Forum Nokia Web Talks

Guarana UI: a jQuery-Based UI Library for Nokia WRT available

wmseto — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:58:26 +0200

A Nokia WRT UI framework has been posted in Forum Nokia Wiki page. This will accelerate current WRT widget developers to create innovative applications. Up until now a version of WRTKit UI framework has been shipped with our WRT Plug-in tools for Aptana, Dreamweaver, and MS Visual Studio. Web developers have been asking for UI framework that is closer to what is used in the real world. jQuery is a popular JavaScript UI library/framework. With Guarana UI, developers have one more option to create their WRT widget applications.

http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Guarana_UI:_a_jQuery-Based_UI_Library_for_Nokia_WRT

This is the documentation of the Guarana UI - a jQuery-Based UI Library for Nokia WRT. Nokia WRT is a development and delivery platform that allows the creation of applications (widgets) based on standard web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and AJAX.

Wai Seto
FNDC

Flash Lite Packager has been off-lined

wmseto — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:26:13 +0200

Just read Akessandro's post of Flash Lite...

The Forum Nokia online Flash Lite Packager has been off-lined due to technical difficulty. There will be a version of the online packager coming online soon. The outage of the packager does not reflect any change to our current support. Nokia is committed to provide a unify development environment and distribution channel to our Flash Lite developers. Content formats (.nfl) (.sis) will continue to be supported on our Series 40 and S60 devices.

As for distributions, Ovi Store is the best place, over 180 countries visibility, to distribute Flash contents now, and it will remain to be the focus of our strategy.

While our packager tool is offline, you can check out some offline options.

Series 40 (NFL) link

S60 (SIS stub application) link
Go to: Flash Lite Developer's Library 1.5 > Deploying Flash Lite applications > Creating a stub application

Wai Seto
Forum Nokia & Developer Community

Web Runtime APIBridge

wmseto — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:19:27 +0200

From Nokia has now release an APIBridge component for WRT developers. This component was once internal and only available to our selected partners (e.g. facebook, netflix, project). FN has now approval from internal teams to release to general developers.You can find the download here:http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/d697a64f-ddae-4937-8151-be157b542d26/ApiBridge.html

DescriptionApiBridge enables developers to extend the features of Web Runtime widgets by using various capabilities of Symbian OS. The capabilities available include:

Uploading files.
Capturing video, image, and audio.
Reading files.
Resizing images.
Creating image thumbnail.
Using the logging service.
Using the location service.
Using the media management Service

Supported platformsApiBridge can be used to access Symbian OS capabilities from WRT widgets on the following platforms:S60 5th Edition.S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2.S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1.Wiki doc is here with a list of features: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/APIBridge_Web_Runtime_API

-Wai Seto

Me @ Adobe MAX 09

wmseto — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:33:30 +0300

Few of us will be going to Adobe MAX 09. There will be developer sessions also

Check out the Forum Nokia Learning & Events for Mobile Developer page for details
http://www.forum.nokia.com/Learning_and_Events/

You can also look at Forum Nokia Twitter account for latest news
http://twitter.com/forumnokia

I will be @ MAX also, come visit... Bring me some food at the booth...

Wai Seto
http://twitter.com/waiseto

Nokia Mobile Web Templates Updated

wmseto — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:11:37 +0300

Not sure if anyone has posted or noticed this already! There are sets of templates available in FN to help creating mobile web sites for Nokia devices.

http://www.forum.nokia.com/Technolog...Web_Templates/

And we will have a Wiki challenge coming up in Oct
http://www.forum.nokia.com/I_Want_To...7_2009.xhtml#7

I would love to hear what you think of them.

BTW, I will be in Adobe MAX and Symbian Exchange Expo. More info on those event later, but hope to see you there.

Wai Seto
Forum Nokia & Developer Community
Twitter: http://twitter.com/waiseto

Tech Buzz Homescreen Widget

wmseto — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:42:40 +0300

Grand Prize winner in the Internet Innovation category of the 2009 Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators contest: the Tech Buzz Homescreen Widget

Link to Ovi store entry

I have it running on my N97. The developer has spent a log of time to make this widget attractive! There is a little ad box at the bottom, but it is not intrusive at all. A good example of try to bring some money in with your widget.

Video talk: Best Kept Secret - On The Mobile Web

wmseto — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:55:45 +0300

I have come across this video on youtube. It is quite good timing because I have just recently switch to a job that is related to mobile web, Web Run-time, Flash, and etc. I will be talking about them more in this blog, and I really hope you will join in the discussions. This particular video is a positive re-enforcement to the mobile web/internet. Let me know what you think. Toward the end, the "mobi" logo has just stayed there a tiny little bit too long... BTW, it still puzzles me why .mobi extension was chosen... (any one can tell me the reason(s)?)

