Monthly archive: May, 2010

Useful jQuery Plugin for UI Developers: Even more jQuery plugins. Several are so good, I would use them today!

(Via Denbagus.)

A TweetDeck For Every Occasion: This is news that I am not surprised about. If you have followed recent events, you aware of the row between Apple and Adobe. Apple has disallowed apps on their iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) that have been compiled by anything other than Objective C, their platform of choice. No matter which side you are on, the bottom line is this is the only way to get on one of these devices. In addition, Apple has decided that Flash will not be available at all. These events, together with the eventual mainstream release of HTML5 and CSS3 mean developers have many choices and some of them will be hard to make.

If you are like any other developer (me included), you have honed a certain set of skills and look for jobs where you can flex them while picking up a few tricks here and there. Often, they make your work life interesting and sometimes make you an invaluable employee. With the advent of the iPhone OS, there has become an arms race of sorts with Android, RIM and WebOS (Palm/HP). All this leaves most web developers on the sidelines looking in. “Hey Apple, I have a great idea for a new app…”, if only I knew Obejective C. I don’t code in those compiled languages at all, despite taking courses in C & C++. Web development has brought me jobs and opportunities, but few working on desktop applications. I am sure my experience is not unique.

Given this, web developers have been on the outside looking in. Now, it appears we may have a bite at the apple, no pun intended. If web developers can create top shelf apps that are compelling in their relevance and ease of use, users will take notice. Especially if they can truly have the same experience on several platforms/devices.

This revelation from TweetDeck about a web version instead of one for each smartphone platform comes on the heels of my employer coming to the same conclusion. We discussed an iPhone app.

• “What if they won’t approve it?”
• “The development/testing can only be done on an Apple machine”
• “You have to get approved to develop and pay each year for API access”
• and so on.

In the end, even an Apple fanboy like me had to relent. We just can’t invest the resources with so much in doubt. Apple also has control over our deployment and we have to wait for each update to be approved. For a member organization driven by an active user base, that’s unacceptable.

Instead, we are embarking on a web application using jQuery and jQTouch. So far, its been a win, win. We can leverage our PHP/HTML/Javascript knowledge and deliver a program that can be deployed on all smartphone platforms. Once we are done, we can create stylesheets for each platform and away we go.

Now, what’s the main drawback for this kind of application. Simple. Round the clock Internet connectivity on both ends. If you don’t have a device with an active Internet connection, these apps are inaccessible and useless. But, with smartphones requiring a data package that includes Internet access, you only have to worry about keeping your server up and running. With a company like Rackspace doing our hosting, we are covered here as well.

While I don’t expect these web apps to replace the traditionally compiled ones, the news from Tweetdeck bodes well for both web developers and users. I expect great applications that will be available on several devices with shorter time between updates. No one would complain about that.

(Via Tweetdeck.)