Mobile Developer's Guide To The Galaxy, 5th edition

Don’t Panic
Mobile Developer’s Guide to
the Galaxy

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5 tio
n
Edi

Mobile Developer’s Guide
Table of Contents

5 Introduction

6 Application Environments Overview
6 Native Applications
9 J2ME / Java ME
9 Flash Lite
10 BREW
10 Widgets
12 Websites
12 SMS Text Messaging

13 Programming Android Apps
13 Prerequisites
14 Implementation
16 Testing
16 Signing
16 Distribution

18 Programming iPhone Apps
19 Prerequisites
19 Implementation
21 Testing
22 Distribution

23 Programming Symbian Apps
24 Prerequisites
26 Porting to Symbian
27 Signing
28 Distribution

29 Programming J2ME / Java ME Apps
29 Prerequisites
30 Implement your App
31 Testing
33 Porting
36 Signing
37 Distribution

38 Programming Qt Apps
39 Prerequisites
40 Creating Your Application
41 Getting Qt
41 Testing
42 Signing
42 Distribution

44 Programming Mobile Web-Widgets
45 Widget Characteristics
48 Prerequisites
48 Writing Your Code
50 Testing
50 Signing
50 Distribution

52 Programming Flash Applications
53 Prerequisites
56 Developing Flash Applications for Smartphones
58 Testing
58 Distribution
3

60 Bringing Your Content to the Mobile Web
63 Mobile Usage Patterns and its consequences
64 Some History on the Mobile Web
66 How to adapt content for the mobile user
68 Satisfy the Interpreter of Your Content: The Browser
70 Let’s do some pigeonholing: Device categories
74 Use GPS in the Browser
74 Testing your Mobile Website
76 Learn More – On the Web

77 Implementing Rich Media
77 Streaming
77 Progressive download
78 Ringtones
78 Flash
80 Mobile Video
82 Media Converters

83 Implementing Location-Based Services
83 How to obtain Location Data
84 How to obtain Mapping Material
85 Implementing Location Support on Different Platforms
86 Tools for making Map Apps

87 Now what — Which Environment Should I Use?

90 Epilogue

91 About the Authors
95 Imprint/Contact

This Developer Guide is licensed under the
Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved License.

4

Introduction
Welcome to the fth edition of our Mobile Developer’s Guide
To The Galaxy! It will help you to realize your ideas on mobile
handsets by outlining the different options you have and by
explaining how to overcome typical problems.
Developing for mobile handsets is a schizophrenic experience
– on one side there is the never-ending stream of innovations
and new technologies, on the other side it can take a painfully
long time until new technologies are actually used by the end
customers. Point in case is for example the mobile internet
which took more than 10 years until it is now at last used
frequently!
The most important issues for mobile application developers
still are fragmentation and distribution. Thankfully solutions
for those problems do exist.

Development is a passion – have
fun in the mobile world!

5

Application Environments
Overview
You can choose between different environments for realizing
your mobile vision. This section describes the most common
environments and outlines differences between them. A more
detailed description follows in the environment speci c chap-
ters later onwards.

Native Applications
There are a lot of mobile operating systems used in the market
today – some are Open Source, some are not. Most important
OS are (alphabetically) Android, Bada, BlackBerry, MeeGo, OSX,
Symbian, webOS and Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. All
these OS allow you to create native applications for them
without establishing a business relationship with the respec-
tive vendor. Main bene ts for programming native applications
include the best possible integration of your application and
often a very good performance. Typical drawbacks are the re-
quired effort and the complexity of supporting several native
platforms (or the limitation of your app to only one platform).
Most mass market phones are, however, equipped with em-
bedded operating systems that cannot be programmed
natively for by outsiders at all. Examples include but are not
limited to Nokia Series 40, Samsung SGH and Sony Ericsson
Java Platform phones.

