August 2011
34 posts
4 tags
JSON bug....
OK… this project isn’t as easy as it was yesterday…. So in the process of creating the contacts page I found a bug in the JSON output for my view. It really wasn’t easy to find either…
I started as I normally do by creating the basic page template and JS code that I have done for the past two pages. I ran into a problem when my getJSON call wasn’t returning...
3 tags
Small tweak to JS from yesterday
In prep for tomorrows post, I made a few tweaks to the Javascript I posted yesterday. I’m posting this now since I think the post tomorrow will be long enough, and I’m not ready to write it up yet. This function is handy in a general sense also, so this way it doesn’t get lost in a longer post.
To get the contacts list I needed to make a few changes to the JS functoin...
5 tags
Mobile Analytics, Simplified.: Android OS - The... →
Mobile development is a bigger challenge than you think it is….
mobileanalytics:
Since the first appearance of an Android OS Device in October 2008, PercentMobile has recorded mobile web activity for more than 100 different Android OS devices. This is roughly one new device per week over the past 2 years. Considering that it took almost 6 months for the second Android OS…
6 tags
Just the basic details
Like with the XPages version, this page will be pretty simple in it’s overall structure:
<body>
<div data-role="page" id="details">
<div data-position="fixed" data-role="header">
<a rel="externa" href="index.html" data-icon="arrow-l" data-iconpos="left">Home</a>
<h1 id='companyName'></h1>
</div>
<div...
Would you like Pepper with that? →
Ya I know… I used that headline already…. Anyways…
The Chrome Native client is finally available with the beta of Chrome 14. Being a C++ developer myself, I think this is a pretty neat idea. I do wonder though why we need another language for the browser. I mean, why not just use Java? Java is already in the browser…. In any case I can’t wait till I find some time...
3 tags
Debugging JavaScript on a mobile phone
Debugging in Chrome or Firefox is pretty easy thanks to tools like the built in Chrome debugger or Firebug. However, once you get your app onto a mobile device it can be very difficult since these tools are not available there. A great option is to use the JavaScript API ‘console.log’ and a tool called jsconsole.com. With JSConsole you can connect to any web page running the...
2 tags
OOOOHHHH!!! Data
As part of some other things going on here at work I’ve been looking into something called the open data protocol AKA OData and found a presentation at www.odata.org that I really liked http://azgroups.nextslide.com/odata-begins
It’s a really great primer on OData and it’s relationship with SharePoint and WCS.
5 tags
We don't need no stinking XPages!
With my mobile app complete, I wanted to see if I could start to decouple my UI from Domino and let it serve as just a backend data source. There are a couple reasons why I want to do this, which I’ll get to later, but for now I just want to stick with some more standard techniques.
Even though I’m going to be working with HTML files exclusively, I’m going to store them in my...
Here is a fantastic new resource for building... →
2 tags
Customers on the GO! - XPages Conclusion
Now that the XPages version is done, before moving on, I wanted to put my overall thoughts down. So even though it took almost 2 weeks to write up all the posts, the actual app didn’t take more than a few afternoons of work to put together. My mission here was to simply extend our existing Notes CRM application and not transform it. There was no need to bring a decade of Notes crufty-ness to...
My take on the current tablet situation
With HP giving up on tablets and PCs there are many people claiming that no one can compete with Apple. I think this is mostly true. Android tablets are not really going anywhere. WebOS is done. Microsoft is sitting around and waiting for… who knows what. However, I say mostly because, so far the only people that have attempted so far are hardware manufactures and they have all priced their...
Notes from the field
Here we go - the final bit of functionality. All that is left to complete the ‘Notes’ part of the app and, like all the others, is reasonably straight forward. I did run into my first problem here though.
XPages are easy
I was able to quickly work though the remaining 3 XPages:
list notes that I have for a customer
create a new Note and store it in the database
view an existing...
R&D in public →
I totally agree with this. Not trying because you think you might fail is the same as failing.
Perma-Noob →
This came up a week or so ago, but given that I’m pretty much still in the middle of learning how to be a mobile developer… even a web developer, I think this is going to continue to be relavent for a long time to come!
4 tags
Do you want a license with that?
Moving on, we get to the License page. This lists all the licenses that the customer has for our tools. This is really handy especially when you are going on site for training or installation help as the customer has probably just purchased the tools and does not yet have them installed. The person on site typically has to call back to the office and have someone email the customer or the tech...
