Posts tagged Version
PhoneGap Build Support Comes to Version 1.4.0
Jan 31st
When it comes to the pace of mobile app innovation, there are a couple leaders in the field that need to be watched on a regular basis. Foremost among them is the PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova these days. Call it the leader of the leaders. Today the company announced the newest version of its platform, PhoneGap 1.4.0. In addition to fixing many of the bugs found in version 1.3.0, the PhoneGap Build cloud service will be fully supported in the new version. Check out below to see what is new in the platform.
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The biggest aspect of PhoneGap 1.4.0 is definitely the integration of PhoneGap build. The service compiles developers HTML, JavaScript and CSS in the cloud and then delivers the app as a ready-made for the Apple App Store, Android Market, webOS, Symbian and BlackBerry. It is one of the more powerful functions of PhoneGap and a great resource to developers looking to build hybrid apps. As we have noted in ReadWriteMobile before, hybrid apps are a good way for the cost-conscious developers to release a native applications to the various popular apps stores.
Here are the highlights of what is new in PhoneGap 1.4.0 as broken down by each platform.
Android
- Work-around Feature for Classic PhoneGap 320×480 resolution
- Add compass demo for Android
- IllegalArgumentException if it is not a JPEG nor a PNG
- Adding JUnit dependency
- Fixing issue with FileTransfer.upload when the passed in url contains a ?
- Allow internal SD Card to be used as storage
- Fixing a timing issue with the web view history not being cleared properly
- Making preference reading code more robust
- Using preference=fullscreen for fullscreen view
BlackBerry
- #124: Adding Battery events to the PlayBook.
- #153: Default for camera destination type changed from DATA_URL to FILE_URI.
- #CB-122: native JSON writer class needs expandable char buffer
- Fixing playbook plugin manager
Note: These are not the BlackBerry highlights. That is literally all of the new documentation for BlackBerry in PhoneGap 1.4.0.
iOS
- Added stand-alone PGViewController (Cleaver – PhoneGap as a Component)
- Added ‘How to Use PhoneGap as a Component’ doc to the .dmg (as a PDF)
- Added for legacy support of deprecated PhoneGapDelegate, in core plugins
- Updated the app icons, splash-screens, and template icons for the Xcode template to Cordova ones
- Added Battery core plugin to PhoneGap.plist
Windows Phone
- Compass API fixes
- Added VERSION file to be like other platforms
- Updated phonegap.js to include XHR updates
- Fix for single document – multipage layouts
- Changed default destination to FILE_URI
- Acceleromter fix #CB-141 – InvariantCulture
There were a lot more bug fixes in PhoneGap version 1.4.0 than in earlier releases. It also comes a little more quickly than previous versions though the update schedule is about once every five or six weeks or so. That would put PhoneGap on par with Firefox, which also is a company that sets the pace of software innovation.
Does the newest version of PhoneGap solve your development problems with the platform? What are you still waiting for to be fixed? Let us know in the comments.
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No One Cares That Novell Has A New Version of GroupWise
Jan 23rd
Today Novell released its 2012 version of its email software GroupWise, and the announcement was greeted by most with a big yawn. GroupWise? Seems so last century. (Actually, the last updates to the software were for version 8 back in 2008-2010.) According to one analyst, “GroupWise has 10,000 customers and is used by 47 of the 50 US state governments.” It has been a distant third to Exchange and Lotus Notes for a while, and many GroupWise customers have switched over to Google Apps in the past several years.
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GroupWise 2012 comes packed with nifty features such as an iPad client, better Web access, integration with Vibe and uses Skype for presence detection. Some of this is certainly late to the game, for sure. The software sells for $143 per seat, and Novell will even throw in a free SUSE Linux server too. Here is an example of its unified inbox from the new version:
While I am glad to see this product still get engineering mind-share from Novell, it is sad to be reminded of how poorly Novell’s stewardship of GroupWise has been. Let’s set our wayback machine for January of 1996, Mr. Peabody, when GroupWise was still a player and probably at the height of its market share.
Microsoft had just come out with Windows 95, the first version of Windows to really embrace TCP/IP and the Internet. Outlook hadn’t yet been invented, and the world was running for the most part on Novell’s Netware networks, which had its own directory services and distributed architecture long before Microsoft copied them into its Windows equivalents. Novell also had purchased GroupWise and it could be found in numerous enterprises as their email solution. Email for an entire enterprise was still a new concept to many, and while many corporations had Internet access, it was still somewhat novel to send emails from one corporate domain to another.
GroupWise was ahead of its time in many areas: it was the first to offer an integrated scheduling and calendar in your inbox, something that Outlook came out with eventually.
Here is an example of what that unified inbox looked back in the day.