The following table provides an overview about the main mobile
operating systems:

6

OS Language(s) Remarks
Android Java, C Open Source OS (based on Linux)
developer.android.com

Bada C, C++ Samsung C based APIs that
allow a tight integration
developer.bada.com

BlackBerry Java J2ME compatible but extensions
allow a tighter integration
na.blackberry.com/eng/developers
C, C++
MeeGo C++ Intel and Nokia powered Open
Source OS (based on Linux)
meego.com/developers

OS X / Objective-C, Requires Apple Developer Account
iPhone C developer.apple.com/iphone

Symbian C, C++, Open Source OS
others www.symbian.org

webOS HTML, CSS, Widget style programming, OS
JavaScript, C (based on Linux)
developer.palm.com

Windows C#, C .NET CF or Windows Mobile
Mobile API, most devices ship with
J2ME compatible JVM
developer.windowsmobile.com

Windows Silverlight, New Windows based OS
Phone XNA targeted at consumers
developer.windowsphone.com

7

J2ME / Java ME
Around 80% of all mobile handsets shipped in 2009 support
the mobile Java standard (J2ME/Java ME), so Java is by far the
most widely distributed application environment. In contrast
to many other environments, J2ME is a standard rather than
a product, which can be implemented by anyone (who pays
Oracle the corresponding license fees that is). Standardization
is the strength of J2ME but at the same time it is the source of
many fragmentation problems.
On many handsets with embedded operating systems, J2ME
is the only way to realize client side applications. The main
problem is the fragmentation, meaning the little differences
between the implementations and handsets.

Flash Lite and Alternative Flash-
compatible Platforms
Flash Lite is the mobile edition of Flash, which pretty much is
the same as an older version of Adobe’s web Flash product and
only supports ActionScript 2.0. Flash Lite gains traction and
is especially favored by many designers, since they know the
tools already. Flash Lite features a powerful UI but it lacks a
good integration into the host device, although this is improv-
ing. Programming Flash Lite is relatively easy thanks to the
ActionScript language that is very similar to Java Script. The
drawbacks include poor performance and small market share
in comparison to J2ME. However, there are millions of feature
phones supporting Flash Lite today and some smartphones
support Flash Lite including Android-based devices. Full Flash
support has been announced for Android and BlackBerry de-
vices.
9

BREW
The Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) is a pro-
gramming environment pushed forward by Qualcomm1. BREW
services are offered by more than 60 operators in 28 coun-
tries, but it’s most popular within the US with CDMA devices
launched by Verizon, US Cellular, Metro PCS among others.
While previous versions only supported C development, the
Brew Mobile Platform (Brew MP), supports applications written
in Java, Flash, TrigML or native C code2.

Widgets
There are several widget environments that you can choose
from. Main bene t of these environments is the simple pro-
gramming, main drawback is that you need to ensure that your
customers will install both – the widget player as well as your
widget. More and more devices feature, however, a preinstalled
widget player – not necessary for the environment that you
have chosen, though.
The other signi cant drawback is that widgets do only provide
a limited access to the handsets native functionalities.
1) brew.qualcomm.com
2) brew.qualcomm.com/brew/en/developer/overview.html

10

All these environments use XML, a script language (e.g.
JavaScript) and a page description language (like HTML) for
realizing a widget. The following table gives you an overview
about popular widget frameworks:

Environment Language(s) Remarks
Web Runtime XML, tiny.symbian.org/runtimespace
Widgets on HTML, CSS,
Symbian JavaScript
Skylight HTML, CSS, Skylight is an Open Source
JavaScript widget platform for
featurephones as well as
smartphones.
www.skylightmobile.org

W3C / XML, Vodafone, China Mobile and
Vodafone HTML, CSS, other companies try to push the
Widgets JavaScript W3C widget standard for mobile
adoption.
widget.vodafone.com/dev

Samsung XML, innovator.samsungmobile.com
HTML, CSS,
JavaScript
PhoneGap HTML, CSS, Cross platform widget platform
JavaScript www.phonegap.com

