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It all started innocently enough. The notebook didn't fit in my pocket, and my N93 was already there.

Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

kevin_s2f | 22 May, 2007 20:59

Friday’s post was fun. It’s the kind of big-sky dreaming that’s kept me in the technology space for longer than we called such endeavors “spaces”.
 
But now it’s back to reality. I don’t have a staff of developers and I don’t have a budget to hire any contract talent. I could conceivably build a business around the technology I want to develop and therefore be able to fund a room full of top talent, but at this time I have no burining desire to spend 70 hours a week on this one aspect of my life. And even if I could stay on the business side and contract out the technical execution, I like digging into the technology. 

No big team. Just big dream.

So that leaves me with modest initial goals, inspiration from some of our Champions, and the resources of the Forum Nokia community inside and outside Nokia Inc.
 
  • I’ve enjoyed reading some of Gabor’s posts about agile development. His thoughts on planning ahead and his web site’s focus on incremental development based on feature value makes sense. I look forward to his additional thoughts.
  • I have Paul’s book on order. I like the way Paul and his students seem to strike a good balance between rapid development and rich feature sets. These two qualities came together well when his initial space/time blogging prototype implemented with Python was further developed into LocoBlog, written in Java, but still focused on studying how people would use such a service.
  • The Carbide team has worked hard to shield developers from some of the difficulties of working with Symbian C++. I don’t know if I’ll do the whole project in C++, but if it wasn’t for the Carbide.c++ UI Designer, I wouldn’t even be attempting this.
  • Ron and all the contributors to the Discussion Boards have completely transformed that service over the last year or so. Again, without that resource I don’t know that I’d attempt this project.
 
So now you know where this project came from, and you know as much as I do about where the project is going. From here on out I’ll be talking a lot less about motivation and a lot more about the nuts and bolts of getting something to work, then transforming that something into what I want.
 
Over the next week I will be working on the following tasks:
  1. Short list the features to develop first (I think I know what they are)
  2. Begin evaluating which Nokia platform technologies to use to deliver the features (there are some trade-offs I don’t yet understand)
  3. and what tooling I need to make this all possible (If the answer to 2 =/ C++ I have no idea yet)
 
I invite your input along the way. If you have suggestions about which features to start with, or opinions on technology entry points, please post comments.
 
Also, if you've recently started developing for Nokia platforms, which resources did you find the most useful? What you found useful welcome, but simple URLs cheefully accepted.
 
And a final note: comments based on your own self-interest are most welcome and appropriate here. If you want to direct this project to explore areas in which you are having problems in the hopes that I can help find the answers, that’s fine.

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Comments

Re: Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

coultonp | 23/05/2007, 11:15

coultonp Kevin

I think your list is a good way for approaching the project and personally I think its best not to choose a platform until thats clear. However, looking at your spec my inclination would be to go for J2ME as I think development time would be quicker and more straightforward

For me with mobile the users experience is paramount and even for projects like LocoBlog we have learnt a great deal and indeed the new N95 version has an even simpler interface and new features, such as storing entries for later up-load ,which we thought about originally but the user experience brought home. So for me I always recommend start with the UI in terms of actions required and in this case how entries will be created and stored and what are the actual inputs required by the user.

Have fun

Re: Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

kevin_s2f | 23/05/2007, 17:08

kevin_s2f Paul,

Thanks for the insight. I plan to check out JME, but partly based on my experience with LocoBlog I am skeptical that it will serve the needs of TMJ. In LocoBlog on my N93, when it presents the user with the opportunity to take a pic, normal N93 image controls like zoom and macro are not available. I need both of these for TMJ. Do you know if there is a way in JME to enable these camera controls?

--kevin

Re: Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

coultonp | 23/05/2007, 17:39

coultonp Kevin

The current camera controls dont allow for zoom and macro. There is a new multimedia JSR but I am not sure if that allows this control. Further, as its only just out its not a very practical solution as yet. If you want to add these elements then S60 is the way to go but its going to be a lot more coding effort

Re: Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

kevin_s2f | 23/05/2007, 18:18

kevin_s2f That's the trade-off I figured I was up against. Thanks.

Re: Nokia N93 Application Development for Mere Mortals

hartti | 23/05/2007, 19:40

hartti Ahh, yes. Paul is speaking about Advanced Multimedia Supplements, AMMS API or JSR-234
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=234
This API contains a number of optional packages, and some of those allow you to control the camera more than what JSR-135 allows you to do. (focus, zoom, exposure, etc - check the Package javax.microedition.amms.control.camera)

Even though the N95 supports AMMS API, the camera controls have not been implemented on 3rd Edition FP1 platform - only Music and 3D Audio, as noted in the Java ME Developer's guide, and in the AMMS implementation notes
http://www.forum.nokia.com/document/Java_ME_Developers_Library/

Hartti
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