Dreamweaver: Sidenote

I saw this while poking around PhoneGap's website today: http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre/index.php/2011/04/12/adobe-dreamweaver-5-5-supports-phonegap/

It looks like Adobe "partnered" with PhoneGap, and in their CS5.5 release, PhoneGap integrates with Dreamweaver to make the configuring for Android much less painful.

HTML5

First glance at HTML5 for the semester, and where do I start?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

Just some thoughts about some of the new additions to HTML5:

• Finally, tags for standard video and audio.  Rather than having to enclose embed tags with object tags, now everything is combined into a simple <video> or <audio>.  Much cleaner and much less code is needed.
• <canvas> - possibly the "Flash Killer."  Now people can code out animations.  Adobe has even went ahead and created a program called Edge that will allow you to code these new HTML5 animations.  Good for Adobe!  Thinking ahead incase something does happen to Flash and the Canvas feature does take over.  At least it covered itself in case of a future collapse.  By the way, the application is in BETA testing, so it's FREE.

Also, another cool website that I found that displays a nice, long list of new features is http://html5demos.com/

Course Synopsis

This course will be an exploration into mobile application development.  I will be diving into PhoneGap to better understand how it works, and how it can be deployed for Android and possibly for iOS (see "Schedule" post for info about iOS).  This course will allow me to get a deeper understanding of the following:

• HTML5 and CSS3
• RSS Feeds and parsing them
• A deeper knowledge of how to use an IDE (such as Eclipse)
• How to combine all three of those into a working mobile web application
• And how to deploy it onto the web

The final deliverables of the project will be:

• Working mobile application that reads in an RSS feed
• Tutorial for others on how to create it themselves

If there are any questions, feel free to let me know!

Scheduling

Here is the schedule that I propose for this semester.  I left it somewhat open towards the end, knowing that programming is always slammed at the end.  I am hoping to get things done ahead of schedule, but we will see how that goes.


NOTE: iOS needs developer license costing $99 for a full calendar year (cheapest and shortest licensing option).  Would you suggest that this be the "book" for this class that I will purchase?

August 22nd - August 26th

• Write about Objectives
• Post Schedule
• Download appropriate SDKs for Android and PhoneGap

August 29nd - September 2nd

• Study through HTML5 and CSS3
• Mobile Javascript Library

September 5th - September 9th

• Study into RSS Feeds
• What platforms work best
• How to integrate an outside feed into another website
• If needed: how to hand-code the parsing of each string in the Feed

September 12th - September 16th

• Take a look at Yahoo Pipes
• See how it aggregates everything
• Test feed outputs

September 19th - September 23rd

• Move outside RSS feed into sample website
• I'll take a website that I have already created and attempt to add the Yahoo Pipes feed into the website.  The reason behind this is that:
• 1) it should be relatively simple to set up. I have the code base done, I would potentially just have to add some style properties
• 2) If there are any hiccups in this process, I will be able to iron them out here before I attempt to develop it from scratch using the SDKs

September 26th - September 30th

• If problems existed from the week prior, troubleshooting may flow over into this week.
• Once troubleshooting is over, I will develop a simple website in Eclipse
• Attempt to apply PhoneGap to the simple website (this will probably carry over into next week, as this will be the most time-consuming part)
• Upload application to the web (Dr. Piercy: Have you uploaded a website from Eclipse to the web?  If so, around this time, maybe you can provide a helping hand if my research didn't cover everything I needed to know)

October 3rd - October 7th

• Applying PhoneGap to Android

October 10th - October 14th

• Applying PhoneGap to Android

October 17th - October 21st

• 1) Applying PhoneGap to iPhone *

October 24th - October 28th

• Applying PhoneGap to iPhone *

October 31st - November 4th

• Write up tutorial on how to create the application

November 10th