Blogs

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.

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.