There are several million web application developers, so as the proliferation of mobile devices continues to grow at an astounding pace, it is not surprising that mobile web development continues to gain traction.
Web technologies can be used on the Symbian platform in two different ways. The user can launch a Web browser, type in the URL (or use a bookmark) and view the Web page inside the browser. However, this can be a cumbersome task on mobile devices without a QWERTY keyboard and small screen, so an alternative is to package up Web application functionality (web pages, scripts etc), install them locally on the device and run them outside the browser as a standalone application.
These tiny applications are essentially mobile web applications (aka widgets). Widgets are lightweight applications that are based on standard Web technologies and are typically used to access information on the Web ((WRT) environment, which is supported by S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 devices and later. Widgets can be started from the application menu like any other application and typically perform small, focused tasks, or can be included on the phone’s home screen.
Widget operation is enabled by the Web Runtime (WRT). Web Runtime is a set of components based on the WebKit architecture, allowing widget installation, loading, network and device access etc.
Widgets may use a network connection to get ‘live’ data from a server via AJAX calls. Web services can be accessed by widgets easily, offering new exciting possibilities for the developers! Web services can be divided into two categories:
- RESTful web services and
- SOAP web services.
Accessing RESTful web services
RESTful web services can be considered as functions that are executed remotely. These functions accept parameters and they return a result. The parameters can be send using HTTP GET or HTTP POST and the result can be a JSON object or some XML text. An example of a RESTful web service that receives parameters via HTTP GET and returns a JSON object is the Google AJAX Language API which allows developers to translate and detect the language of blocks of text.
Also, widgets have access to the device APIs which are not available when running in the web browser (e.g. GPS, access to contacts, calendar or sending SMS messages).
Both the web services approach or accessing via device APIs uses the same underlying technologies, namely HTML (HyperText Markup Language), JavaScriptTM and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and both rely on the browser or the Web Runtime to support this functionality.
If you are familiar with Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then creating a widget is easy. Dive right in with the Web Runtime (WRT) Quick Start. It’s similar to creating a normal Web page, which is packaged up into a compressed file.
The Symbian Tools team is actively working on developing a pure Eclipse Plugin to further improve the user experience for the web developers. Stay tuned for more details!
Web apps are really great if you have 3G. When can we see N97 like UI for other devices. Of course more polished.
I guess WebKit has the potential to converge the industry.
It has already started!
Some apps are showcased in MyDailyApp.com. I like especially widgets like the Shopping List where there is integration between a mobile app and the cloud.
But indeed you need 3G to really appreciate… at least in Europe we’re moving there full steam!
The widgets are somewhat limited with the current webkit version and API.
The animation performance on 5800 is terrible using a “web 2.0″ JS frameworks like jQuery UI.
Security preferences should be allowed to be set 1 time by a user.
E-mail is not yet supported via the API although SMS and MMS are supported.
http://spanishgringo.blogspot.com/2009/09/nokia-wrt-api-documentation-available.html