Palm Developer Center

Palm Developer Center Blog

Now Available — Developing Applications for webOS webcast

Comments (22)

February 27 — Topics: O'Reilly, SDK — Chuq Von Rospach

I’m happy to announce that the Developing Applications for webOS webcast is now available from O’Reilly for online viewing.

You can view this either from O’Reilly’s webcast page or from their YouTube channel.

If you weren’t able to see the webcast list, now’s a great time to go and take a look.

If you have questions about developing on the Palm webOS that weren’t answered during the webinar, please leave a comment here and ask them. We might not be able to answer every question right away (for instance, we know you’re going to ask “When?” and “How much?” and we can’t answer those questions yet) — but we will answer as many as we can, and keep track of the rest and answer them later.

Also, we’d love to hear what you thought about the webinar. Please post a comment here telling us what you thought liked about it, and tell us how we could make it better next time. Your feedback will help make future events better!

20 Comments

  1. i think the masses of people is getting this whole palm pre issue wrong or i could be wrong so correct the masses or myself people are thinking the pre will have only web-apps i am saying it will have native apps on the pre written and coded with the present html5 ,ajax the common tools found on the web browser realy looking for this phone another issue getting me very cross with is the card view issue in comparsion to iphone web page only tabs or card view totally different cases when you have a master phone like the pre running all applications in card view that you can switch between the photo or email card view i want people to understand how awesome this phone is

    tony – February 27, 2009 @ 2:47 pm – Permalink

  2. @tony:
    it would be much more awesome if you had used some dots and commas in comment to split your one-sentence-comment in shorter, better understandable sentences. i’ve barely understood what you wanted to tell us.

    michel – February 27, 2009 @ 3:48 pm – Permalink

  3. I am sorry about that was in a rush.Basically I was saying and asking question’s at the same time, my issue is the masses of people seems to mistake how the pre os handles apps. From what I am understanding please correct me if I am wrong , the pre os is called webos from how I understand how the is works it has native apps, using the common tools that already present in the web browser. Eg Ajax,HTML and so on people seem to only be understanding that the pre will only use web apps . They are not understanding that the current tools in the web browser is to write and code the apps for the pre webos to run as native apps please correct me if I am wrong and thanks again..

    tony – February 27, 2009 @ 5:10 pm – Permalink

  4. Great webinar…I haven’t really had a new mobile platform in years that really motivated me as much. It’s been a while since I’ve seen as much opportunity in a Palm platform, and it’s nice, as I got my start doing Palm OS stuff back in the late 90’s. @tony: I think what you’re trying to understand is whether or not all development is done in web apps. What it is, is a hybrid of the typical web 2.0 web application, with an SDK that allows it to work as if it were a native app. It’s something that I predict will take a lot of people awhile to wrap their heads around a web app that runs natively and still has access to system event handling outside a browser interface. Makes a lot of sense to me, but I’m not exclusively an application or web developer.

    Rus – February 27, 2009 @ 5:53 pm – Permalink

  5. My company uses the Lotus Notes program to basically run our entire communications network.We also us HanDbase database program to keep track of all my contacts. {this is a fantastic program) I have always wanted a phone, palm, Notes, and database, all interactive in one unit. Are we there yet?

    Charlie Karp – February 28, 2009 @ 11:19 am – Permalink

  6. Questions:
    -Will there be animated effects available for controls and
    views? (fadein/out/rotate..)
    -Are there any other protocols besides http available? (can we send data over udp? accept tcp connections?).

    Looking forward to the sdk (and the pre).

    chadoe – February 28, 2009 @ 12:25 pm – Permalink

  7. Will there be support for the canvas element?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_(HTML_element)

    Richard Paul – February 28, 2009 @ 4:19 pm – Permalink

  8. Screen scaling? If we write an app for the Palm Pre with its 320×480 resolution, and some months later Palm or a licensee releases a device with different resolution (and aspect ratio) will WebOS handle scaling or will the app have to be tweaked and re-released?

    John – February 28, 2009 @ 7:35 pm – Permalink

  9. I’m a little concerned about whether the widgets can take greater advantage of the touchscreen UI. Being able to drag and drop widgets (including into another widget) on a scene for example could be very helpful for making apps that’ll take greater advantage of the UI.

    Similarly I second the question about whether there will be animated effects. I know the webcast only showed an html view and not a full emulator, but do scene changes follow the general feel of normal OS UI transitions or do they just look like webpage changes? I know it should’t be too difficult to write custom page transitions for apps but I guess my question is whether it would default to a webOS-esque scene change or if transition options are already in the SDK, etc.

    Other than that I just hope the SDK comes out soon and you guys figure out some sort of rights management system, because I’m absolutely certain that a good rights management system would significantly boost the number of developers.

    Either way I look forward to any updates.

    teksys – March 1, 2009 @ 10:24 am – Permalink

  10. What you’ve described so far has been web-centric. I’m thinking of an app where the data would be created and viewed on a PC but it would also be nice to be able to view it on a Pre. There would be no web component to it at all. Is it possible to download data to the Pre from a PC and then read and format the data as appropriate on the Pre?

