Developers building applications with webOS 3.0 are enjoying the benefits of the Enyo framework. Enyo is HP’s JavaScript-based framework for building mobile web applications which abstracts the complexities of building features like web service access, localization and complex user interfaces into mobile applications away from the developer
There comes a time in a Linux-loving geek’s life when he or she needs a new challenge. Making desktop apps isn’t hacking it anymore and building yet-another-website seems passe. If you want to jump into the world of mobile, here are a few reasons why HP webOS is the platform for you.
With the upcoming release of the Pre 3 and TouchPad, we will have two new webOS devices that offer different screen sizes and resolutions than we’ve had before. While these devices will be able to scale & display current apps correctly, developers who want to take advantage of the additional screen real estate will still need to update their apps accordingly
As we make the transition to Enyo, developers can still take advantage of Mojo, especially with the upcoming releases of the HP Veer and Pre 3. And while you’re probably very familiar with Mojo, perhaps you aren’t aware of how you can take advantage of the many existing JavaScript libraries that work seamlessly with Mojo
When developing and pushing the limits of webOS applications, it can be helpful to know some of the boundaries you might run into. Here are a few that have come up in the past for other developers: Maximum size for an ipk file (i.e., the app package): 200MB. You can locally install larger ipks, and you can also grow your application resources after installation by downloading or dynamically creating additional content, but this is the biggest ipk file that can be uploaded to our catalog server.
The HTML5 Canvas element is often used for games because it’s less CPU intensive than moving divs around.
It feels like it was only five months ago that we published part 2 of this series . Sorry for the long wait! This time, we’re taking our BadFont sample and going in two directions. First, we’ll add some TrueType font display code using the SDL_TTF library. Second, we’ll talk about packaging up your PDK app for installing on the device and submitting it to the Palm webOS App Catalog. As a bonus, we’ll also provide a makefile you can use on Windows for all of this. Here’s what it will look like when we’re done: Using TrueType Fonts All webOS devices ship with a set of TrueType fonts in /usr/share/fonts. The main system font on webOS is called Prelude and we include these fonts: Prelude-Bold.ttf Prelude-BoldOblique.ttf Prelude-Medium.ttf Prelude-MediumOblique.ttf PreludeCondensed-Bold.ttf PreludeCondensed-Medium.ttf The Oblique forms are what you get when you italicize text. The Condensed version is an alternate form that has thinner letters.
A neat little feature in webOS is the ability to push a scene from another application on top of your applications stack. Some of the core apps that have this feature are the People Picker (which is a cross-launch of the contacts app), the camera capture, and the video player.
Introducing PhoneGap When you build an application for a mobile device you usually build it using the SDK specifically for that platform. This gives you a completely 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.
You may not realize it, but if you have the webOS SDK installed on your system, you’ve got the source for the Mojo framework there right on your machine available for reading. On Windows, we install it in the “share/refcode/webos-framework” folder under the location where the SDK lives (usually c:Program FilesPalmSDK), next to the code samples and webOS application source.
When building the events scenario for the Facebook application I saw a screen that looks like this: Two lists. One shows the events coming up, and the other birthdays forthcoming. As a Web developer I looked at this in a simple way
For those of you hoping for a tutorial on client-server using webOS as a client, Frank Zammetti has come through for you! His latest is “ webOS Wiki ,” a wiki package that runs on your device and synchronizes with a server hosted on Google’s™ App Engine. He takes you through the whole process of setting up the server side code on GAE, then plows into the client side of things. Along the way, Frank discusses how and why he makes design decisions, and describes how the code works, step by step.
We kick into the new podcast talking about a panel that we were involved in discussing Flash and Canvas.
One of the goals of our team doing development on the Facebook app has been to learn about our webOS platform from production software.
Alright, kiddies, gather ’round, because it’s time for everyone’s favorite class: Palm Model Codes 101. As you might recall from Sunnyvale’s previous exploits in the FCC’s system, P101 devices are Pres, while P121s are Pixis. That part of the code is followed by a three-character string indicating the radio type: EWW for CDMA, UEU for European GSM, and UNA for North American GSM.
