> code / creativity / community > Interview with
Sunil Shetty, Mobile Developer, eBuddy
For the complete interview visit: devworx.in
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BlackBerry 10 is here...
I
t’s February, and after a long wait, BlackBerry 10 is finally out there. A couple of analysts we spoke to believe “BB10 definitely has an advantage, if compared to other new platforms such as Windows Phone”. When compared to an open platform such as Android, it won’t have challenges such as fragmentation to the extent that developers working on Google’s platform face. At the same time, it’s of course not as ‘closed’ in nature as Apple is.
Monetarily speaking, it’s cheapest to develop for BlackBerry. Yet, at the same time, BlackBerry developers earn more than 4 times what Apple developers earn. Scrolling down to the overall experience, or user interface per se, there has been a lot of squabbling between Apple and the Android camp. A couple of days ago, a court ruled specifically that Samsung tablets do not infringe Apple patents. After these technological
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http://dvwx.in/10lbP5T
Read the entire article at http://dvwx.in/T51ZTC and share your comments.
Oracle faces hiccups
Github’s two million
>>Launched in April 2008--GitHub--the open source developer’s code repository of choice, now has 3 million developers on board. By adding 1.3 million sign-ups since raising $100 million in July, GitHub is now red hot with 3 million developers on board with their 4.9 million repositories. GitHub has been used by several prominent products to host code.
skirmishes, Microsoft had refreshed the ecosytem with its fresh tiled interface in Windows Phone. While all of that seemed unique enough, it left very little space for any new entrant to have room enough to ‘innovate’ with creative, functional or rather original an approach. For a while it felt each piece of innovation risked being the victim of IP claims and possible sabotage. Surprisingly, Research in Motion has mostly overcome all the above hurdles. It’s stripped off bloat, dead weight as an organisation, plugged holes, nearly written off Java for a POSIXcompliant RTOS called QNX that powers car dashboards in over 200 million automobiles across the club, factories as well as nuclear power plants. It’s not without reason that the Canadian company is banking so heavily on BlackBerry 10.
Project Glass begins...
>>The events, which are being called “Glass Foundry”, will allow developers to get to know the Mirror API and start developing for Google Glass with the help of easy access being made available to a number of Google Engineers at the events.
http://dvwx.in/UUZMFF
>>Google is now allowing Android application developers to respond to reviews generated for their apps on the Play Store. Read:
http://dvwx.in/VKEu1q
*15k apps in 37.5 hours!
>>Yes, that’s exactly what Research in Motion managed to pull with a hackathon prior to the launch of BlackBerry 10. Read:
http://dvwx.in/VKEvCz
*Device irrelevant
>>A new study by Accenture reveals that two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners don’t have strong brand loyalty to any one particular operating system. Read:
>>After the American government warned users of the security risk posed by the recently discovered Java vulnerability that was being exploited in the wild, Oracle quickly came into action and posted a security update within 3 days of the news spreading worldwide. However, according to several analysts, there is still considerable work needed to assuage industry, developer and user concerns surrounding the report of a security vulnerability.
http://dvwx.in/VKEFto
*Respond to App reviews
http://dvwx.in/13fnwK8
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devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in 63
Firefox OS: Web to the Core >>There’s yet another smartphone OS joining the already confused selection in 2013, and that is Firefox OS. Mozilla’s latest endeavour is an operating system built entirely for the web, sound familiar?> by Kshitj Sobti
F
irefox OS sounds a lot like Google’s Chrome OS, down to the fact that both operating systems are named after their respective browsers. Like Chrome OS which is a Chrome-based browser, Firefox OS is a Firefox-based OS. While similar, they are both actually quite different, and have different goals. What Firefox OS is actually a lot closer to is HP / Palm’s webOS. Firefox OS is an operating system that is designed to run only web applications. On the surface this sounds a lot like Chrome OS and the difference between the OSs seems to be that Chrome OS is for notebooks while Firefox OS is for mobile. However the deeper difference becomes apparent when you consider that in Chrome OS the browser, the UI, and everything are all native code running on Linux; Firefox OS on the other hand is an operating system that itself is a web app! Firefox OS is built entirely using web technologies, this means even the home screen, dialer and even the browser in Firefox OS is written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Firefox OS’s architecture consists of three layers which Mozilla has named Gonk, Gecko and Gaia. The middle one, Gecko might sound familiar, stick with us and you will understand why. Here is what these layers are and what they do: Gaia: This is the visible layer of the OS, it is the UI that you see when you run Firefox OS. Gaia includes all the basic apps of Firefox OS including the dialler, SMS app, the camera app, home screen, lock screen, OS setting app, and almost everything else you would consider and essential part of a mobile OS. Since this is simply a web application, you can easily run it on Firefox, or even Chrome on a desktop or a modern browser running on any platform. Gecko: Gecko is actually the rendering engine used by Firefox. This is what Gaia runs on. Think of it as a fullscreen browser running on the mobile device, with everything else running on top of this full screen browser. The difference between this version of Gecko, and the Gecko have running in desktop or mobile versions of Firefox is that the Firefox OS version of Gecko has mobile APIs required for mobile web applications enabled. Gonk: Gonk is the lowermost layer of Firefox OS. This consists of the Linux kernel and other userspace apps necessary to run the Firefox engine. Since this layer is developed by Mozilla it can give Gecko more access to native hardware than is available on any other OS. This layer actually shares a lot with Android since it has a similar goal of running on mobile devices.