    Bruce Peterson – March 2, 2009 @ 2:17 pm – Permalink

  11. I hope that your newest treo can sink with mac’s address & calendar .

    With my current treo (700p) I downloaded the software for mac and I still have to do two entries for additions or deletions to my address & calendar applications on Mac

    Maria Schulte – March 3, 2009 @ 7:47 am – Permalink

  12. Hi – Will I be able to use Mobile Me in a similar was as I would on an iPhone? Is the Palm Pre a great fit for Mac users who also use iMail and iCal???

    Judy Motyer – March 4, 2009 @ 10:25 am – Permalink

  13. Will synergy do the same for tasks, and create a global bucket sources from different apps/locations (exchange, computer, online, whatever)

    Jame – March 4, 2009 @ 3:40 pm – Permalink

  14. Hello and thank you for the webinar, but it gave me new questions:

    - The screen resolution is 320×480, ok, but it seems that the status bar is not removable when the palm is in a vertical position. So, what is the size (in pixels) of this status bar? Same question for notifications bar? Do we have the 480×320px available when the palm is in an hoizontale position (as suggested by the CES demonstration videos). We need to know the size of “Card” (in px) to create our applications.

    - Are Animated GIF pictures supported ? And PNG pictures with transparency?

    - You have shown a bit of code on the “Local Storage” which is specific to the palm pre (db = Mojo.Depot (…)). It seems to be similar to window.globalStorage from FireFox, but you use, for the webinar, the Safari browser, that is compatible with the HTML5 (with an API to handle SQL in JavaScript). Please tell us which browser and API for data storage, must be used to develop our applications until the SDK is released ?

    Thank you for all the info you can give us before the release of the SDK …

    Aymeric – March 5, 2009 @ 9:10 am – Permalink

  15. Sorry for my last question about the local storage API. I did’nt read all the slide about it. I already have the answer: HTML5 DB API (as in Safari) OR Mojo Depot OR Cookies …
    Sorry

    Aymeric – March 5, 2009 @ 9:29 am – Permalink

  16. What’s the word on backwards compatability with Palm OS? It’s very important to me, particularly regarding the Calendar and Contacts applications. I don’t want to lose my lengthy history in the calendar, or have to re-enter hundreds of contacts, none of which I have in Outlook.

    Ken – March 8, 2009 @ 10:01 am – Permalink

  17. All I can say is I hope and pray that source code does get hidden. All of the applications I would develop would be for offline usage (with no cloud components) and having the source code available for all to see would basically be forcing me to be open source if I want to code for the webOS, something that’s just not practical from a business point of view.

    JayCanuck – March 8, 2009 @ 4:27 pm – Permalink

  18. Questions asked as requests:

    1) Please make the NDA around the SDK developer friendly, not like the iPhone ‘Fight Club’ NDA was (first rule of iPhone development: nobody talks about iPhone development!)

    2) Please make the SDK available at no, or at least low cost, and via bittorrent. There’s nothing worse than paying for something only to not be able to download it as the provider’s servers are hammered.

    3) Please make a beta SDK available soon. We’re all fired up over the Pre, but if we don’t get an SDK soon we’re just going to shift our attention to the next ‘hot’ platform (or sticking with the one that we’re actually releasing apps on, now) and you’ll have missed the boat.

    Nigel Runnels-Moss – March 9, 2009 @ 5:15 am – Permalink

  19. This SDK everyone’s raving about… is it a database of code or a working development suite-like deal? I’d like to know, because, like Nigel said, we’re all really fired up about the Pre, and I’d like to begin putting together some apps on a new platform. I’m pretty new at writing code and the like, but it was virtually impossible for the public to get their hands on the Palm OS SDK. And, now that Palm OS is being discontinued, I figure that a good time to start is when you’ve got a new platform. I just need to know whether it’s a block of usable codes & webOS GUI sprites or a software program that’s designed to make programming easier. If it’s just code, images, and a manual, that’s no problem for me. I’ve got web development tools… I just want to know what I need to utilize this SDK.

    Also, I agree with Nigel when I say that the iPhone NDA was stupid. Apple just doesn’t get it when it comes to open development or online community. Open talk about this SDK will only make the product better. The Pre is for the user; users should be able to help develop their smartphone. That’s just my take on it.

    I’ve got really big hopes for Palm webOS. This thing’s got potential; let’s make it everything it can be.

    BenR – March 27, 2009 @ 12:45 pm – Permalink

  20. http://ppt2swfsdk.com/Download.aspx

    Ppt2Flash SDK

    * PowerPoint 2000-2007 support
    * COM API
    * Command Line Interface
    * ActionScript API
    * Detailed documentation
    * ASP.NET, C#, C++, PHP, VBScript, Java samples
    * ActionScript API samples
    * Command line samples

    http://ppt2swfsdk.com/Download.aspx

    sdf – April 25, 2009 @ 9:15 am – Permalink

2 Trackbacks

  1. By preDevCamp - Philadelphia » Developing Applications for webOS webcast is now available on February 28, 2009 at 4:54 am

    [...] See the complete post from the Palm Developer Network News. [...]

  2. By Pre 2/27 developer webcast -- worth checking out - TreoCentral.com on March 3, 2009 at 9:41 am

    [...] yet seen the February 27th webcast, I think that it well worth spending an hour watching it: Palm Developer Network Blog