ND: Welcome Leonardo, please tell us a bit about yourself!

Hi! I’m Leonardo Risuleo, a passionate mobile designer/developer working as freelancer from Italy. Forum Nokia Champion & Co-Manager of MobileRevamp.org, the Italian Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group (J2me user group too). I started my career as graphic designer but my passion for mobile began in 2003, when I started developing Flash Lite and Symbian mobile applications for Nokia devices. During the past years I worked as freelancer on a variety of mobile-related projects for big firms and studios in the mobile industry.

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

I use different technologies for my Nokia projects: from Symbian c++ to WRT and Webkit but my main focus is on “Flash on Devices”. Recently I’m playing with a little bit of QT too.

ND: Talking about Flash Lite: which do you think are its greatest pros and cons?

Well, the first pro is definitely the active developers community. Friendly people always ready to help and share ideas. With Flash is easy and fast to build stunning mobile interfaces, working prototypes and multi-screen applications running on a big variety of devices (hardly possible with other technologies… ah right, now we have Qt too!).

The con is that while is super-easy to create mobile content with Flash is not so easy to find “Quality” contents. But I hope that new Adobe efforts with Flash Player 10.1 and Flash Lite 4 will bring a new quality standard for Flash on mobile.

ND: Which improvements would you like to see in Flash Lite support on Nokia devices?

I can’t really wait to see Flash Player 10.1 or AIR Mobile running on a Nokia device. The biggest limit I see now is all about packaging our Flash Applications. A real cross-device standard is actually missing from Nokia…

ND: Which technical resources would you recommend for developers who want to start learning Flash Lite?

Developer communities first. Places like Forum Nokia and Adobe user groups are really indispensable for developers to find answer to their questions. My suggestion is to follow as many top bloggers as possible too in order to be always updated with latest news! NokiaDevs.com for example.

ND: Have you published some app on the Ovi Store?

Yes, of course. My latest Flash Lite project “10×10 Mobile” is free to download from the Ovi Store. It’s basically the mobile version of 10×10™ (www.tenbyten.org). “Ten by ten” is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. For this application I used Flash Lite as the only technology (except for the stub application used for packaging). The application is designed for touch enabled device and gives to users an engaging user experience balancing visual animations and performances. Curious? Give it a try, it’s free!

ND: Which is your overall impression about the Ovi Store experience?

With the Ovi Store now Nokia users have a real, working app store. The overall experience is pretty good but unfortunately is still a little behind competitors.

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

I would like to see Nokia investing a lot more effort on User Experience. Other platforms are gaining a more solid position in the market while Nokia lost the leadership on UX. My suggestion is to put more attention on the design phase for both Nokia and Symbian.

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

Yes: keep up the good work! =)

Are there any more questions you’d like to ask Leonardo? If yes, please leave a comment!

Today Maximiliano Firtman, mobile developer with a focus on mobile web, shares his experience and thoughts about mobile web technologies, perspectives and limits with all Nokia Devs readers. If you have further questions to be answered about mobile Web, please leave a comment.

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

I’ve been a developer focused on web 2.0 and mobile technologies for more than 10 years. I’ve developed apps for many native platforms and I’m now focused on mobile web, joining my two interests (web and mobile). I’m speaker and trainer for mobile technologies and I’m author of many books in spanish. I’m author of the book “Programming the Mobile Web” published by O’Reilly media in July, 2010.

I’m Forum Nokia Champion since 2006 and since that time I’ve created some global projects, like www.mobiletinyurl.com and widgen, a mobile widget generator. I’ve just launched my new blog on mobile web technologies, www.mobilexweb.com

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

I use mainly Java ME and WRT widgets for Symbian. I’ve used C++ for some projects, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t like it. Too much work for small tasks. About IDEs, I always like NetBeans over Eclipse, even for my students. The Java ME plugin for NetBeans is better than Eclipse’s one. For WRT, I mainly use Aptana Studio and sometimes Adobe Dreamweaver, with the WRT free plugin available from Nokia.

For SDK I mainly use Series 40 SDK and some S60, but for S60 I prefer RDA (Remote Device Access) or the device itself. I don’t like S60 emulators, too heavy and it doesn’t work as I might expect.

ND: Which is the state of mobile Web nowadays?

