Today Nokia Devs talks with Edson Luiz, mobile developer from Brazil, currently working for i2 tecnologia. Edson started working on mobile devices one year ago, thanks to rapid development technologies as WRT and Flash Lite.

ND: Welcome Edson, please tell us a bit about yourself.

I am technical in game development, and have started working with mobile devices one year ago.

I am currently working, as mobile developer, with i2 tecnologia, with a focus on WRT and Flash Lite.

ND: Which platforms and technologies do you use for mobile development on Nokia devices?

For each project I often use more than one technology, including WRT and Flash Lite, and I’m currently studying Qt. To develop use Flash Professional, Aptana Studio and Qt creator.

ND: When have you started working on Nokia devices? Do you remember your first project/app?

As I remember, my first app was a little over two years ago for a project concluding a course: it was an advergame, developed using Flash Lite, for Nokia N70, where the goal was to collect the greatest quantity of correct items and achieve the highest score.

ND: Working on multiple technologies, can you say which are the strong points that you see in each of them?

Flash Lite has its strongest points in development speed and in matters concerning aesthetics and visual animations, allowing to build apps with great impact on the user. As for WRT, the main point is the ease of integration with many different APIs and web technologies, as for standard web apps.

ND: Talking about WRT: do you use any frameworks or UI libraries for your projects?

I use the jQuery library in my projects and use state machine development pattern which simplifies the development part.

ND: Which new features (e.g.: APIs) would you like to see in WRT?

I’d like to see an IDE that shows me in real time the changes I am making to CSS and HTML in my application.

ND: Have you ever integrated WRT widgets with other technologies (e.g.: Flash Lite, C++)? If yes, please describe your experience and thoughts about it.

A while ago, along with a development team, I did a work component to display images integrating JavaScript and Flash Lite, where the user could zoom in, zoom out the picture that appears in the Flash Lite component. Combining these two technologies has proved to speed up the whole development process.

ND: Which are the main issues you face when designing, developing and testing a new WRT widget?

The main issue is related to testing, and is not strictly related to WRT: basically, the main point is to let tests be performed by persons not involved in the development part, as some of the errors in your code can go undetected by being familiar with the application’s flow.

ND: Do you have any specific recommendations for developers who may want to start with WRT development?

One of the things that helped me to start with WRT was to already know a little about web development. I also recommend the part of Forum Nokia related to mobile Web development, as it contains very important information for those who want to start, as well as other sections helping in most other technologies.

ND: Please share with us your impressions about Nokia and the general mobile ecosystem, and how you see it in the next few years.

Looking at the ecosystem now as a whole, I hope that Nokia will invest more in WRT, both in its technology as the IDE itself, to further facilitate development.

ND: Something else you’d like to tell to Nokia developers?

While Nokia offerings cover many development technologies, my hint for developers is to focus on the one in which each one most identify him/herself.

With the recent Qt WRT announcement, mobile web developers gain a new tool to build powerful web apps for Qt-based platforms. In this conversation, Nokia Devs asks Wai Seto, from Forum Nokia, what Qt WRT is all about and what developers should expect from it.

ND: Welcome Wai, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, My name is Wai Seto working Forum Nokia as Technical Marketeer evangelizing and executing Nokia Web development offering. I have started this role last year, and prior to that I have been software architect for web and Internet related products on Nokia devices. Love to interact with developers who are interested in developing for Nokia, so please connect with me and chat. Check the Forum Nokia Web Talk blog or find me in twitter @waiseto.

ND: We’ve seen the recent launch of Qt WRT: can you tell us what it is?

On Jul 19 2010, Qt WRT was announced to be open sourced and part of Qt’s new open governance model. It is a technology component that is of interest to OEM’s, operators, and other platform development professionals with an interest in open source and expanding the capabilities of web applications.

ND: Which advantages does it bring over standard Qt hybrid development?

Qt hybrid development is a powerful way of programming. It has the best of both C++ and Web world. However, hybrid program does request some level of C++ development knowledge. Qt WTR is completely Web based, and requires no C++ skills.

ND: Talking about APIs: which ones are supported today? Are you working on integrating new APIs in next releases?

Calendar, Camera, Filesystem, Location, Media Messaging, Sensor, Syst Info, and telephony are included in the current package. We think these are the right set of device API for now. Plus Qt WRT1.1 support HTML5 and CSS3 features such as canvas, local storage and CSS transition. As the technology is open sourced, new improvement will be visible to public.

ND: Will Qt WRT be integrated in MeeGo releases?

At this point, the Qt WTR is part of Qt open source governance model. Qt is designed to work on multiple platforms including MeeGo. According to the MeeGo architecture page there will be a Web runtime component based on Qt, but not in 1.0. Please wait for future MeeGo announcement for details.

ND: Will it be possible to distribute Qt WRT apps through the Ovi Store?

This announcement is about Qt WRT technology going to open source under Qt platform. When the Qt WRT technology is available on Nokia devices, we will make the appropriate announcement about the Ovi Store support.

ND: Where can developers find more information about Qt WRT, to start developing widgets?

