MoDevDC 2/1/2012

I went to MoDevDC meetup last Wednesday night - two subjects were presented and both were (for me) very interesting. http://www.meetup.com/modevdc/events/48923902/?a=ea1_grp&rv=ea1

First was a presentation on PhoneGap by Andrew Glover of App47. 
I had been fooling with PhoneGap for a while now - mostly to see just how easy it would be to create a multi-phone app. I had not moved beyond the "HelloWorld" stage, but had gotten that deployed on both a Droid and a Blackberry. I figure that the iXX wouldn't be any harder. So I was very interested in this presentation. Here were my take-aways:

1. PhoneGap is a framework for creating multi-platform apps. 
2. It is designed for creating apps using javascript, HTML5 and CSS3.
3. It provides a way to create a "shim" (my word) for leveraging a webkit browser on any mobile device. In the iXX world, this happens fairly automajically. In the Droid and other mobile worlds, I still have some file organization and a little coding to do.
4. PhoneGap provides a seamless javascript API to some of the phone's features, such as the GPS, camera, accelerometer, and so on, so that my app will work across devices without having to change the way I access those phone functions.
5. In addition to PhoneGap, I need a decent mobile javascript framework for my app. There are several such frameworks:
   • jQueryMobile
   • Sencha Touch
   • Appcelerator

Second was on HTML5 Caching by Ryan McGeary of BusyConf.
This was a very interesting discussion of the caching capabilities of HTML5 and how to use them to create an HTML app that could be downloaded and then used when offline. Most of the discussion was on the contents and syntax of the cache file and some of the "gotchas" that come from that. The material Ryan presented is from http://diveintohtml5.info/

Verizon, Thunderbolt, Network Connectivity

I have an HTC Thunderbolt and I've been having problems lately maintaining a connection to Verizon's broadband network. After reading a few comments on this, it would seem that the issue has to do with 3G/4G network availability (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). I found this suggestion:

Enter the following from your dial pad- *#*#4636#*#* 

Then open the phone information- scroll down and change from CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto to CDMA auto (PRL)

Well - this seems to have done the trick for me.

Windows 7 Symlinks

I'm finally realizing (maybe the last person to cotton on to this), that starting with Windows Vista, we now have the capability to create Unix-style symlinks between Windows files and folders. YIPPEE!

It's done with the mklink command (from the cmd window):

mklink
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

In my particular case, I'm experimenting with the Sencha Touch mobile application development kit. Creating the simple "Hello World" app as a place to start. This requires that Sencha SDK. I downloaded that and would prefer not to create a copy of it in my app server. Symlinks to the rescue. Since my Hello World app makes reference to the SDK as  <script src="lib/touch/sencha-touch.js" type="text/javascript"/> , I simply created a lib directory in my app folder and then made a symlink to the Sencha Touch folder:

mkdir lib
cd lib
mklink /D touch ..\..\sencha

And voila - no copying.

Thanks Steve Jobs

Even though I was expecting it, I was saddened to hear that Steve Jobs had passed away last night. I'm not going to repeat all of the fantastic things he accomplished in his short lifetime. Nor the incredible vision he brought and left as an indelible mark on so many areas of technology.

I just want to say "Thank you Steve, you will be missed".