Blogs

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!

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.

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!

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!

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

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

PhoneGap's 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.

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.

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:

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!

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:

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

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.