Blogs

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.

-30-

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.

-30-

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)

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

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! :)

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.

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:

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!