PhoneGap Plugins Demo from Joe Bowser on Vimeo.

Recently, we have been working on each platform to get the platform-specific features to be encapsulated as plugins. Now, for the iPhone, that may take the shape of native controls, but for Android, we’re working on a project for the plugins called PonyGap. Why did I call it PonyGap? Because chances are that you would use this app in a demo, and that you would most likely stick to the basic feature set of HTML5. Of course, you MIGHT use one of these, but generally not all of them.

Currently the first plugin feature that we added was the ttsHook. This will hook into the Android Text to Speech functionality and allow PhoneGap applications to be useful to people who may not necessarily have the best vision or coordination. We’ll work on a better MobileSafari example and release it with the plugin.

This functionality was inspired by the Eyes Free work that Google did.

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One of the big complaints that we keep hearing when you port PhoneGap apps over is that they don’t follow the Android UI specifications AT ALL. The alerts don’t have buttons, the back key doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, etc, etc.

Well, we fixed the back button, and introduced a new event, menuKeyDown. When the menu key on any Android device is pressed, this will fire an event that will let the user know if they need to present the user with a menu of some sort. The menu could come from the bottom like the typical Android menu, or be a lightbox that takes over the window. The event exists so that the user can decide on it.

Also, the alerts have buttons now! I’m going to push these up to the EDGE version of PhoneGap momentarily.

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I just finished the basic version of Android 1.6 Database Storage for PhoneGap. Unlike Android 2.0, which has a proper implementation of this, Android 1.6 does not. There are definitely numerous bugs that can happen with this implementation of Database Storage, such as mis-formatted numbers being passed into Javascript due to what SQLite sends back to the browser, however I’ve tried to mimic the HTML 5 spec the best I could with Java and JavaScript.

Now, the code being passed is VERY primitive, and it’s not well documented. Android is notorious for having this weird API in the providers that gets in the way of you and your SQLite Database. Providing a mapping from Javascript to the rawQuery seems to have made the most sense. We have yet to add a fail condition to this yet, so when it fails, it will fail silently. That’s somewhat annoying when it comes to errors in SQL syntax, and we’ll try to hammer out that bug later this week.

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I just pushed my latest work on PhoneGap Palm to my github repo, and it should be pulled over to the main phonegap repo shortly.
PhoneGap API’s available to Palm devices include geolocation, accelerometer, notification, orientation, sms, telephony, network, file (read only), and a limited selection of device properties (see the PhoneGap Mobile Spec running on the Palm Emulator to the left).

Unfortunately the contacts API won’t be available for a while, due to the fact that the Mojo API limits data access (including contacts data) to that which was created by the app in context (see this discussion). Hopefully this will change.

For those who don’t know, Palm’s webOs is completely based on web technologies. We’ve got a couple of Palm Pre’s here for testing, and they’re sick. And the edit/deploy/test cycle is very smooth. You can test on device and write to a debug console which you can monitor on your SDK console.

Like we did for Symbian WRT, we simply had to write a javascript shim to map the Mojo API (webOs’ mobile js API) to the PhoneGap API. I also had to do a bit of messing around with the stage/scene system which they use for changing application views. But its ready for use with the device APIs listed above.

I’ll be continuing to work on this and expand the API, and I also hope to get some time to continue my work on PhoneGap Symbian/Qt.

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A few weeks ago, Sony Ericsson asked Digital Dandelion to build a mobile application from web-based content using their new WebSDK and PhoneGap. They built a Google Android app around the Maverick’s Surf contest. You can find some screenshots from the app on Sachin’s blog.

Jeremiah also put together this great two-minute video talking about using PhoneGap:

You can read the whole story on the Digital Dandelion blog. Here’s an excerpt:

“PhoneGap allows web apps to be first class citizens on mobile platforms. It does this by running web pages inside of a native application, and providing a javascript bridge library to access device features. When you’re done, compile and distribute like any other app.”

