Tag ‘rhodes’

OK… sorry about the inflammatory title, but it really does feel like MS has been coasting since it came out with its first mobile software release. I’ve used Windows Mobile on two Dell Axim revs and two cellphones. Instead of feeling like each new OS revision was an upgrade, it just felt like the same thing with a few more applications included and a few more options in settings. Before that I went through almost every model of the Apple Newton… at least with Newton, each OS update and device update felt like a significant improvement.

Windows Mobile currently has the worst browser in any shipping operating system and made development for mobile web sites or multiplatform mobile development (Rhomobile) very difficult. I’ve had countless customers tell me “no one uses” Windows Mobile so they didn’t want to target it. Lots of people use Windows Mobile every day, but the fact

Tags: android, iPhone, rhodes, rhomobile, Windows Mobile
Posted in General, iPhone | No Comments »

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Rhodes allows you to create and use helpers, short methods you typically use to DRY your views. Very much the same as the ones you encounter in Rails. There are a number of caveats though.

Tags: iPhone, rhodes
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What is the best cross-platform mobile framework out there?
Let’s take a look at the main three competitors.

First of all, cross-platform compatibility is all about compromising on the native look, feel and features of devices. Therefore, if you’re looking into creating a 3D game or an interactive, multimedia, animated app, you’re looking in the wrong direction.

PhoneGap, Titanium and Rhodes are all based on web technologies and are aimed at web developers that want to leverage their current skills set to the mobile apps world.

Tags: android, blackberry, iPhone, palm, phonegap, rhodes, symbian, titanium, webOS, Windows Mobile
Posted in iPhone | 4 Comments »

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Offshore software developer position using Ruby on Rails and web technologies to build web applications for desktop browsers and targeting mobile devices. Also using Rhomobile to make native mobile applications.

Candidate should be a remote worker, must use an Intel Mac running OSX 10.5 or 10.6, should have strong communications skills, good written and spoken English. Availability on IM or Skype required during work hours.

Tags: android, blackberry, community, iPhone, Rails, rhodes, surgeworks culture
Posted in Surgeworks | No Comments »

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You might encounter the following error message when working with 1-4-unstable branch of Rhodes:

Your java bin folder does not appear to be on your path.
This is required to use rhodes.

Here is the fix…

Tags: java, rhodes
Posted in iPhone | No Comments »

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The ID of an object (record in a table) is an important piece of information. In most of the situations when we need an object from the database, we search for it using its ID. Moreover, the ID is usually part of the URL of a page.

Given its importance it is worh mentioning a big difference between Rhom (the object mapper in Rhodes) and ActiveRecord (in Rails): in Rhom, the object ID is enclosed in brackets {}. A typical Rhom object ID looks like this: {32034644033132}.

Why is it such a big number?

Tags: activerecord, rhodes, rhom
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Ever desired a method to handle a DateTime picker in Rhodes without reloading the page? The ideal solution would be to tap the datetime input field to popup the DateTime picker, choose a date and/or time and tap ‘Done’. This would automatically display the selection into the input field.

We were able to achieve this using 2 AJAX calls. Read on and get the full code to do this!

Tags: iPhone, rhodes
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Even though the iPhone specific CSS is not perfect in Rhodes, it can be easily customized to improve the look of the app and make it similar to a native one. But there’s another important aspect for the look & feel of a native iPhone app: animations (transitions between views) and this is missing in Rhodes.

We tried to fix this by using jQTouch, a jQuery plugin for mobile web development. It provides all kind of animations that you would expect from a native iPhone app: horizontal and vertical slide, flip, pop, fade. You can even create your own animations. It also features swipe detection.

Tags: iPhone, jqtouch, jquery, rhodes
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Rhomobile provides great instant gratification in building applications. See my last article for a starter.

There are some elements you’ll miss as you start to work on the iPhone target. The back button is one and the custom tab bar is another.

The main bar can currently be customized by building rhodes from source (the way I did in the previous post). Open platform/iphone/rhorunner.xcodeproj in Xcode and double-click MainWindow.xib under Resources. This will launch it in Interface Builder.

You might wonder why the bottom bar is a toolbar and not a tab bar. Native iPhone apps typically use a tab bar that switches the view above the bar. This isn’t going to work for rhodes however–we aren’t going to change to a different view. We’ll simply tell the UIWebView to go to another part of the application. Fortunately,

Tags: IB, interface builder, iPhone, native, objective-c, rhodes, rhomobile, Xcode
Posted in iPhone | 2 Comments »

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We’ve been evaluating the Rhodes platform, aka Rhomobile, as a way to deliver multiplatform applications to our customers. Version 1.2.1 was recently released.

One thing that is clear right away is the development platform problem. Develop on OSX if you need to work on iPhone and Android ports. Use Windows if you plan to release for Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. For most multiplatform deployment combinations you’ll need to switch back and forth, use windows in a vm, etc.

Back on OSX, install rhodes and create a basic application. The application will work only with local data and not synchronize it with a server copy. (You need to install the iPhone SDK and ruby/rubygems as prerequisites).

$ sudo gem install rhodes
$ rhogen app testapp
$ cd testapp
$ rhogen model location lat,lon,rating,image_path,type

To use the scaffolds for model manipulation, we’ll add the model controller to the main index:

$ cat app/index.erb


<div>
<h1 id="pageTitle">
Testapp</h1>
</div>
<ul id="home" title="Testapp">
<li><a href="Location">Locations</a></li>
</ul>


We should be

Tags: 1.2.1, iPhone, rhodes, rhomobile
Posted in iPhone | 1 Comment »

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