Hybrid Mobile Application Development with JBoss Tools

I have been working to create an Eclipse based tool for developing hybrid mobile applications since I have joined Red Hat a few months ago. The tool is a set of plugins that make it easier to develop Apache Cordova based applications by hiding the details of the target platforms and allowing the developer to concentrate on building the application using the web development techniques.

We are still on the early stages of the development and not complete yet (but we are getting there fast).  Here is a list of features you can try and give feedback today. The instructions on how to get the latest builds is available on the GitHub project.

• New Hybrid Mobile Project wizard. Creates a project structure that is compatible with the cordova-cli projects
• Run on iOS emulator. Creates and compiles a XCode project and runs it on the emulator
• Run on Android emulator. Compiles an Android project and runs it on the emulator
• Run on Android device. Runs the project on an Android device if there is one attached. I should also note that Android functionality does not require the ADT plugins to be present. 
• Config.xml editor.  Provides editing support Cordova's flavour of w3c widget specification XML configuration 

For those who needs more visual encouragement to try the tools, here is a video that shows creation and running of a Cordova project on iOS emulator with the JBoss Tools. 

We have more features coming in which includes a simulator environment for Cordova apps based on Ripple together with live reload support. If you have ideas for more features open them on JBoss jira, better yet implement them and create pull request to the project.

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Using Nokia Maps on LWUIT applications

Nokia has a cool Maps platform with APIs that cover several platforms. Maps API for JavaME is one of those APIs. It is a quite well documented API especially for using with vanilla JavaME UI components (namely LCDUI Canvas). However, when it comes to JavaME applications, using a third party UI library instead of the vanilla JavaME UI components is a more common approach.

Since Nokia has chosen to port LWUIT to Series 40, I have naturally decided to create a small API to make it easier to use the Maps API with LWUIT.

The API is available on github. Repository also includes an example application that lists earthquakes on a list and map (see screenshots ). You can also find instructions that can get you started with the API quickly on the project's wiki. Furthermore, if you find bugs please do report them on github. If you want to improve the API or the example feel free to do that as well (that is why it is open source and hosted on github). And if you find the API useful drop a comment here.

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A new IDE based on Eclipse MTJ

Nokia released a new version of the Nokia SDK for Java. In additon to supporting AshaTouch devices (devices with touch only input for you and me ), it includes a new IDE.  This new IDE is based on Eclipse MTJ. For those who remember, it also integrates to SDK discovery features of the now discontinued Pulsar distribution of Eclipse.

The main focus on this version of the IDE was to make it easier for newbies to Nokia platforms to discover and install the necessary tools and get started. On the discovery part IDE does a good job. As you can see from the screenshot it provides an extensive array of filters to find the right SDK for your project.

You should expect to see more features coming to the IDE and some of them will also appear on MTJ.

Besides the fact that I am the project lead for the Eclipse MTJ, this IDE makes me happy for an additional reason. I believe this is a product of my internal evangelism that has taken years to build up. For those of you who have not worked for the large companies (lucky you) this may sound strange.  But large corporations are like a community of their own and you basically spend more time advocating to your company than outside your company.

In this case, I had a positive result but in evangelism you encounter more frustrations than victories.

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Slideset for New Features of Series 40 JavaME Platform

This is the slideset that I have used for JavaOne and the İstanbul developer day event. It highlights some of the major features introduced with Java Runtime 1.0 for Series 40 and Java Runtime 1.1 for Series 40.

More information including the tools and documentation for Java is available on the Nokia Java site.

The More Capable Series 40 Java Platform

View more presentations from Gorkem Ercan.

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