To get started, download the release from http://get.qt.nokia.com/qtwrt . Source code and examples are available there. Also discussion you questions and comment in the QtWRT Forum.

If you have more questions about Qt WRT, you can leave a comment here or on the official announcement page.

Today Nokia Devs talks with Manikantan Krishnamurthy, a mobile developer from Singapore, about his development experience on Nokia platforms. Manikantan has recently published a Flash Lite game for Series 40 devices, Deep Days, and other applications realized with the Ovi App Wizard.

ND: Welcome Manikantan, please tell us a bit about yourself.

I am Manikantan, a student of NTU, Singapore studying Masters in Digital Media Technology and I posses a computer engineering background from under-graduation. My interests lean towards developing games and Web 2.0 apps for mobile devices. I primarily have used Flash Lite for development over the past two and half years. Sometimes, I also indulge in programming using PyS60 and J2ME, and lately Qt. I am also part of Adobe Flash communities in India (a.k.a. IndiMaD). I also have published a broad range of applications and games at the Ovi Store under the publisher name Chompgames. I am a Forum Nokia Champion since 2009 and also a Forum Nokia Wiki moderator. I blog at flashactions.com and croozeus.com and active on twitter @manikantan_k.

ND: Which platforms and technologies do you use for mobile development on Nokia devices?

As far as Flash development goes, Adobe Creative Suite is the only thing I use. Adobe toolkit comes with an emulator program called Device Central with which all Flash content can be emulated on a plethora of phones. I like the Nokia Qt SDK that was released few months back. I faced problems installing the Symbian S60 SDKs on my Vista. But Qt for Nokia has solved those problems for me. I also sometimes use Eclipse and ERIC IDE for PyS60.

ND: When have you started working on Nokia devices, and what has changed since then?

My first app on mobile phones was in 2006, when I was not aware of Forum Nokia. My only support was Adobe Documentation. Over the years, there has been constant innovation and many transformations in various aspects. Devices have grown smarter with multiple sensors, UI has undergone a complete revamp. Mobile web is exploding and I have seen the mobile developer community grow multi-fold. Mobile development is starting to become the key skill that companies are hiring.

ND: Have you used Ovi App Wizard? If yes, what’s your opinion and how would you improve it?

Yes, Ovi App Wizard is an excellent tool that helped me build three applications, King Khan, Bollywoodie and Wallet Watch in practically no time. Though the tool doesn’t offer much UI customization, it promises a clean UI and has supports feeds from Twitter, Flickr and mechanisms like RSS and ATOM feeds.

I think, with mobile web exploding and many people enjoying internet from their handsets, these tools with quick time-to-market are handy. Some UI customization is an improvement I would like to witness.

ND: You have recently published a Flash Lite game for S40: Deep Days. Can you describe how you had the original idea, and the main hurdles you’ve found during development (and how you solved them)?

Deep Days has a funny starting, quite similar to Doc. Brown’s idea of time travel in Back to the Future movie. It was a sudden vision that came to my mind on a Saturday night at 2 am. And I was off to my machine to code it immediately. Within a few hours, I had written the core logic and mechanics of the game.

Being a programmer, I am not good at designing game assets. After some time, Wrecker Tike was generous to do the design and skinning of the game and I finally launched it in Ovi as Deep Days. I must say, being targeted at the lower S40 audience, it has been doing phenomenally well in the Ovi store.

ND: As a developer and publisher, which was the overall impression about the Ovi Store itself?

I am happy with how Ovi Store has been evolving in the recent months and Nokia users are beginning to enjoy a wider range of applications. However, not many indie developer studios have seen cash flow. I would also like to see featuring of localized applications in the Ovi main menu just like recommendations, and better costing abilities in for developers. For example, iAd from Apple is a wonderful initiative for developers creating free content. I would like to see more protection for these indie developers from Ovi and in totality a richer mobile ecosystem.

ND: How Flash Lite did help you to create your apps, and which limits did you find in using it?

Flash Lite is the rapid prototype creator’s dream tool. I think it is the best and quickest way to create games and rich media content. However putting it in a mobile context from Flash is a bit hard. For example, getting access to native file system or the sensors can sometimes cause erratic behavior on some Nokia phones.

So, if I had to harness these resources, I wouldn’t take Flash Lite, as I did in my master’s dissertation, where I control a vehicle on the PC using the sensors on my phone.I used PyS60 in this project and it proved to be very reliable.

ND: Which are the main resources and libraries/frameworks (if any) that you use for Flash Lite development?

Many game development or physics engines in Flash are available today only in AS3, which is still not supported in Nokia handsets. So I generally don’t use third party libraries. I think the Adobe Help and Documentation is the best resource for Actionscript developers. I sometimes use UI Frameworks like Shuriken in app, and sometimes use the Forum Nokia UI components.

ND: Is there something in Nokia technologies that you think it’s missing, and you would like to see in the near future?

