My name is Alessandro La Rosa, and I'm a freelance software architect for Mobile and Web platforms. I'm living in Rome, Italy.
Feel free to contact me at: info@jappit.com
Forum Nokia has just updated its excellent resource for mobile Web development, the Web Developer’s Library, adding a lot of resources to support the design and development of Web Runtime widgets.
Changes in this last release include:
If you’re a mobile Web developer, check it out!
Forum Nokia has recently published a very informative guide about developing RIAs for mobile devices: A developer’s guide to creating Rich Internet Applications for Nokia devices.
The document focuses on three kind of applications: websites, web apps, and stand-alone Adobe Flash applications, covering all topics involved in design and development of a RIA, from development tools to user experience design and evaluation, from testing to going to market.
Mobile offers significant opportunities for RIAs. The ability to access data and information anywhere there is a suitable network connection is of significant appeal to mobile users. The knowledge that their data is also securely stored on a remote server, regardless of what happens to the mobile device, is a significant attraction as well.
With many hundreds of millions of Nokia devices already in the market place that can run RIAs now, there has never been a better time to go mobile with your RIA.
This week Forum Nokia Wiki features an article explaining the opportunities that the Ovi Maps service offers to web and mobile developers.
Ovi Maps offers a complete and flexible platform to build rich location-based services. By providing a consistent set of components and libraries, Ovi Maps allows developers to build both a web a mobile version of their applications with minimum effort.
Interested in what can be done with Ovi Maps? Here are some links taken from the article:
Next steps? Check out the whole article: Ovi – Opportunities for developers, and then sign up for the Ovi Maps beta program!
If you’re developing applications for Nokia devices, and more specifically Web Runtime, Flash Lite or Java ME applications, you probably already had to deal with the platform limitations, and with the tools and libraries that allow to go beyond these limitations by adding more capabilities.
Basically, when you want to extend the functionalities of a WRT widget or a Flash Lite application, you have two options:
Both of them provide a set of tools and libraries that, added to your applications, allow them to access more functionalities than the ones that each technology naively supports.
So, which approach is the best one? It’s not easy to give a unique answer to this question, so let’s go into details.
The Platform Services library is available from more time, and there’s a well established set of resources and code examples that will help you to quickly get your functionalities ready and running.The primary source of information is Forum Nokia Library, that has a detailed references of APIs and useful sample code. Then, also Forum Nokia Wiki provides an extensive set of examples that cover all the possible usage scenarios. Even if there is some little parts where this information could be improved, you shouldn’t get much in trouble when using Platform Services in your application.
API Bridge is a fresher technology, released on November 2009, and so it’s harder to find complete documentation and usage examples. Anyway, Forum Nokia released a set of libraries for various platforms (Flash Lite, Web Runtime and Java ME) that will definitely help in starting to use API Bridge.
Platform Services are fully supported starting from S60 5th edition devices, but are also compatible with a subset of S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 devices: the full list of supported devices is available here: Web Runtime 1.1 compatible devices. This means that you can use them only on the touch screen Nokia devices.
On the other side, API Bridge can work on all devices starting from S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 onwards, so meaning:
Current Platform Services (version 1.0) allow to access a wide set of features:
It is currently available also a beta release of Platform Services 2.0, that adds to this features’ set also the access to the device camera.
API Bridge, instead, has a more limited set of functionalities, currently including:
Platform Services are currently available for Flash Lite and Web Runtime applications.
API Bridge libraries have been released for Flash Lite, Web Runtime and Java ME. Generally speaking, the API Bridge engine, working as a local HTTP server running on the device, is accessible from all technologies.
The current implementation of Platform Services and API Bridge don’t allow to decide which approach is the best one, and there is no need to do it anyway. Right now, if you’re working in Flash Lite or Web Runtime, and as long as your set of target devices support them, you can benefit of both technologies, including the two libraries in your application.
Talking about future perspectives of both approaches, we can see both of them evolving in more mature products.
