PhoneGap Palm now available | December 7th, 2009
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.
December 8th, 2009 at 7:01 am
[...] PhoneGapteam announced yesterday that they’ve got support for Palm’s webOS Mojo API. PhoneGap API’s available to Palm [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
[...] The suite supports app building for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android operating systems, and recently added Palm’s webOS to the fold. PhoneGap integrates well with webOS APIs, including geolocation, accelerometer, notification, and [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
[...] versions of paid applications) in the App Catalog. Second, mobile application development tool PhoneGap announced support for webOS. PhoneGap is a cross-platform tool that leverages Web technologies (much like Mojo development [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
[...] versions of paid applications) in the App Catalog. Second, mobile application development tool PhoneGap announced support for webOS. PhoneGap is a cross-platform tool that leverages Web technologies (much like Mojo development [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
You say “We’ve got a couple of Palm Pre’s here for testing, and they’re sick.”
Did you mean to say “slick”, or are your Pre’s really sick? If so, please take ‘em to the doctor.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Contact API is not available for Palm WebOS?
but, they have People Picker and Contact Service API. What are these two functionality for then?
December 10th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Got a question:
In the PhoneGap roadmap, Palm Platform is listed as Palm Pre - http://phonegap.pbworks.com/Roadmap. Does it mean that it does not work on Palm pixi?
Thank you
December 10th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
They’re sick. Not like I don’t feel well cause I’m sick. I mean like “Whistler was sick this weekend. Oh and that Palm Pre is sick too. So sick bro.”
December 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
In my post I link to a discussion in the palm developer forum about the Contacts Service API, and how it is limited by the fact that an app can only access contacts created by that app. The PhoneGap contacts API is meant to give a developer access to all device contacts. Since we cannot achieve this functionality using webOS’ contacts service API, its not a reasonable solution.
The purpose of the contacts API is to access device contacts in code, and allow a developer to manipulate the data as they see fit. Particularly sets of contacts. The People Picker only allows one contact to be selected, and requires user interaction. This really does not meet the needs of PhoneGap’s contacts API.
The main goal of PhoneGap is to implement the same behaviour across different platforms … yes contacts interaction is available in webOS, but not the functionality required to meet PhoneGap’s device-agnostic goal.
If you don’t agree, feel free to branch the PhoneGap repo and implement the Palm Contacts API
.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
It certainly should work on the pixi (though we don’t have one around and haven’t tried it). Thanks for pointing that out, I just corrected that.