64 devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in
Firefox OS is a web app running on the Firefox engine on Linux. An entire mobile OS written in web technologies that can install run and manage other web applications in itself sounds like a big accomplishment, but it is only a small part of the whole. After all, how does a phone even work, how can a web app make calls? The web platform is the perfect platform for creating cross-platform applications. After all an app can be written once, using one well known technology and it will run on every device. So why do people still spend so much time and money making native apps for different platforms. The fact is that while web apps can reach far, they cannot reach deep. They cannot use features such as system’s camera, or Bluetooth. They cannot use NFC or telephony features of a mobile system. What is left for a mobile app to do? When you think of the SMS app in a mobile, why does it seem like it’s something that a web app could not do? Microsoft can bring its office suit with complex rich formatting and a ribbon interface to the web, but a simple text message sending application seems out of reach. The only thing missing is the last piece of the puzzle, access to the system functionality of sending a message. Currently many developers use toolkits such as PhoneGap to bridge the functionality gap between the web and native apps. However due to the work done by Mozilla and others this might not
always be necessary. In the process of making a mobile OS using web technologies Mozilla also took a look at what is missing from the web platform; what stops developers from making the web applications for mobiles and making native apps instead. Wherever there was a roadblock, a missing API that stopped an application from getting access to a feature it needed, Mozilla decided to start work on an API and submit it as a web standard for inclusion in all browsers, and participate in its development. The result of that effort are the Battery API, WebVibration, WebContacts, Settings API, WebSMS, WebTelephony and a number of other web APIs. Many of these APIs have already been implemented in Firefox OS, giving Firefox OS apps access to those native mobile functions. After all, it’s not that web applications weren’t capable to doing great things, just that they weren’t allowed to. This is where Firefox OS is closer to webOS. Many mobile platforms have embraced the web as an application platform, but with Firefox OS the web IS is the native platform of the device. Every existing web application is already a Firefox OS application. With a little effort it can even become an installable Firefox OS application. Another important part of Firefox OS is Mozilla’s web app store which is intended to make it easy to discover and install web applications on the Firefox OS – and eventually even the desktop – platform. An app doesn’t even need to be on Mozilla’s store to be installable or using on Firefox OS, all it needs to do is support a manifest for installing the app. Perhaps the most important thing to understand about Firefox OS is that it is not competing with Android and iOS. It isn’t even launching in the US first. Firefox OS is designed to run on low power devices, cheap devices. It is intended to bring smartphones to people who currently only have access to feature phones, and make it possible for them to run applications on their mobile that can enrich their lives. This is another place where the ubiquity of the web platform comes in. On a platform like the iOS one simply would not find it worthwhile to create an application that has highly local information, such as an app for a local department store. Not many farmers are likely to have iPhones so an app that lets people check market prices of farm produce is less likely to succeed. Even if these apps are entirely free and not profit driven, they are simply not reaching the right people because those people do not have access to the technology being used to deliver it. Firefox OS intends to be that bridge for those people. Firefox OSs success won’t be
*pointers >>Nuggets of cool code at work
*Firefox Phone OS demoed at CES 2013
>>The initial intended market for devices running B2G is South America and emerging markets. That’s why it was demonstrated on a low-end device. The reasoning for the OS is simply to offer choice and competition in the mobile sphere.
