The Symbian Foundation says its Web Runtime Tools help Web developers become mobile phone application developers.
The Symbian Foundation's
Web
Runtime Tools help turn Web developers into mobile phone application
developers.
"Symbian Foundation's open-source Web Development Toolkit IDE
(integrated development environment) enables developers to develop and deploy
Web applications to mobile devices," Symbian said on its Website.
On its page for the tools, Symbian said: "Using Symbian's Web Runtime
Tools you can quickly and easily develop, distribute and install Web
applications on Symbian devices. All of this can be done using standard Web
programming skills like HTML/JavaScript/CSS,
and by exploring just a few more JavaScript APIs you can directly access
device-specific APIs like contacts, accelerometer and location."
Symbian Foundation Development Tools Manager Paul Beusterien initially
blogged
about
the tools on April 6 and revisited the issue in an
April
29 post describing the impact the tools appear to be having on developers.
Beusterien said Symbian's goal in issuing the new tools is "to help Web
developers create applications for the Web Runtime (WRT). The main release
[criterion] was to provide an IDE that had
at least feature parity with the alternatives. We believed we met that, as well
as providing some additional improvements," he said.
"The key difference is this IDE is
developed with purely open-source components from Eclipse JSDT [JavaScript
Development Tools], Chromium and Nokia," Beusterien continued. "We
plan to collaborate with Eclipse, Symbian and other open-source communities to
rapidly innovate and improve these tools to enable developers to create more
and more compelling mobile Web apps."
In the later post, Beusterien said he ran into developers at a meet-up in San
Francisco who lauded the tools. One developer in
particular said he was glad he could use Web technologies and not have to "dust
off his rusty C++ programming skills" to build mobile applications.
Beusterien said: "Instead he could just continue using his Web programming
skills [in] which he has years of expertise. And by learning just a few
additional JavaScript APIs, he was able to access some of the device-specific
features, like the contacts, accelerometer and location. The previewing,
debugging, packaging and deployment functionality in the tools also contributed
to his transition to mobile device app creation."
Beusterien added:
"So the lesson seems to be, if
you can develop for the Web then you can develop applications for Symbian. The
simplicity of this message hopefully makes it easy for the word to spread among
the Web development community. With so many Web developers out there and so
many great devices coming to market, I'm sure that conversations like the one I
had recently will be repeated many times over. Convergence is happening between
once distinct tribes and this makes for really interesting and exciting
community interactions.
It's been proven that compelling
applications have the ability to fuel robust communities. In this way, Symbian
Web Development Tools are an excellent entry point for Web developers to
broaden their experience and seize opportunities in the mobile marketplace. And
the low learning curve enables them to just start making and deploying great
Web apps, [complementing] their portfolio along the way."
Meanwhile, Beusterien said Symbian will include deep support for HTML5 in
Symbian 4, the next major release of the
Symbian smartphone operating system.
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