We have already written about web development for iPhone using html and js only. And today we want to tell you about jQTouch, a plug-in for well known Javascript-framework jQuery. It allows to create web applications for touch phones very easy – for all the phones with a touch screen and with finger-oriented interface. Such as iPhone, for example, and as based on Android HTC Hero, Dream, Magic, and a lot of different WM-communicators with different shells.
Let’s enumerate some features of jQTouch:
• It is very easy to control behavior of all the components.
• It is possible to create themes.
• There is some interaction with a phone (for example, you can determine its orientation).
• It supports animation and various interface features of iPhone.
• This is jQuery, and this says it all!
The plug-in is very nice, but still we do not have a full application at the output. Why? As we do not have access to such things as the accelerometer, vibration, sound and so on.
And, by the way, using such frameworks as PhoneGap you can transfer your mobile apps written with html and js to any other platform. For example, PhoneGap, supports iPhone, Android, Blackberry (OS 4.5), Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and Maemo. But remember that developing iPhone applications you need MacBook, license and all that other stuff.
All mobile apps developers always face choice of the right platform. The existing abundance of mobile operating systems can easily throw you into confusion. Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian — which of them is the best one? And moreover we should take into account a large number of the applications and frameworks developed by manufacturers of cell phones, communicators, PDAs and smartphones. Let’s come to know the particulars of all this mobile stuff.
First of all, a developer should define the main objectives:
professional development of commercial mobile software or amateur development (open source);
target audience;
competitive abilities and competitive environment.
All this seems rather complicated. With relation to monetization (commercial development) it’s better to choose such leading OSes as iPhone and Windows Mobile. This variant has some significant pluses. For example: a large number of users who are ready to pay for their software. But at the same time you will have to compete with more than 200,000 developed mobile applications for Windows Mobile and iPhone. And as is well known Apple follows a quite tough policy of apps submission. That is why it may take a long time before your new program is approved and appears in App Store.
Eclipse Foundation has released a new version of Eclipse Pulsar, open tool for cross-platform mobile applications development.
RIM devices like Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Sony Ericsson – In the near future Eclipse Pulsar will allow to develop mobile apps for these smartphones (RIM means “Research In Motion”, wireless communications).
Now creating applications for smartphones from different manufacturers mobile program developers have to use various SDK-sets corresponding to desired platform. It’s obvious that such conditions make their work more complicate, because they have to prepare different versions of the same program for different platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.).
Pulsar creates a unified environment based on Eclipse, which will allow developing multi-platform mobile applications. Now Pulsar supports SDK for Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Sony Ericsson. However, developers still have to create separate versions of applications for different phones based on integrated Pulsar SDK.
Integrated development environment Eclipse Pulsar
Today Pulsar supports Java-phones. In the future it is expected to support RIM devices based on BlackBerry (Apple iPhone support is also possible).
Print
Send