Let me share a little secret of my own, when I first started as mobile browser engineer, the WAP time (yes almost 10 years ago, if anyone can find some WAP articles I wrote in 1999, I shall give you a small gift. Yeap they are out there in the Internet still), I realized WAP is actually 927 on your traditional phone keypad, two cool things 1) the 3 letters are all first character of the multi-tab. 2) The keys form the perfect triangle (okay this is pushing it a bit). Could it be the standard guys were so clever then to think of all these, or these are just coincidence? Was there a conspiracy? I don't know about you. When .mobi extension came out, I was a bit disappointed... The extension was very difficult to type on a multi-tab keypad. I was thinking... if you going to make a mobile web site extension, why not take a look at the keypad first? Would it nice to have something easily enter with a KEYPAD on a PHONE, for your MOBILE SITE? I guess my comment is a few years late (well no one would cares about my comment then and now anyway); plus now, a lot of phones have QWERTY or virtual key board.... Anyway, there is the video I've wanted to shared. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. (hey don't forget to post your comments to the creator of the video too!)

-Wai Seto

Are you using my (un-official) Forum Nokia Facebook app?

wmseto — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:16:53 +0300

Last year I experimented how to write Facebook apps, I created two. One of them was created to show Forum Nokia news/feeds. How many of you know about it? If you are interested, you can add it into your Facebook profile. The home page of this app has a link to the source code. You are welcome to reuse it.

Forum Nokia News
App link: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=22623363472

Just a reminder, you can do the same with iGoogle. Here is my previous post on this topic .

- Wai Seto

Turn my S60 WRT widget into an iPhone app

wmseto — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:48:43 +0300

It's possible... Not perfect yet.

Couple months back, I experimented S60 WTR (Web-Runtime) widget with Google Translate API. It was a fun excise. One of the key reasons to write WRT widgets instead of native programming languages (C/C++) is because JavaScript, CSS, HTML are widely supported on browsers and many mobile platforms. Apple, Google, Palm, Qt and Nokia all have webkit engines on their mobile platforms... So ideally my code should work on all mobile platforms. Unfortunately, not all mobile platforms offer "widget" development "per-se". Here is my attempt to turn my S60 WRT widget into an iPhone app. Nothing spectacular here and I think most developers can figure these out anyway. There are some items I still don't know how to solve and try to get workarounds.

(Disclaimer: I am only writing this to demonstrate the advantage of using standard web technologies to achieve cross (mobile) platforms programming. This is not to promote one or the other platform.)

What I have done

(You do need the SDK and the compilers, etc...)

Step 1) There is a new sample code (dated 2009.04.12) in IPhone Developer web site named "TransWeb" (registered users only). It pretty much gives me everything I need. The sample use a module called "UIWebView" (a webkit based UI control). It loads a HTML page into the view. The control also allows JavaScript to be run, so it is almost like a widget engine.

Step 2) Uncompress the sample code, and you will find an html file named webViewContent.html. I simply cut and pasted the my Google Translator code I had into this html file.

Step 3) Rebuild the sample code and there you have a S60 WTR widget turns iPhone app!

Some findings and limitations

1) I cannot store data, such as user name and password., via JavaScript, since there is no direct file access from UIWebView. Nokia S60 WRT allows you to save data in the preference list and (soon) in file system, so that is handy. A work around for now is (actually, my widget don't need any data to be store, but just for the sake of investigation) I can use the native UI to store username and password. In my JavaScript code, I place something like 'var = "_VAR_";' statement. At the time I load the HTML content, I just substitute the variable to what I need.

NSString *finalHtmlString = [htmlString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"_VAR_" withString:@"username"];

Therefore when the time of the JavaScript is loaded the right content is set in the variable. (if you know of a better way, let me know!)

2) I have found UIWebView zoom out quite a bit by default. I believe the UI control has a property to set autosize or fit to screen. I have not try the property myself. In stead, I put this tag in the HTML <meta name = "viewport" content = "width = device-width, height = device-height">in the <head></head> section. And the zooming works nicely for me.

3) Graphics... I am not able to load any local graphics. For example, <img src="something.jpg"> don't show anything. I am still looking into it. May be I have missed something

3) JavaScript and HTML are in a single file. Related to above, I cannot reference any local file yet. However, external JavaScript is okay; for example, the Google Translate API works perfectly.

Finally, some screen shorts

It would be really nice if there is some local storage... Then graphics can be loaded from the phones and all kinds of interesting can happen. Can someone tell me it is possible and I have just missed it? :-) I am still playing around with this, and hopefully I will have some updates here again soon. It is almost the same as my S60 version. :-)

- Wai Seto

Presentation Files from Web2.0 Expo SF

wmseto — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:52:05 +0300

In case you couldn't make it...

http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2009/public/schedule/proceedings

- Wai Seto