Back in 1996, using a Web browser to read your email seemed clunky, mainly because broadband connectivity was sparse and because the UIs were miserable. When Exchange came out with its first Webmail client, it couldn’t view email attachments for example. That would be unthinkable now.
One of its best features was what we’ve called the “save your job” button. You could recall any unread messages in case of a change of heart. This was something that was part of the product ever since the early days when it was called Word Perfect Office. It also had for a long time the ability to check-in and check-out documents from pre-specified libraries.
Well, GroupWise was certainly ahead of its time, at least back in the 1990′s. Will this update make anyone switch from Exchange or Notes? Doubtful. Certainly, the few existing users will rejoice.
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New Mobile AdWords Targeting Options: WiFi & OS Version
Jan 20th
Google AdWords advertisers can now target campaigns to mobile devices that have a high-speed WiFi connection. Advertisers can also now target specific versions of operating systems on iOS, Android, and WebOS. Here’s how to take advantage.
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Google Chrome: New Version Faster and More Secure
Jan 9th
Google Chrome, which recently released version 17 to beta, now has the ability to prerender webpages on the basis of what site a user is likely to visit. When a user begins to type a URL or search query in the address bar, Chrome predicts what page the user wants and begins to load that [...]
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Poll Results – Do you like the new version of Google Analytics?
Jan 5th
Well, the results of our poll, “Do you like the new version of Google Analytics?”, are pretty interesting. I think it is clear that the majority are not happy, but I guess some of our readers like it. 83 people voted that they “love it” and “can find everything”. 91 voted “it is ok”, which [...]
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Do you like the new version of Google Analytics? [POLL]
Dec 29th
I have seen many complaints about the new version of Google Analytics. I have to say that I don’t like it myself and have a hard time finding what I need. I was wondering how you feel about it and if you have any tips, suggestions or recommendations for other analytics programs to supplement GA? [...]
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Boxee Said To Drop The PC Client Biz With Latest Boxee 1.5 Version – ReelSEO Online Video News
Dec 27th
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Boxee Said To Drop The PC Client Biz With Latest Boxee 1.5 Version
ReelSEO Online Video News The following is an index of our more popular video search engine optimization (Video SEO, VSEO,… Many of us here at ReelSEO are still settling back into our routines following the awesome SMX West… We had the privilege of speaking with Bruce Clay … |
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Kindle Fire Loaded With “Pre-Alpha” Version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Dec 26th
The hackers at XDA Developers have been hard at work trying to port Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich onto the Android Kindle Fire. The first success was made in early December when a limited version of ICS was run on the Fire. Last week there was a breakthrough in what the XDA coders are calling a “pre-alpha” of the fire running an actual version of the newest Android OS. See the video below.
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The newest hack of Ice Cream Sandwich on Kindle Fire is based off of CyanogenMod 9. According to the XDA Developer Forums, CyanogenMod 9 is not all that fundamentally different from the standard the stock edition of Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Ice Cream Sandwich. That does not mean to say that CyanogenMod 9 will not fork away from ICS and bring additions to the custom ROM, but for now there is little different in the code bases.
XDA developer JackpotClavin released the “pre-alpha” last week and the XDA community has been building off it since. Previous work on bringing ICS to the fire was done by an XDA member know as g1011999 who has made significant progress.
There are still several bugs to work out of Android 4.0 on the Fire. Wi-Fi is working (the all-important first step) while video playback and some audio are not yet working. That is significant progress for the project that had stalled (in terms of updates) through the middle of the month.
The work of g1011999 was built from CyanogenMod 7. Prerequisites for building ICS on the Fire include installing custom software such as CM7 or TWRP 2.0 after rooting the tablet. Then perform a factory wipe of the device and install JackpotClavin’s work.
Currently the biggest obstacle is getting the SD card to save files from the device. That has been the most recent fix but still remains a work in progress.
Here is a video of ICS running on the Fire.
To follow the discussion on XDA discussion boards, see this thread based on JackpotClavin’s pre-alpha launch. The thread was split from this thread that details the work done by g1011999. The IRC associated with ICS on the Fire is located at irc.freenode.net/#kindlefire-dev. To learn more about CyanogenMod 9, see the company’s blog here or join the CyanogenMod forums here.
As this is a “pre-alpha” the current build of ICS on the Fire is not really ready for public consumption at this time. If developers want to help in the work of bringing ICS to the Fire, go jump into the XDA Forums or the IRC and volunteer your expertise.
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PhoneGap Releases Version 1.3 With Full Windows Phone Support
Dec 20th
PhoneGap is turning 1.3 today. There are a plethora of new features, tools and controls across five platforms in the new PhoneGap release. Biggest among these is Windows Phone’s support of all PhoneGap features, a first for any mobile platform that is not iOS or Android.