RSS Feed update...
The problem is with <pre> blocks which is where I have been sticking all my code. It appears that in the RSS the '<' characters are being written to the feed as < which messes up the XML big time.
Until I figure out a work around for this I turned on ‘Truncate posts’ in the RSS settings in Tumblr for the time being. The code bits display fine on the blog itself.
Feel...
RSS is messed up at the moment
It seems my RSS feed is a bit messed up at the moment. Doesn’t like all the code posted here so bear with me while I try and figure out what is going on…
Don't call me
The next two pages of the app are the easiest. Both the ‘Contacts’ page and the ‘Licenses’ page will have 2 XPages each. Once to list the documents, and one to show the details of the selected document.
The ‘Contacts’ pages
Starting with the basic page template I had from before with a header that contains the company name and a footer with the 4 tabs,...
The latest silver bullet →
I really like this article. In fact, I think it supports my current feelings about HTML5 - It’s not the silver bullet everyone claims it is. First, and formost, it is still a draft standard so not all browsers support it or support the same bits of it. Until that is true, the ability to create truly cross platform mobile apps just isn’t there yet. Second, it is really JavaScript that...
Cool write up of HTML field types →
Ben Poole has a great, quick write up of a few of the new input types coming with HTML5. Watch for the part about supported browsers! We are not there yet….
Where for art thou customer
One of the neat things about mobile things is that almost all of them have some sort of awareness of their location. If there isn’t a GPS type receiver in the device itself, it can usually get a pretty good approximation of where it is using WiFi signals. So, besides the basic customer address info, I also want to display a map on the screen showing the location of the customer. I also want...
A whole bunch of CSS tools →
I have not tried many of these, but I figured I would post this just in case someone else wants to check them out.
JQuery with 'Legacy' Notes →
Found this cool post today - Watch Steve McDonagh prove that modern web techniques even work with ‘legacy’ versions of Notes! I figured I would post it here also since it seemed kinda related.
4 tags
Now it starts to get interesting
One of my big design goals with this app is simplicity. As I said earlier, this app is really complex in Notes desktop form. I am not intending to make the mobile app a one to one translation of the desktop app. In fact, the mobile version will be down right boring in terms of features.
However, boring doesn’t mean not useful. I want this to be as useful as possible given the limitations...
2 tags
Before moving to page 2
Before moving on to the company details page, I want to make a few minor additions to the first screen. First is the header. A header in JQM is pretty easy to add with the following bit of code:
<div data-position="fixed" data-role="header">
<h1>Customers On the GO!</h1>
</div><!-- /header -->
Stick this inside the div marked with data-role=’page’...
4 tags
JSFiddle →
Just wanted to share a site I really find useful. With JavaScript being more and more important in the projects I’m working on, it’s really handy to have this around to test little snippets without having to go through all the effort of creating an actual test page.
2 tags
Things to consider... →
Some great tips when planning what your mobile app is going to and not going to do….
5 tags
Adding JQuery Mobile to an XPage
So I now have a very basic view on the first page of my mobile app. The list is really kinda ugly though even though I did do a little bit of styling with a basic CSS file.
Since this is intended to be a mobile app I don’t want plain old links because those are hard to see and press when viewed on a small screen. This is where JQuery Mobile comes in. JQM is a smallish JS and CSS library...
6 tags
First up, XPages
Since this is a Notes database on a Domino server, I figured the best way to get started would be with XPages. I don’t know XPages very well at all, but how hard could it be?
I have also chosen JQuery and JQuery Mobile as my framework. I’ve dabbled with these before so I’m most familiar with these, and that was really the only reason I chose them.
Note about the app: I’m...
4 tags
First things first...
Here are the basics. I have a database where all my customer information is. Call this the ‘contacts’ db. I also have a database where I store all the license keys for the products people buy. Lets call this the ‘license’ db. As it stands right now, these two databases are not connected very well. Sure there are connections between the two, but they really can’t be...
Anatomy of a HTML5 Mobile App →
I like this page as it gives a more complete picture of what HTML5 really does for you.
4 tags
Notes on Mobile
Simply stated, I’m going to build a mobile app for a notes database. I’m going to start with a pretty complex set of databases and bring them to a mobile phone. My goals and materials should be pretty typical for what most people are likely to have lying around - Lotus Notes db that is very old (10+years), very complex (hundres of views, forms and fields), and very large (1 gig+). The...
