Open Source to the Rescue of Mobile App and Mobile Web Fragmentation

Open Source to the Rescue of Mobile App and Mobile Web Fragmentation? (short summary of the OSCON BoF session) Tom Deryckere Software Architect / Siruna @twom

This is not a presentation! Report on the BoF session on OSCON Monday 20 july 2009 Mail me if you have additions to this report. What’s this

Professional Open Source company Located in Belgium | UK | US | India | UAE | China http://www.siruna.com Siruna helps you to make anything mobile on any device with total peace of mind. Siruna Website XML Feed

OSCON unique chance to meet fellow developers Discuss current state of Open Source tools for mobile developers Do they provide solutions to overcome device fragmentation? Networking and Exchange ideas and experiences Publish outcome after OSCON Why a BoF session

Browser companies http://www.skyfire.com/ : executing websites on the server to take the load of mobile devices: http://www.obigo.com : full featured mobile web browser supporting most standards including the BONDI / W3C specs Application developers / consultants Game developer with need for some power (going for the navit app appraoch, mainly on one platform – iPhone). Used to develop J2ME but sees a lot of fragmentation in this world.. Handset manufacturers Samsung working with open source operating systems based on desktop gnome Consumer companies Looking at extending sales channel and promoting products through mobile Medical records access from mobile devices for underdeveloped countries Open source adepts Open source companies http://www.siruna.com .... Who was around the table

Problem of fragmentation How to develop applications that run on different devices / platforms What platforms are there and what fragmentation does a developer needs to overcome Which tools are available to help Mobile web development What standards do we have What standards should we adopt Problem of javascript UI libraries that are not mobile friendly Problem of flash Transcoding solutions Device detection (very shortly) What was discussed

Has always been a developer challenge J2ME used to be a solution Currently fragmentation on J2ME is to big Fragmentation on two fronts Device capabilities: screen size, GPS, touch, accelerometer, CPU, bluetooth, .... Operating system: webOS, WinMo, Java, Android, iPhone, Symbian, ... Other? Puts difficult choices on developers E.g. What platforms to develop for Fragmentation

Some numbers (AdMob) United States Handset Data - April 2009 Requests: 3,538,714,000 More: http://metrics.admob.com/

Red: percentage of web request coming from the phone Blue: percentage of total sold mobile devices Numbers

Platforms Platform Language iPhone Objective C Android Java (Dalvik JVM) Windows mobile .NET / C++ / Java Nokia C++, java, Flash lite Palm Pre HTML / CSS / javascript With own touch (services api + widgets) What some would call widgets. Blackberry Java Browser HTML / CSS / javascript W3C standards, limitations

It is not only that mobile need to evolve to ‘desktop functionality’ Mobile browsers are more and more desktop like HTML / CSS / javascript capabilities Problem lies not in capability, but in layouting and making javascript gui’s that make sence on mobile Mobile browser need mobile specific functionality Access to GPS (not standard available on desktop browsers) Access to camera, contact list, file system, etc ... Mobile javascript based UI libraries BONDI project is addressing this issue Desktop versus mobile

HTML / CSS / javascript gains momentum and is heading towards a middleware language to run on all devices PhoneGap already brings this in reality More platforms/browsers are supporting it Webkit! BONDI Industry initiative defining interfaces to access mobile device resources (calender, camera, file system, location) Standardisation versus open tools

Open Source project making a mobile device database available as xml file Get device capabilities Screen size Which html standards Javascript Video capabilities ... API’s for Java, PHP http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ WURFL

http://ready.mobi Test on objective paramters/site semantics -> not always linked to how well a site works No Open Source Adobe device central (only for flash?) Yospace.com Crowdsourcing based testing companies Mob4hire.com Mobile testing

Use html / CSS / javascript to build applications UI Iphone / android / BlackBerry Access to native functionality Geo location Vibration Accelerometer Sound Contact support Camera Under development http://phonegap.com/ PhoneGAP

Mobile web Content adaptation engine Multi-platform distribution Takes online content and formats it for mobile Semi automatic: using an xml based scripting language + adaptation engine Device detection, image transcoding, CSS adaptation, content selection, ... Manage different versions of one site for different device categories Other open source example: Morfeo http://www.siruna.com / http://open.siruna.com / http://composer.siruna.com Siruna

Web browser engine (both mobile / desktop) Nokia Safari Android Palm Pre QT Contributing to WebKit can change the mobile web! http://webkit.org/ WebKit

Open Source operating systems (Symbian, Android, ....) iPhone application development Open source scripting for mobile Python runs on different devices Widgets Often HTML/CSS/javascript based web application .... What we did not talk about

Mail : [email_address] Blog: http://www.mobiledrupal.com Twitter: @twom, @siruna Siruna: http://www.siruna.com , http://open.siruna.com Contact

Open Source to the Rescue of Mobile App and Mobile Web Fragmentation

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