PhoneGap, which technically changed its name to Apache Callback for legal reasons, will now actually be called Apache Cordova when it releases version 1.4. It does not really matter what PhoneGap calls itself, the functionality continues to improve with each successive iteration. A full suite for Windows Phone should be a big boon to the platform as it reaches out for more developers.
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PhoneGap + Windows Phone
The most robust of the changes in PhoneGap 1.3 are dedicated to Windows Phone. One of PhoneGap’s core developers, Jesse MacFadyen, led the Windows Phone development team and published a blog post on the integration.
Windows Phone requires the use of Visual Studio and C#. The templates of Visual Studio make it easier to set up an app which keeps the whole project pretty simple. Fundamentally, PhoneGap is working through the browser so it is important that Internet Explorer 9 be robust and have decent HTML5 implementations through Mango. HTML5 development company Sencha benchmarked Internet Explorer 10 and found that it was robust in terms of HTML5 implementation. IE 9 is not all that far behind and is what is currently available in the Mango environment.
The Windows Phone source code is available here on GitHub.
“On Windows Phone, PhoneGap is incredibly flexible. The API is implemented inside a user-control. This means that you can easily add a little PhoneGap to an existing WP7 app, or if you choose, you can add Silverlight controls to your PhoneGap app,” MacFadyen wrote.
Major Improvements Across Platforms
The biggest improvements may have been for Windows Phone but there were important additions to all the major platforms. For instance, PhoneGap is now supported for BlackBerry development on OS X so developers can code from their Macs.
Here are the major improvements for each mobile platform supported by PhoneGap:
Android
- Remove addWhiteList from public API
- Remove PhoneGap.stringify, replace with JSON.stringify
- Fixed: Backbutton should go back in appview history before going back in our history stack
- Changed createCaptureFile to explicitly check for PNG and to throw an IllegalArgumentException if it is not a JPEG nor a PNG
- Refactored the backHistory() code so calling navigator.app.backHistory() has consistent behavior with the backbutton
- Changed API to postMessage() to call a plugin’s onMessage() method
- Optimized enumerations
BlackBerry
- Added OSX support
- Fixed a memory leak issue with WebWorks
- Updated PluginResult Exceptions to use latest naming scheme
iOS
- Added download method to filetransfer, interface is the same like on Android
- When playing audio from remote URL, stop as soon as download fails and make loading cacheable
- Fixed warning – implicit conversion of UIInterfaceOrientation to UIDeviceOrientation (which are equivalent, for the two Portraits and two Landscape orientations)
- Added ‘resign’ and ‘active’ lifecycle events
Windows Phone
- Added Full PhoneGap API support
- Bug-fixes for XMLHttpRequest calls to local file system, especially important for jQuery Mobile apps
- GapView is a usercontrol, so you can use it in your existing Windows Phone app, you don’t have to start over to use PhoneGap
- Addressed issues with File API persistence + local storage
See the full change log from PhoneGap here.
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What Is New in PhoneGap Version 1.2?
Nov 21st
PhoneGap released its next iteration last week and it has a variety of changes for developers to take advantage of. PhoneGap has also been contributed to the Apache Software Foundation and, as we have reported before, will be called Apache Callback when it is a full-fledged member of the open source foundation. There is also iOS 5 support and Windows Phone 7 support. What is new in PhoneGap 1.2?
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There are a variety of contributors to PhoneGap 1.2 but a lot of the most fundamental developers are listed in the changelog. Joe Bowser was responsible for several of the most important updates including upgrading to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, fixing the, “jsConfirm so it doesn’t break the back button,” and removing the camera permission.
Bowser’s contributions:
Bryce Curtis also has an extensive list on the PhoneGap 1.2 changelog. He is responsible for the update to version 1.2.0 and the update to download and run the callback-test repository. Perhaps one of the best new features in version 1.2 is Curtis’s implementation of the ability to load multi-page apps in the same webview and update/pause them for consistency. That should both speed up PhoneGap applications and make for a consistent experience across platforms.
Curtis’s contributions:
PhoneGap has also been updated for iOS 5 and has several fixes for mobile Safari including issues with iFrames. There is now support for pause/resume events and support for custom plugins for BlackBerry. PhoneGap 1.0 launched in late July.
All of this adds up to a fairly comprehensive update from the PhoneGap team. There should be more developments coming from PhoneGap as it gets more integrated under the umbrella of the Apache Software Foundation and Adobe fully integrates Nitobi after its acquisition of the PhoneGap maker last month.
Is there anything missing from the changes in PhoneGap 1.2 that you have been waiting for? Let us know in the comments.
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