Mobile web is right now in every web developer’s mouth. I was surprised of how many people were interested in my last talk in Santa Clara, California, inside Velocity 2010 about mobile web performance. Every developer is looking for mobile web, but most of them are afraid of the problems and compatibility issues. Following the right practices and having the right knowledge allow any web developer to enter the mobile web era successfully.

ND: How do you see the present and future of mobile widgets?

The present is a promissory future. I really like widget development, called webapps or HTML5 apps in other platforms. However, I’m not seeing a lot of development nowadays. It is still a platform that web developers don’t know about and mobile developer don’t like. The future is better. Many standards and frameworks are appearing, almost all manufacturers have some kind of widget platform in their roadmaps and every application store, like Ovi Store, accept or will accept widgets. So, for many kinds of applications, widgets will be a great platform in the very near future.

ND: Is cross-compatibility, in mobile Web, a reality today?

If we consider cross-compatibility, the ability of a mobile web to run over different devices, it is a reality doing some work on progressive enhancement and server-side content adaptation. If we consider cross-compatibility, the ability of a one source code to render properly on every device, it is not a reality today. There are too many standards and compatibility problems today that forces us to make some extra work for delivering the best possible experience for each device.
Mobile web today coexists with XHTML MP, XHTML Basic, XHTML, HTML 4.01, partial HTML 5, CSS 2.1, CSS 3, WebKit extensions for CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, JavaScript additional APIs. I insist that following some guidelines it is not as awful as it might appears to be.

ND: In your opinion, which are the strenghts of mobile Web, especially when compared to native apps?

* Access to knowledge, best practices, hacks, IDEs, tools and frameworks available today for the web
* Access to web 2.0 APIs easily
* Low time-to-market
* Porting between platforms is easier and simpler than in native apps
* On some platforms, it can be installed as any native app

ND: What is still missing to mobile Web, to get more developers approach it?

Standards between platforms is a big issue. Lack of official documentation from manufacturers is also a big problem. Hopefully my book will help developers to approach mobile web. Other problems include lack of multiplatform frameworks (there are a lot for iPhone or maybe a few for Android, but as we know, they are not the only platforms in the market).

ND: So, in the long run, how do you see the native apps VS mobile web “duel”?

I believe that mobile web will win in some areas, like mobile client for web services, quick and small apps and every apps focused on the web. Native apps will still exist for high-demand CPU applications, augmented reality, games or platform-specific applications.

ND: Which technical resources would you recommend for developers who want to start with Mobile Web?

After the research I’ve conducted for my book, I can say that good technical resources for mobile web doesn’t exist today. You have official documentation from some manufacturers (like library.forum.nokia.com) but they are not useful for multiplatform development. (In fact, Nokia documentation only talks about Symbian web development, nothing there for Series 40 or MeeGo). And some online resources about mobile web are too old. There are some other few books (2 or 3) in the market, but they have some years or they don’t have practical information, only a lot of “should work”, “be careful” but without real tips or information about compatibility. Therefore, with no intention of advertising (as you may know book authors don’t make money for book sales) my book “Programming the Mobile Web” is my best recommendation as a resource to start with Mobile Web.

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

Deliver the best possible experience for each device. Remember that not every user in the world is using the latest smartphones, so remember that Series 40 exists, even if you currently don’t have too many users from that platforms.
The final advice: Test, test and test. Use virtual labs for testing, even some free and excellent services, like Nokia Remote Device Access.

Today Nokia Devs talks with Gargi Das, an enthusiastic Nokia developer from India. If you are a Forum Nokia Community member, you may know Gargi (a.k.a. gaba88) for his excellent contributions, especially in the Python for S60 area.

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

Thanks, I am a Software Engineer from India. I am an Nokia Enthusiast and a Forum Nokia Champion too. I love writing applications for Nokia devices. I carry a expertise in getting some good Location Based solutions and GIS, apart from that I also write applications for IPhone and Samsung Devices.

Generally I am fond of Bollywood Music and Movies

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

I have almost used all technologies (except Java) that Nokia provides to write applications for its devices. I started with the open source Python, continued with Symbian C++ using carbide.c++, and I’m still developing apps in Symbian c++. During for a sort period of time I used Aptana studio and javascript to develop some WRT Widgets. Currently I am developing applications using the new Nokia Qt SDK and Qt for S60.

ND: When have you started to develop for Nokia devices, and which are the main differences when developing an app today, compared to when you started?

