Sunday 7 November 2010

Phonegapping

After a problem where I could not scroll the application up and down with the touch screen, I soon saw the quality of the Phonegap CSS in all it's glory on my phone:

Phonegap example app running on my HTC Desire

The scrolling issue needed a slight code adjustment:

function init(){
document.addEventListener("touchmove", false);
document.addEventListener("deviceready", deviceInfo, true);
}


The first line of the function did read: document.addEventListener("touchmove", preventBehavior, false);

I will now continue to play with Phonegap but I'm starting to see it's limitations. I can see it not being very responsive and obviously games are out of the question. When I say games I mean anything with any movement, puzzle and strategy etc should be ok. In fact it maybe worth looking at some existing Javascript stuff and maybe porting it to Phonegap.

Saturday 6 November 2010

Is phonegap cheating?

Chapter 3 of the book has gone waaaaayyy over my head. It seems to have gone up a few notches very quickly. There are no comparisons to existing languages to ease you in. So as a result I've put the book down for a bit and decided to look at phonegap. It still uses Eclipse for the IDE but everything else is HTML, Javascript and CSS.

I've built the sample in no time and I am already changing it to get an idea of how it will look. Firstly the sample CSS makes everything look like a native app, very slick. But you would think it would not have the capability of a native app... you would be wrong. You can make the phone vibrate, beep, take readings from the accelerometer, geolocation, bring up the dialler etc... Pretty much everything the average developer would want. Also it is multi platform compatible so with a bit of work it can run on iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Palm as well as Android. I'm not too fussed by that but you never know, a killer app multiplied by 5 outlets is more than just one. Next I'm going to see what the sample app looks like on my HTC Desire.

Monday 1 November 2010

Slow going

Just a quick post to say I'm still working my way through the book. Had a read of chapter 3 which talks about dialogues, intents and activities. I think it will take a couple of read-throughs to get this cemented in my brain. Plus it might be worth while me doing some simple Java tutorials in the meantime as the book has already used some examples with code in, of which I have zero clue about!

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Another day another tutorial recommendation

I think I'm going to have to keep a list of tutorials that have been suggested to me somewhere! Thanks to helium from a forum I visit who has suggested:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/25/get-started-developing-for-android-with-eclipse/

Search Amazon.com for android

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Android Market reaches 100,000 apps but does that really matter?

As has been reported by plenty of sites already, the Android Market has reached 100,000 apps. But should we care? The Apple App Store is at 300,000 but to be honest most of the apps I see when searching for with various key words are total guff. The same themes over and over again but tweaked slightly. An example is the World Cup themes for every team but each one a different app. 32 apps that could have been just one.

For me it is all about quality over quantity. That is why when I get to the point of releasing my potential apps I will do my best to make sure they are worthwhile releasing.

Sunday 24 October 2010

Weekend of no development(s)

This weekend saw a great F1 race and pretty much no development work. I read chapter two of the book which details information about debugging tools and using other tools to help with testing, such as send text messages to the virtual environment, make calls, browse the net etc. All very handy, saves building the app on my phone and wasting texts and minutes. Save wasting them on the final builds eh?!

Friday 22 October 2010

Should I abandon Java and use phonegap... or both?!

Thanks to a recommendation via twitter from @Substitute79 (thanks very much!), I have had a quick look at http://www.phonegap.com/

Looks like at first glance that you can still use Eclipse but use HTML/Javascript/CSS etc... to produce applications... interesting... I think I will be spending some time with this along with the Java route. My findings, as ever, will follow!

Chapter 1... Hello World... Unsurprisingly

So into chapter 1 and the inevitable 'Hello World' app is dealt with. Now I've already tackled this in an on-line tutorial in the past so I knew where this was going. However this is where spending money shows it's worth. The book explains more of the finer details, why you are doing things, what each bit does along with some nice gentle exercises like adding more strings and changing the order they appear. The little end-of-chapter quiz is a little pointless for chapter 1 but I expect it will become a handy recall exercise in later chapters.

I still plan on looking at the on-line tutorials for a comparison with the book but also you never know what one misses the other may pick up on. Unfortunately the inevitable diversion in routes into Android development that both tutorials take are bound to differ very soon!

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Amazon deliver

The Android developer book has arrived. Time to start!


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Learning Android

So i've decided to spend my spare time learning to develop Android applications. I feel that the world is going mobile application crazy and you never know that one great idea might just be the killer app.

Why Android?

Well for starters I own an Android based phone. I'm not a fan of Apple. I love their products and given the right price and a change to more openness then things may be different. And the reasons for not liking Apple are the same reasons for liking Android. Open, cheaper and more accessible.

What next?

Now i've never developed in Java. ASP, VB, PHP is my lot so this is going to be tricky. Some say even harder than a complete programming newbie as I already have preconceptions as to how a programming language should work. Trying to fit new syntax into my head wont be easy.

Right so I've installed Eclipse, downloaded the latest SDKs from Google and got some links to a few tutorials as well as Amazon sending me a book or two on the subject of beginning Android development. Here is a link to those tutorials I plan on tackling:


Here goes, wish me luck...