Sony Ericsson HTML, CSS, Based on PhoneGap
WebSDK JavaScript developer.sonyericsson.com

BlackBerry HTML, CSS, na.blackberry.com/eng/developers
JavaScript

11

Websites
Webpages are supported by all phones, so in principle this
should be the environment of choice to get the widest possible
reach (after SMS texting). The only problem is the sheer number
of browsers and their varying feature sets. Some browsers are
very powerful and support CSS as well as JavaScript, others are
less sophisticated XHTML only. Thankfully the old WAP stan-
dard with its WML pages does not play any signi cant role
nowadays.
Main problems for web pages are that they are only available
online and that they cannot access device features today. Main
bene ts are the easy development and a deployment that lies
solely in your hands.

SMS Text Messaging
Almost everybody who has a mobile phone is also texting.
Texting provides the limitation that any interaction needs to
be pressed into 160 characters and that it can be quite costly
to send out text messages in bulk. On the positive side it
enjoys a global audience of any age and plays an important
role especially in the emerging markets where SMS banking is
a common usage scenario.

12

Programming Android
Apps
The Android platform is one of the latest systems for the mobile
market. Created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance in
late 2007, Android is an operating system and an application
framework with complete tooling support and a variety
of preinstalled applications. For 2010, fty new Android based
smartphones are expected to be introduced. Additionally,
Android is planned to be used for tablets, media players, setup
boxes, desktop phones and car entertainment systems.

Prerequisites
The main programming language for Android is Java5. But beware
that not the complete Java library is supported and that a lot of
platform speci c API is present. You nd answers to your
What and Why questions in the Dev Guide1 and to your How
questions in the reference documentation2.
To get started you need the Android SDK3 and a decent
Java IDE. The SDK is available for Windows, Mac OS X and
Linux and contains tools to build, debug and analyse applica-
tions. So you have no constraints on your development platform.
As for IDE support, you can install the ADT plugin for Eclipse
which coordinates building and deploying. But as the com-
plete build cycle of Android applications is Ant based you can
basically use any IDE you like.
1) developer.android.com/guide/index.html
2) developer.android.com/reference/packages.html
3) developer.android.com/sdk/1.6_r1/index.html

13

Implementation
An Android application is a mix of activities, services, message
receivers and data providers declared in the application
manifest. An activity is a piece of functionality with an attached
user interface.
A service is used for tasks which should run in the background
and is therefore not tied directly to a visual representation.
The message receiver can handle messages broadcasted by the
system or other applications. The data provider is an interface
to the content of an application and thereby abstracts from
underlying storage mechanisms. These application components
are composed such that the user can ful l a certain task. The
communication between the components is done by intents.
An intent bundles data like the user’s location or an URL
with an action. These intents are a way of triggering all
kinds of behavior in the platform. For instance the intent
of showing a web page will open the browser activity.
The nice thing about this building-block philosophy is that
functionality can be replaced by other applications and the
Android system will use the preferred application for a speci c
intent. For example the intent of sharing a web page trig-
gered by a news reader app can open an email client or a text
messaging app depending on the user’s preference and on the
applications installed.

14

To aid development, you have a lot of tools from the SDK
at your disposal, the most important ones are:

— android: Create an initial project or manage virtual
devices and versions of the SDK.
— adb: Scan devices at your USB bus, connect and interact
with them (and virtual devices) by moving les,
installing apps etc.
— emulator: Start it with a virtual device and it will
emulate
the de ned features. It takes some time to startup so do
it once and not on every build.
— ddms: Look inside your device or emulator, watch log
messages and control emulator features like network
latency and GPS position. Have a look at the memory
consumption or simply kill some processes. If this tool is
running, you can also connect the Eclipse debugger to a
process running in the emulator.

