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palm-pre

Now that Palm Pre SDK is out, what does it take to develop for that phone?

I'd like to know what languages and tools (debuggers, IDEs, profilers, libraries, etc) are available for those wanting to develop for Palm Pre.

Also, I'd like to know what technological restrictions exists that one has to be aware of.

Solution

  • There is a library of JavaScript functions for interacting with the base system (phone-level stuff) and CSS tags, styles, etc, for rendering in the Palm WebOS style.

    The SDK comes with a script "palm-generate" which builds a set of configuration files and folder structure. The "palm-package" script builds an isntaller, and nother script, "palm-install" load the installer into the emulator's file system (or a real palm, I believe...mine is on order and should be here Monday!!!).

    It is easy enough to find this code, and it isn't at all original, but I thought it would be valuable to give a glimpse here...

    Hello World - copied from the tutorial in the palm webos sdk

    alt text

    HelloWorld/appinfo.json - meta-information for this application, including a unique name (domain-style), and the root of the application ("index.html")

    {
    "id": "com.yourdomain.hello",
    "title": "Hello World",
    "type": "web",
    "main": "index.html",
    "icon": "icon.png",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "vendor": "Your Company"
}

    HelloWorld/sources.json - manifest

    [
    {
        "source": "app\/assistants\/stage-assistant.js"
    },

    {
        "source": "app\/assistants\/first-assistant.js",
        "scenes": "first"
    }
]

    helloWorld/app/assistants/stage-assistant.js - controller for the application. each application consists of a Stage with multiple Scenes; the StageAssistant.setup() method gets control first, providing time to initialize data, connections, etc.

    function StageAssistant () {
}

StageAssistant.prototype.setup = function() {
    this.controller.pushScene('first');

}

    HelloWorld/index.html - the view for the Stage

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPECTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Hello, World!</title>
    <script src="/usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/mojo.js" type="text/javascript" x-mojo-version="1"></script>
</head>

<body>
Hello, World! 2:59
</body>
</html>

    helloWorld/app/assistants/first-assistant.js - view for the "first" scene

    <div id="main" class="palm-hasheader">
    <div class="palm-header">Header</div>
    <div id="count" class="palm-body-text">count</div>
    <div id="MyButton" name="MyButton1" x-mojo-element="Button"></div>
</div>

    helloWorld/app/assistants/first-assistant.js - controller for the "first" scene

    function FirstAssistant() {
    /* this is the creator function for your scene assistant object. It will be passed all the 
       additional parameters (after the scene name) that were passed to pushScene. The reference
       to the scene controller (this.controller) has not be established yet, so any initialization
       that needs the scene controller should be done in the setup function below. */
}
FirstAssistant.prototype.handleButtonPress = function(event){
// increment the total and update the display
    this.total++;
    this.controller.get('count').update(this.total);
}
FirstAssistant.prototype.setup = function() {
    /* this function is for setup tasks that have to happen when the scene is first created */

    /* use Mojo.View.render to render view templates and add them to the scene, if needed. */

    /* setup widgets here */

    /* add event handlers to listen to events from widgets */
// set the initial total and display it
    this.total=0;
    this.controller.get('count').update(this.total);


// a local object for button attributes
    this.buttonAttributes = {};

// a local object for button model
    this.buttonModel = {
        buttonLabel : 'TAP HERE',
        buttonClass : '',
        disabled : false
        };


// set up the button
    this.controller.setupWidget("MyButton", this.buttonAttributes, this.buttonModel);
// bind the button to its handler
    Mojo.Event.listen(this.controller.get('MyButton'), Mojo.Event.tap, this.handleButtonPress.bind(this));
}

FirstAssistant.prototype.activate = function(event) {
    /* put in event handlers here that should only be in effect when this scene is active. For
       example, key handlers that are observing the document */
}


FirstAssistant.prototype.deactivate = function(event) {
    /* remove any event handlers you added in activate and do any other cleanup that should happen before
       this scene is popped or another scene is pushed on top */
}

FirstAssistant.prototype.cleanup = function(event) {
    /* this function should do any cleanup needed before the scene is destroyed as 
       a result of being popped off the scene stack */
      this.controller.stopListening(this.controller.get('MyButton'), Mojo.Event.tap, this.handleButtonPress.bind(this));
}