iBond
As the end of our London-themed mobile application tour rolls around, we turn to the world famous Mr. Bond, James Bond. One of the features not provided for by mobile browsers yet is the ability to take a picture using the device camera. This of course makes it hard for James to use a web standards-based application to take spy photos when he’s off saving the world. Luckily, as we reach into Q’s bag of tricks we can tap into the device APIs offered by Mr. Gap, PhoneGap. From the point of conceiving all four demonstration ideas, through development, and to the point of delivery, which included a trip from the United States to London, England, was four days. Four applications in four days was an ambitious goal to be sure, but PhoneGap and web standards...
Tardis Finder
Poor Doctor Who. Always running around time and space, saving the universe … In a phone booth. Well, okay, it’s not actually a phone booth, it is a “time and relative dimension in space” machine, or “TARDIS” for short. But what I want to know is how, in all these different places, does The Doctor remember where he parked the Tardis? I can’t remember where I park my car at the grocery store. So in continuing the London-themed series of PhoneGap applications, and knowing that “there’s an app for that” I built Tardis Finder. Tardis Finder is really a simple example of using the device compass from PhoneGap. The code is actually pretty short and sweet. It is also very similar to using the accelerometer. You make a call...
Blimey
In this spin on the differences between British English and the English used by Americans, I’ll take you through recording an audio file with PhoneGap. We will get a brush with the PhoneGap File API along the way there. Having recorded your voice, we will then translate the audio file. Well, okay, we won’t translate per se, as much as play back a pre-canned audio recording of a female computer voice tell us nice things about our presentation – and then some. To get there we will use the HTML5 “audio” tag. And just for good measure, we will take a quick look at using the PhoneGap Notification API. WARNING: There is some potentially offensive material in this tutorial. If you find yourself sensitive to foul language, you may want to head...
Mind the Gap
In this London-themed example, I’ll take you Underground, as we explore accessing device accelerometer data to control the basic motion in a simple game. Along the way we will take a look at a few considerations around relative tilt, CSS3 transforms, and decoupling processes. But watch out! You don’t want to fall onto the rails, or get trapped between the platform and the tube. Mind the gap? Yeah, buddy. Mind the PhoneGap! Accelerometer Accessing the accelerometer with PhoneGap is a relatively straightforward process. The main function you will want to call is “navigator.accelerometer.watchAcceleration()”. That sets the ball in motion to poll the device for accelerometer data at a given frequency. The parameters you’ll want to pass to...
PhoneGap Goes to London
Last week I went to London, England to present at HTML5 Live. The topic was “Building Mobile Applications with PhoneGap.” Even though Adobe recently acquired Nitobi, largely the main drivers of PhoneGap, I had presented this topic a number of times before. Even before PhoneGap was integrated with Dreamweaver CS5.5 I was out there giving presentations on the technology. But while I knew what to present, I really didn’t want to show the same old demonstrations again. I wanted something new. But what? About a week before the trip, as I was reviewing the presentation, and updating to all the latest bits, it hit me. “If you’re going to London, why not have a variety of London-themed examples?” I set to coding, and before long found myself with...
About Me
I am a father, husband, photography enthusiast and pilot most of the time. I work for Adobe managing the world's best evangelism team the rest of the time. I also enjoy hacking hardware, cigars, travel, and movies.