I wrote my first code for mobile devices which was in Python during my early college days, in mid of 2006. The first Nokia device I used to test my application was the Nokia 7610 which was cool device that time. Through out my college days I wrote several applications using Python, JavaScript and Symbian c++.

Nowadays developing applications for mobile is a part of my profession, and the best part compared to the past regards resources: today lots and lots of resources are available to learn new stuffs which makes a developer’s life bit easy. Apart from that, the options to develop for different kind of platforms have widely opened out, with the presence of other smartphone OS in the market.

ND: Have you published, or do you plan to publish apps on the Ovi Store?

As of yet I have not published any apps on Ovi Store, but as recently Nokia has allowed individual developers to publish applications on the Ovi store, I am developing some apps using the new Qt SDK and as soon as that are finished I am going to make then live on the OVI Store.

ND: Can you describe your Calls Info app?

The main objective of this application is to give a detailed analysis of money spent by the user on his or her mobile phone. Calls info gives a graphical analysis of outgoing calls and incoming calls by which the user can know to whom he is making the most calls and from which caller he is getting the maximum calls.

There is analysis of the calls and their cost which will make the user aware of his or her cost details. If we talk about postpaid customers in India, they don’t get the knowledge of their bill instantly if they want, but by using this application the postpaid customers can easily know the total money he has spent. Apart from the cost analyzing objective the application has the objective to make the user aware of his or her location on which he or she has made a call or received a call.

ND: You have a great experience with Python for S60: which are the pros and cons in using this technology, in your opinion?

As I have told previously Python was the language using which I started developing applications for mobile devices, I helped and still helping lot of people at the Forum Nokia Python section, I also wrote some tutorials for newbie’s which helped them to start developing applications using Python for S60.
The Best part of writing applications using Python for S60 devices is its rapidness, Python for S60 drastically decreases the development time of an application compared to other platforms and at the same time its still functionally powerful.
The bad part is that Python needs a runtime on the backend to make the applications work and the runtimes are not shipped with the devices, so the deployment and distribution of applications become a bit difficult, which makes Python a bad choice for writing commercial applications.
Anyway, if I get any chance I will more than love to write applications using Python for S60.

ND: Generally speaking, which are the biggest hurdles you face when developing for Nokia devices, and which the major benefits?

To be very honest there are quite a few hurdles when developing applications for Nokia devices and at the same time there are lots of benefits which makes the developer happy and enjoy the development.
Talking about the hurdles when using Symbian C++, which was the main platform to write applications for Nokia devices, the bad point was that, if you are a beginner, then by no means you are going to love developing apps using Symbian C++ and, apart from that, development time was also an issue. But with Qt for S60 I hope that these shortcomings will be overcome, as Qt drastically decreases your applications development time, and learning Qt is simple too.
Talking about more benefits, Nokia Developer offerings and support is one of the best in through out the mobile ecosystem

ND: Is there something you’d like to see in Nokia devices or technologies, that you haven’t seen yet?

To start writing this let me remind you all that I am a very big Nokia Enthusiast. I am using Nokia Devices since 4 years and as a user I love those devices. But there are certain things which Nokia has missed out and I hope those things will be back to Nokia soon.

If I talk about features in a device then I can firmly say no devices can be compared with Nokia one based on its features, but recently Nokia has failed to create some innovations and a very good UX, I hope with the upcoming S^3 , S^4 and MeeGo Nokia will strongly fight back and will be on top as always.

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

We all developers know that this Mobile Eco-System is growing at a very fast rate. We as developers have lots of option to choose a platform and language to give some ideas a practical sense: some factors like ease of development and a better marketplace to distribute the applications play a major role in making a ecosystem very effective and grow rich.
The good thing about the ecosystem is that every one here is taking a step to make developers life very easy and I guess they know what amount of importance developers carry for a particular ecosystem.
The main challenge I personally see as a developer in this mobile ecosystem is the level of fragmentation already occurred and I if I see the future I don’t see this going down at any stage, so we as a developers need to work out on some thing which helps all of us to fight up this fragmentation issue.

The next thing I am going to tell is that Nokia, and particularly Forum Nokia is doing an excellent job in reaching out to the developers, helping out in any manner and form they can. This point gives Nokia a special point in my thoughts and I know whatever be the challenges, Nokia will definitely come up front.

Last but not the least I will thank the Nokia Devs’ guys for giving me a chance to express my thoughts and they all are doing a excellent job and it was just a small help from my side to them.