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Last week we were at Web 2.0 Expo in NYC where we were part of an exciting announcement with Sony Ericsson, the release of the Sony Ericsson WebSDK. The WebSDK is an open source tool created in collaboration with the PhoneGap open source community. With the Sony Ericsson WebSDK, web and mobile developers can create mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript that access platform features and data including accelerometer, GPS, camera and contacts. Sony Ericsson Web SDK initially supports Android (e.g. XPERIA) and Symbian (Satio) platforms.

“With the Sony Ericsson WebSDK our focus is on bringing all the capabilities of web technologies to mobile applications and giving web developers wide access to easy-to-use tools and mobile phone platforms.” says Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson. “We are driving this initiative together with the PhoneGap open source community and invite developers to join us as we offer advanced mobile devices and a clear monetization path.”

If you want to find out more about the Sony Ericcson WebSDK, check out the official announcement from Web 2.0 Expo.

“Mobile development is increasingly no different from Web development, but proprietary hooks remain.” said James Governor, RedMonk industry analyst, “By building on Phonegap, Sony Ericcson can grow its developer community and allow the apps built to take advantage of native platform functionality.”

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Hey everyone,

We’ve been making some exciting progress with PhoneGap recently.

The Ant Window in a PhoneGap BlackBerry project

First, the Mobile Spec – our own homebrew set of tests for the PhoneGap API – is taking off. People are starting to watch it, fork it, and add to it. I am really stoked to see that – keep it coming!

Second, the PhoneGap team has been working on making developing and building PhoneGap applications easier. A big step towards this was putting together some build scripts so that you – the PhoneGap developer – did not have to go through the same, tedious steps to test and develop applications in your platform’s IDE. Shazron recently rolled out an installer for those iPhone PhoneGap developers out there and I saw it in action (as detailed in this post) – it is hot shit. Super-easy! Joe has the same thing going for Android, the Android.jar he put together is a huge step towards that. So, without further ado, I present to you: an Apache Ant build script for PhoneGap BlackBerry! I’ve added it to the repository, as well as instructions in the readme on how to use it.

In my short time using it, the biggest win for me as a developer is the ability to build, sign and deploy to device with one command. It’s super-fast too – way faster than using RIM’s ‘Desktop Manager’ software to load the application onto the device.

If you’ve tried using it, post to the comments and tell me how it went! I’d be glad to help out, too, if you’re having problems.

Have fun!

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So after starting off with Qt 4.6 tower, then upgrading to colossus ), then a beta release candidate, the official Qt 4.6 RAMBO release is here! Well its not called Rambo but it should be. Its got solid Qt Support, though I haven’t upgraded my PhoneGap Symbian fork yet, but will shortly. I was hoping we might have the Qt Mobility packages built into the release but I guess there’s still some work to be done on them. For now I’ll have to continue to include the different libraries via source code, which isn’t a big deal.

Brian fowarded me a twitter post of someone who was confused how Qt gets installed on the device … its a sis installer file, just like most other tools and apps (save WRT Widgets). Sis installers can encapsulate other sis installers, so I was thinking Qt could be packaged with PhoneGap apps for deployment. Maybe if developers really start making apps using PhoneGap Symbian with Qt, Symbian will ship with Qt …

There may be some confusion as to how PhoneGap Symbian Qt will be built and deployed, so here’s a bit of a step by step of what’s required (detailed version):

1. Install the S60 (Symbian) SDK, Qt 4.6 for Symbian (SDK first, Qt patches it), and their various associated prerequisites.

2. Download the PhoneGap Symbian source code, which which will include the required Qt Mobility APIs.

3. Build your webapp using html/js/css and the symbian phonegap.js, and place it in the phonegap/symbian.qt/framework/www/ folder.

4. Build and in the emulator, if desired.

5. Qt 4.6 includes qt.sis. This installs qt to your symbian phone. Do it.

6. Build your application, which will give you your application.sis (self-signed). This will be your distributable. Voila.

Outstanding issues:

- cannot send xhr’s from our local resources (priority)

- many API’s still to be implemented

- Symbian Signing

Feel free to post comments if you have any questions.

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