I have previously not managed to get the Windows Phone 7 emulator running on my dev install (Windows 7 on Parallels 7). After upgrading to Parallels 8, installing the latest Parallels update for Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 7.1.1 SDK update. I have managed to get it working a little more. It still takes ages to startup: 2-3 minutes of “Windows Emulator is doing a full OS boot” before the Windows Phone logo shows […] Read more »
No joy – WP7 emulator in Parallels 7
For a couple of years I have been running my development environments completely virtualized – there are many benefits in being able to quickly change operating systems and toolsets for working in different environments. With advancements in virtualization technology my original gripes with running things virtualized have more or less entirely disappeared. Unfortunately my virtualization environment of choice Parallels 7 on OSX has failed me terribly, I blame Microsoft too for forcing me to use […] Read more »
Js updates all-around!
As I have written previously I am involved in some really JavaScript heavy development target at “native” mobile apps done using Phonegap. The last month or so has brought a lot of framework updates which are interesting. First of all JqueryMobile 1.0.1 has been released and the upcoming (February?) 1.1 release is said to bring true fixed header/footer toolbars and scrolling. We’ll see… Steve Sanders has released knockoutJS 2.0 – this is actually the 1.3 […] Read more »
iScroll 4 first fix for acceleration on multiple touchmoves
iScroll 4 is a great library for adding scrolling to mobile Html5 applications. Unfortunately I found that there is something missing in how the scroller works compared to native scrolling. After comparing how one of my HTML5 mobile applications scrolls compared to an equivalent native app I found one major difference that changes the feel of the iScroll scroller – multiple consecutive scrolls on the native app speeds up the scrolling. With iScroll 4 multiple […] Read more »
Knockout js 1.3 external native templates using xui
caseycorcoran and maverix (Andrew Harry) have created a gist for an external template engine using jQuery for Knockout’s new native templating feature in 1.3. I am using Knockout in one of my Phonegap projects but I am trying to avoid jQuery in favor of xui.js which is a much smaller library optimized for mobile phone HTML5 development. I have created a fork of their gist changing the ajax loading from jQuery to the xhr function […] Read more »
Is Phonegap dead already?
Recently Adobe acquired Phonegap developers Nitobi, read about it here and here. Does this mean Phonegap will die? Phonegap has been an open source, free product from the start. Nitobi have had a business model where they provide training, consulting and other value adding services – like their build service. As far as I understand Adobe have a completely different business model, they sell software licenses… There have been other examples of free software being […] Read more »
Enable scrolling in html5 mobile apps
My recent forays into mobile app development with Phonegap have uncovered a couple of surprises (for me at least). Clearly mobile app development and specifically HTML5 applications are a very imature space! I have been focusing on getting to know a couple of different model-view frameworks (Knockout, Backbone, Angular) and also trying to get a simple UI based on HTML5 to render in a mobile phone, both with and without UI frameworks (JQuery mobile, Appmobi […] Read more »
Break-down of javascript mobile frameworks for phonegap development
I am experimenting with PhoneGap for a couple of projects that I am currently working on. PhoneGap is a native mobile app packager which basically converts a html5/js based site into an app that will run on mobile phones and can be distributed via app store/market. Since PhoneGap merely leverages existing support for html5 and javscript in the mobile phone you have pretty much the same issues as when developing a regular mobile enabled web […] Read more »