http://dvwx.in/TXFuhv
determined by whether it can dethrone iOS or Android, but how many feature phones can it replace with smartphones phones. How many people finally get access to the web when they never had it before. If you are itching to try Firefox OS for yourself after reading this, the good news is that there is a version that can run on desktop computers. This is a Firefox OS simulator; it essentially runs Gecko on Windows, Linux or Mac OSX and Gaia on top of that. Firefox OS is currently available under its code name of boot2gecko, and as such what you get is a boot2gecko package with the Firefox OS UI running on a phone sized window on your computer. You can download this package from: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/b2g/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/
*Ubuntu Phone first look
>>Aaron hits the floor at Pepcom’s Digital Experience to bring you details on the recently announced Ubuntu platform for smartphones. We wonder if there is enough room to support another mobile operating system.
http://dvwx.in/105Dvvy
*Automating Firefox OS
>>Malini Das discusses the challenges in testing Mozilla’s new Boot2Gecko operating system, and how they arrived at a solution. http://dvwx.in/13yB83j
*Demo of QNX Car 2 application
>>Sheridan Ethier, automotive engineering manager at QNX Software Systems, gives a featureby-feature demo of the QNX CAR 2 application platform in the company’s latest reference vehicle.
http://dvwx.in/UHDSrb
You can get packages for Windows, Linux and OS X here. Firefox OScan also be installed as an add-on for Firefox. This is the recommended method as it integrates with Firefox itself, allowing one to push websites and web applications from Firefox to the Firefox OS simulator. That add-on can be acquired from: https://addons.mozilla.org/ en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-os-simulator/
2013 should be an exciting year for mobile platforms. Other than Firefox OS, there is also Tizen that is expected to come to a mobile device this year, and it may also see the re-emergence of webOS and MeeGo as mobile platforms. Read the original article online on devworx. Visit www.devworx.in devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in 65
*join us!
>>we ensure we have maximum features available on XMS >> >>Sunil Shetty, Mobile Developer, eBuddy eBuddy as an alternative to text, is old. What’s your expectation from the future? Although eBuddy Chat has been available since 2003, we launched an XMS real-time messaging app for smartphones in March 2011. We expect people to increasingly use instant messengers leaving behind text messaging. There is no dearth of applications these days, as there are phenomenal levels of fragmentation acrpss platforms. How does XMS stand out? It is very well agreed that there is a huge chunk of specialised messaging platforms available in the market now and XMS is also a part of those applications. Therefore we ensure we have maximum number of features available on XMS, such as allowing users to chat cross platforms, ability to communicate via text, pictures and video. We also have a web companion to our app, so that a user can have the option of having the ease of using the big desktop screen if required. Is the mobile app native, or is it a web interface? What is the mechanism behind XMS? All our mobile XMS client apps are native. We also support a browser-based version which works on tablets, called WebXMS. Our mobile apps open a socket (either plain or TLS) to the XMS backend services to handle the messaging when the application is on the foreground. When the application is off (or on the background depending on the mobile platform) we rely on the Push Notification services provided by the mobile platform. Read the entire interview online, at www.devworx.in and share your comments. 66 devworx> | February 2013 | www.devworx.in
>>You’ve been following devworx every month as you enjoy your favourite technology magazine. With your support, devworx has been on a steady rise, and is discovering its identity with you – the reader – the developer. While on one hand, it’s an extension of your most trusted brand – Digit; on the other, it’s tailored for application developers in India. Whether you’re an app development company based out of India, an application developer, or simply an enthusiast – you are nonetheless, a catalyst in India’s growth as a software development powerhouse. Be it the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, or the Curiosity Explorer currently roving across Martian terrain,
Indian technologists and developers are a very close part of cutting edge innovation across the globe. We want to help you innovate! devworx is an attempt to recognise such stories in software innovation, early on! Irrespective of where you stand in the scenario illustrated, we invite you to be a part of us. Whether you’re an established app development company, a policy maker influencing the mobile ecosystem, or an individual developer, there’s a lot to share with the community. We eagerly want to hear your story. Write to us today! Visit www.devworx.in and go to the Contact us and Careers pages for further information. You can also email us at editor@devworx.in.
*open source
Lucene
Solr
http://dvwx.in/UedcPR
http://dvwx.in/Vjr2iK
>>Lucene has been widely recognized for its utility in the implementation of Internet search engines and local, single-site searching. Text from PDFs, HTML, Microsoft Word, etc, can all be indexed.
>>Solr’s powerful external configuration allows it to be tailored to almost any type of application without Java coding, and it has an extensive plugin architecture when more advanced customization is required.
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