D 2010 Conference. I just updated http://spidergl.org with a link to the paper, I think going through the article is the best explaination about the library. In few words, SpiderGL is aimed at simplifying all the common webgl patterns for buffers, shader programs, textures etc. while not preventing access to the low-level webgl layer. It is not a scene graph. Moreover, it does not only provide rendering stuff but also geometrical classes and routines for (basic, for now) geometry processing.”

C3DL started out before WebGL became an official effort. C3DL has several developers working on it. It has an irc forum at irc.mozilla.org#c3dl. I asked if anyone there would care to speculate on how well C3DL would work on mobile and got a response on irc.

“[It] depends on the capabilities of the video rendering of the device. If new phones come out with NVidia/ATI ultra lite, and low power video chips with relatively decent framerates, it should be possible.”

SceneJS includes a parser for collada objects. The author, Lindsay Kay, was keenly interested about mobile operation.

“SceneJS is not actually tested on mobile devices yet, but after viewing the Collada presentations from WebGL camp, it dawned on me that it should be a priority for SceneJs to work efficiently on them… how it compares – thats a tough one. I think it’s currently behind a bit in terms of 3D effects like shadows, transparency etc., but I would say that it’s got some advantages in that its API is compact and flexible, and is geared towards modularity where instances [prerelease 0.7.6 docs] are fully parameterisable.“

CopperLicht seems to be the option with the highest level of commercial support and includes tools for building models. You can use this library without buying support but for more access to source and tools you should plan on it. Nikolaus Gebhardt commented on the use on mobile platforms:

“…some users told me they were able to run the CopperLicht demos on their Nokia N900. See for example this blog post where the author writes that even the CopperLicht Quake 3 level demo seems to run (key control also works as someone in the comments writes).”

ProcessingJS is in a class by itself… rather than a javascript layer on top of WebGL, this library provides its own C-like visualization language that is converted into canvas operations, including WebGL operations. This would be a good choice for simple interactive visualizations. ProcessingJS has been adapted to work an interesting “IDE” (pictured above) that runs in iPad and other webkit mobiles. As a reminder, only 2D operations work on these mobiles since WebGL is not running on iOS yet. Since the 2D methods work on mobile, everyone fully expects the 3D operations to be workable on mobile as well.

JQTouch mobile app integration with SmartFoxServer

Brad Midgley — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:11:54 +0000

In the previous articles on http://surgeworksmobile.com/cross-platform/jqtouch-mobile-app-for-user-registration-tutorial, I focused on the JQTouch side of things. I’d like to mention the ingredients to make the app work with SmartFoxServer since that can be tricky.

I built both grails and jython web services to serve as the back end interface for this application. Unfortunately, both these implementations would not work with SFS, so I made a very simple JSP servlet to handle registration requests.

First, the structure of the app. Do not provide any jar files. They need to be provided by SFS:

in WEB-INF/web.xml:

AppServlet
AppServlet

sneakapp.xml, in the top directory, we document where the servlet will appear in the web site’s hierarchy.

< ?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?>
< !DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC “-//Mort Bay Consulting//DTD Configure//EN” “http://jetty.mortbay.org/configure.dtd”>

/sneakapp
/webapps/sneakapp.war

in images/ are the .png files refered by index.html.

css/ contains the jqtouch css support files.

js/jqtouch contains the jqtouch javascript files.

To deploy, the app, build a war, place it, and restart SFS:

javac WEB-INF/classes/AppServlet.java
jar cvf /opt/SFS_PRO_1.6.6/Server/webserver/webapps/sneakapp.war .
/etc/init.d/sfs stop ; /etc/init.d/sfs start

Finally, the servlet code in WEB-INF/classes/AppServlet.java. A few points to note.

Output is formatted for use by JQTouch, with a place in the warning string to place error messages
The SFS hook is handled in handleInternalRequest. This call accepts a list of strings and returns a string
The servlet performs basic validation; all validation happens at the server

import java.security.*;
import java.math.*;

import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import org.json.*;

import it.gotoandplay.smartfoxserver.*;

public class AppServlet extends HttpServlet {
  private static SmartFoxServer sfs;
  private static String success;
  private static String failure;
  private static String warning;
  private static BufferedWriter writer = null;

  public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException {
    sfs = SmartFoxServer.getInstance();
    success = "  Thank you
 Home 
  Thank you for signing up!  You will receive an email soon with instructions on how to activate your account.  
Please also check your Spam folder!  ";
    failure = "  Try again 
  This username or email are in use already. Please try again and complete all required fields.
  ";
    warning = "  Try again 
  %s Please try again.
  ";

    try {
      writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("/var/www/out.txt",true));
    } catch(Exception e) {}
  }

  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {

    String hash = "";
    String emailhash = "";
    String key = "";
    String result = "";

    try {
      hash = mymd5(request.getParameter("password"));
      emailhash = mymd5(request.getParameter("email"));
      key = mymd5("token" + Math.random());
    } catch(Exception e) {}

    String params[] = new String[7];
    params[0] = request.getParameter("username");
    params[1] = hash;
    params[2] = request.getParameter("first_name");
    params[3] = request.getParameter("last_name");
    params[4] = request.getParameter("email");
    params[5] = emailhash;
    params[6] = key; 

    PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
    try {
      String msg = "";
      msg += verify(request, "first_name", "First name");
      msg += verify(request, "last_name", "Last name");
      msg += verify(request, "email", "email");
      msg += verify(request, "username", "Username");
      msg += verify(request, "password", "password");
      if(!msg.equals("")) {
        out.format(warning, msg);
        return;
      } if(writer != null) {
        for(int i=0; i < 7; i++) writer.write(params[i] + " ");
        writer.write(request.getParameter("password"));
        writer.write("\n");
        writer.flush();
      }
      result = (String) sfs.getZone("SOTL").getExtension("sotl_db").handleInternalRequest(params);
      if(result.equals(""))
        out.println(success);
      else
        out.format(warning, result);
    } catch(Exception e) {
      out.format(warning, e.toString());
    }
  }

  public String verify(HttpServletRequest request, String parameter, String name) {
    if(request.getParameter(parameter) == null || request.getParameter(parameter).equals("")) {
      return name + " is required.";
    }
    return "";
  }

  public static String mymd5(String pass) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException {
    MessageDigest m = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
    m.reset();
    m.update(pass.getBytes());
    byte[] digest = m.digest();
    BigInteger bigInt = new BigInteger(1,digest);
    String hashtext = bigInt.toString(16);
    // Now we need to zero pad it if you actually want the full 32 chars.
    while(hashtext.length() < 32 ){
      hashtext = "0"+hashtext;
    }
    return hashtext;
  }

}

Again, the index.html from the root of the java project ties everything together, pulls in JQTouch, and connects the form to the servlet:



 
 
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