Ovi App Wizard Launches; Symbian^3 Makes App Creation Simple As Well
Nokia is experiencing their fair share of problems, with a CEO possibly
on the brink of stepping away and a next generation smartphone OS
that's now delayed from Q2 2010 to Q3 2010. But here's some bright
news: anyone who can create a webpage can now create an app for
Symbian^3. That's Nokia's next gen OS, and while it won't ship to
consumer devices for a few months now, it's good to see Nokia hopping
on the app ball before they fall hopelessly behind Apple, Palm and
Google.
Symbian today announced the availability of its web application development tools, making application development on the Symbian platform as easy as creating a webpage; these new tools open up application development to creators of any technical ability, providing access to consumers and device manufacturers within the world’s largest mobile market. In other news, the Ovi App Market also opened up today, this time bringing simplistic app making to existing Nokia phones. This is certainly a double-edged sword; on one hand, it's great that newbies can create apps with only links to RSS feeds, but on the other, it seems that this could quickly crowd their app store with useless junk.
Using Symbian’s web application development tools, any existing web developer can simply apply all their existing skills with HTML, CSS and JavaScript but in a mobile context. By exploring just a few more JavaScript APIs, developers can directly access the deep device capabilities that ultimately produce truly engaging applications with mass appeal to the mobile consumer, such as contacts, camera, accelerometers and even location. Is this sort of dumbed-down app process the future, or is this just a blip on the radar of much more sophisticated apps?
Symbian today announced the availability of its web application development tools, making application development on the Symbian platform as easy as creating a webpage; these new tools open up application development to creators of any technical ability, providing access to consumers and device manufacturers within the world’s largest mobile market. In other news, the Ovi App Market also opened up today, this time bringing simplistic app making to existing Nokia phones. This is certainly a double-edged sword; on one hand, it's great that newbies can create apps with only links to RSS feeds, but on the other, it seems that this could quickly crowd their app store with useless junk.
Using Symbian’s web application development tools, any existing web developer can simply apply all their existing skills with HTML, CSS and JavaScript but in a mobile context. By exploring just a few more JavaScript APIs, developers can directly access the deep device capabilities that ultimately produce truly engaging applications with mass appeal to the mobile consumer, such as contacts, camera, accelerometers and even location. Is this sort of dumbed-down app process the future, or is this just a blip on the radar of much more sophisticated apps?
Although Symbian web applications can be created using any existing web development environment, the added value delivered by the tools environment provided by Symbian is in areas like mobile-specific application preview, debugging and deployment capabilities. These features further support the transition of desktop development skill into the mobile universe.
Williams added: “With these tools, web developers can leverage their existing expertise effectively to create powerful mobile applications. This, combined with the on-schedule release of Symbian^3, is further proof of our commitment to enabling innovation and empowering all developers, including web developers, to harness the rich capabilities of the Symbian platform.”
The new tools, which have recently come out of community beta and are available across all of the major platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux, can be accessed at:
http://developer.symbian.org/main/tools_and_kits/symbian3_developer/index.php.
Information about developing and contributing to the tools as an open source project is available from the package landing page, at: http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/packages/package/index.php?pk=263.