Platform Services 2.0 is already available as a beta release, so you can already start experimenting with the new APIs and features, including the access to the device camera. On the other side, API Bridge promises to allow everyone to create custom plugins, through the ECOM interface, as reported on Forum Nokia Blogs.
Concluding, Platform Services, with the already mature and features-rich library, surely represents a simpler approach for developers who don’t want to deal with Symbian building and packaging, while API Bridge, with its plugin architecture becoming mature and open to developers, could definitely end up to be the best ally to allow widgets and Flash Lite apps access more and more features.
>On the other side, API Bridge promises to allow everyone to create custom plugins, through the ECOM interface, as reported on Forum Nokia Blogs.
They just release APIBridge Plug-in API: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/APIBridge_Plug-in_API
Hi Trufanov,
you’re right! Just noticed the same thing 
Hi pit,
I hava a problem using APIBridge.fileUpload method to upload a photo to the server. The method failed with error:404. The problem is driving me mad ! Do you have any suggestions?
The Series 40 5th Edition SDK, Feature Pack 1 Lite is now available for download on Forum Nokia.
For more infos about Series 40 5th edition Feature Pack 1 Lite, you can check out Forum Nokia technology spotlight.
A full list of devices is also available here.
This article shows you how to create, compile, build and deploy a Web Runtime widget, that includes the APIBridge plugin developed by Nokia, and available on Forum Nokia website.
The APIBridge is a Symbian C++ engine that exposes native functionalities to Web Runtime widgets. These functionalities include:
Before starting with the following steps, you have to download APIBridge from Forum Nokia website, and unpack it to a convenient location on your machine.
Also, to compile and build the whole example, you must get one UID from your SymbianSigned account.
The first step is to develop your own widget, and to package it into the standard WGZ format. You can develop the widget with the tools of your choice.
In this tutorial, I’ll just build a simple “Hello World” widget with the WRT Plugin for Aptana Studio. You can read a full guide about creating from scratch a simple widget on Forum Nokia Library.
Using the Aptana Wizard interface, let’s create a new “Nokia Web Runtime Widget”.
Now, let’s customize the “index.html” file with your Hello World text.
So, the test widget is ready to be packaged!
Now, take the folder where you have unpacked APIBridge, and make a copy of its WgzInstaller folder. We’ll use this copy to create the new widget installer.
Note: to perform this step, you must already have your own UID.
Now, perform these changes:
Now all is ready to compile your source code. Go into the group\ folder and, from command line, run:
bldmake bldfiles abld build gcce
If you don’t get any errors, the APIBridge code shoud have been correctly compiled.
Now, copy your packaged widget to the content/ folder. Done this, open the /sis/WgzInstaller_template.pkg file and set the appropriate values for these properties:
Since we’re building from command line, we also have to tell where makesis can actually find the WgzInstaller.exe file created in the previous step. In this tutorial, I’ve used the S60 5th edition SDK v1.0, so I’ll change this value:
“$(EPOCROOT)Epoc32\release\$(PLATFORM)\$(TARGET)\WgzInstaller.exe”
to
“\S60\devices\S60_5th_Edition_SDK_v1.0\Epoc32\release\gcce\urel\WgzInstaller.exe”
Now, let’s create the SIS file: from command prompt, go into the sis/ folder and run:
makesis WgzInstaller_template.pkg
Your output should be something like this:
Processing WgzInstaller_template.pkg... Created WgzInstaller_template.sis.
Take the SIS file you’ve created in the previous step, and sign it with your own SymbianSigned certificate:
signsis WgzInstaller_template.sis WgzInstaller_template_signed.sis your_certificate.cer your_key.key your_password
Now, your widget is ready! Just send it to your Nokia device, and install. You’ll notice that, during the installation, you’ll be prompted to install both your widget and the APIBridge engine.
Below you can see the Hello World widget running in all its glory
Thanks go to Leonardo for his precious support!
rondo, 
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