After seeing iPhone, Android and Maemo phones, I am beginning to feel the Symbian phones’ UI is a bit outdated. I hoped to see a complete revamp in Symbian^3, but Symbian^3 looks quite similar to the current S60 phones in the market. I hope to see them in Symbian^4 devices. I also feel that there are too many programming languages within Symbian phones like java, Flash Lite, Python, Symbian C++ and now Qt apart from WRT. I hope this streamlines into fewer languages and more libraries in them rather than seeing  the same platform services in different languages.

ND: Something else you’d like to tell to Nokia developers?

I have enjoyed my way in developing for Nokia handsets. I think it’s the right time to develop for these handheld computers today and encourage others to do so.

As many of you already know, Forum Nokia has recently launched a new free tool for project management: Forum Nokia Projects. Nokia Devs asked Andrea Trasatti, from Nokia, to explain which are the main features of this tool and which benefits it brings to developers.

ND: Welcome Andrea, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hello, my name is Andrea Trasatti and I have recently joined Nokia, in May 2010, specifically. I have been working in the mobile space for 10 years now and of course my first experiences were with Nokia phones. The 7110 that many did not like still has a special place in my heart, in particular the roller that seemed so appropriate to scroll pages quickly.

ND: What is Forum Nokia Projects?

Forum Nokia Projects is not a new idea, it is something Forum Nokia has been evaluating for a few years now, considering if it would be appropriate to start (yet another) project hosting service.

Early this year the company decided that it was worth it and that developers would have had a consistent benefit. I was hired to manage the community around the service, reason being that Forum Nokia thinks there will be many developers and end-users taking advantage of it.
In three words Projects is a “project management tool” for open source software, but not only and of course focuses around mobile. Forum Nokia, as you probably know, is about helping the growth of mobile services, Web, native applications, widgets, etc. Projects wants to help developers to better manage their software and also have an easy way to connect to their users.

ND: Why should developers use Projects?

Projects offers all the standard tools that you would expect to manage your software in all its life-cycle, we have a wiki, tickets, version control, discussion boards, etc.

On top of that we add something that hardly anyone else can offer, the great community of Forum Nokia that is composed of professional developers and hobbyists that might very well be interested in participating in your project or be your users.

If that was not enough, we offer better visibility. Forum Nokia is the best display for any mobile project. We have started in July with what we called the MVMP, i.e. the Most Valuable Projects Member of the month, and of course we will have a new one every month. This will give visibility both to individuals and their projects. We promote the MVPM on Forum Nokia and we plan to use the software (with the owner’s permission of course) in other materials that Forum Nokia will produce in the future.

Projects should also be a way to connect to users of your software, so we expect a lot of casual visitors that will download and test software and of course comment and send feedback.

ND: Which are the main available features?

Projects is built on top of Trac, a well known project management software that has been in development for years. Trac comes with all the most common features that you would expect, tickets, wiki and integration with SVN.
We wanted to give power and flexibility to our developers and we developed a plugin that allows us to have multiple projects within a single Trac install (something that is not available out of the box) and we installed a number of plugins such as the ability to also use Git and Mercurial as SCM’s, we installed and improved the discussion boards and we offer webDAV access.
One small feature that comes with the support of multiple projects is also the ability of making your project private. Most of the other hosting services require that your project is open source and completely public. We also allow for private projects, we thought this would be very helpful for people that want to have a team of members to help him and we hope that eventually it will be turned into a public project. Of course a public project has better visibility.

All Projects’ contents are also indexed by the Forum Nokia’s search engine (and all other search engines), so every time a user is looking for something on Forum Nokia they will also find a project in our service if that matches the search query.

ND: Are you working on new features and/or improvements for the near future?

We have launched our public beta in mid-June and our goal is to have a final release after the summer. We are working on many tweaks and improvements, but our focus now is to provide a system that is powerful and easy to use.

In accordance to what we think are the key advantages of Projects, we are working to make sure that project owners can create really good sites around their projects, so improvements to the project homepage, to the permissions system, the design and so on.
In the near future we want to give access to information about how the project is going, so show pretty graphs of visitors, commits to the repository and downloads.

ND: Can you show us some cool hosted projects?

We were overwhelmed by the number of projects that were created in less than a month, so naming 2 or 3 is too little, so I really suggest that you check out our homepage where for example the newest and the most active projects are listed.

One project that I particularly like is QtMirror, it’s quite simple in its idea and yet the owner has created a nice site and is working on bringing new features soon. Link:  https://projects.forum.nokia.com/QtMirror
I like going hiking and walking, so another personal favourite of mine is Kinematics, born as a tool to track your cycling, but of course you can apply it to anything. Just turn it on and it will record your position over time and show you on a map your trail. Link: https://projects.forum.nokia.com/kinematics

Forum Nokia is also using Projects to host our own software, for example you can see the QtQuickPlayground (link: https://projects.forum.nokia.com/qtquickplayground) and the Cartoon Reader (Link: https://projects.forum.nokia.com/CartoonReader) that are sample applications we developed. The difference is that starting from now developers and users can also communicate directly with the teams that were involved, ask questions and suggest improvements. We plan to continue doing so and we want the community to be more active.