Palm Developer Center Blog
webOS developers at Sprint Developer Conference: Pivotal Labs
November 3 — Topics: The webOS Community — Chuq Von Rospach
Palm engineers had a lot to say at the Sprint Developer Conference. Instead of trying to have the last word about webOS development, Palm shared the stage with four of your colleagues‹developers who already have apps available on Palm Pre. We thought you’d want to get a glimpse of what they had to say.
Chris Sepulveda from Pivotal Labs demoed their first webOS app, the Twitter client Tweed, as well as Scoop, an RSS reader that’s just about to hit the catalog. He mentioned that Tweed was really Pivotal’s chance to kick the webOS tires, to try it out and see what they could do with it. “It was our ‘Hello World’ app, so to speak,” Chris said, “and it took us a couple of months to finish it.” By the time they got to Scoop, Pivotal engineering already had enough experience with webOS and the MOJO SDK that they were able to complete development in weeks.
Among the reasons Pivotal decided to jump into webOS were that Pivotal engineers had a lot of experience coding in JavaScript from their web dev project and because of that they were able to experiment and iterate with ease. It also made it easy do test-driven development, a style favored by the Pivotal team. (You can read more about test driven development and webOS in the webOSdev article, Mojo Test Framework. Additionally, they felt that webOS allows for a “stickier” user experience rather than one that prompted users to get in and get out quickly.
Next he turned to the Mojo SDK and Framework. Chris said it was really easy to learn for those with experience with JavaScript and, in particular, Ajax, adding that if you only know request/response web development the transition to Mojo would be more difficult than if you are used to asynchronous programming techniques. He also pointed out that you really don’t have to use much CSS or HTML if you use native Mojo widgets and default styling, and if you decide to use your own widgets/styling, things get interesting fast.
He concluded with a couple of general points for web developers considering webOS development: First, when building a mobile app, you have to be much more concerned with ergonomics, that is your use of space and how users reach each part of your application. And, second, he suggested that webOS lets the developer focus on building the best applications, not simply
applications that work.
Don’t forget to read the webOS developer profiles series, “Getting Their Mojo Working,” in the webOSdev magazine.