These tools and more - e.g. to analyze method trace logs, inspect
layouts or to test apps with random events - can be found in
the tools directory of the SDK.

The user interface of an application is separated from the code
in Android-speci c xml layout les. Different layouts can be
created for different screen sizes, country locales and device
features without touching Java code. To this end localized
strings and images are organized in separate resource folders
and the ADT plugin may help to manage all these les.

15

Testing
The rst step to test an app is to run it on the emulator
or device and debug it if necessary through the ddms tool.
Android is built to run on different devices and OS versions
without modi cation but hardware manufacturers might have
changed pieces of the platform. Therefore testing on a physical
device is paramount. If you do not have a lot of devices at
your disposal, try remote device services like Perfecto Mobile
or Device Anywhere. They provide you a remote access to
actual device hardware in different con gurations. To automate
testing, the Android SDK comes with instrumentation classes
to send system events like key presses or an incoming phone
call. You can test for the status of your application after these
events occur. A maven plugin and a helper for the continuous
integration server Hudson may also assist your testing.

Signing
Your application will always be signed by the build process,
either with a debug signature or a real one. Your signature may
be self signed, so forget about signing fees (and security).
The same signature is required for updates of your application.

Distribution
After you have created the next killer application and tested it,
you should put it in the Android Market. It is the rst place to
reach all customers and developers of the Android platform alike,
browse for new exciting apps and sell your own. To upload
your application, start at market.android.com/publish. You
are required to register with the service with your Google
Checkout Account and a $25 registration fee.
16

Once your registration is approved you can upload your
application, add screenshots and descriptions to nally
publish it. Make sure that you have de ned a versionName,
versionCode, an icon and a label in your AndroidManifest.xml.
As Android Market is not available world wide and the
number of competing applications in the Android Market is
large, you might want to use alternative application stores.
They provide different payment methods and may target spe-
ci c consumer groups.

17

Programming iPhone Apps
The iPhone is a highly interesting and very popular develop-
ment platform for many reasons, a commonly named one being
the App Store. When it was introduced in July 2008, the App
Store took off like no other marketplace did before. Since its
inception, App Store users have downloaded over four billion
apps, which makes the App Store very interesting for mobile
developers. Now there are over 185,000 applications in the
App Store, and the number is growing daily. This re ects the
success of the concept but it also means that it is getting more
and more dif cult to stand out in this mass of applications.

The iPhone SDK offers high-level APIs for a wide range of tasks
which helps to cut down on development time on your part.
New APIs are added in every major update of iPhone OS, such
as MapKit in iPhone OS 3.0 or (limited) Multitasking in iPhone
OS 4.0.

Since the iPad, which went on sale in April 2010 uses the same
operating system and APIs as the iPhone, acquired skills in
iPhone development can be used in iPad development. A single
binary can even contain different versions for both platforms
with large parts of the code being shared.

18

Prerequisites
In order to develop iPhone (and iPod Touch and iPad) apps,
you will need the iPhone SDK, which can be downloaded at de-
veloper.apple. com/iphone. This requires a membership, which
is available for free. If you plan to test your apps on your
device or distribute your apps on the App Store, you need to
sign up for an account starting at 99USD a year.

The iPhone SDK contains various applications that will allow you
to implement, test and debug your apps. The most important
applications are:

— Xcode, the IDE for the iPhone SDK
— Interface Builder, to build user interfaces for iPhone app
— Instruments, which offers various tools to monitor app
execution
— iPhone Simulator, which allows the developer to test his
or her apps quicker than by deploying to a device

The iPhone SDK will work on any Intel-based Mac running Mac
OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard). A guide to get
you started and introduce you to the tools is included, as is
a viewer application for API documentation and sample code.
References and guides are also available online at developer.
apple.com/iphone/library/navigation.

Implementation
Usually, you will want to use Apple’s high-level Cocoa Touch
APIs when developing for the iPhone. This means that you
will write Objective-C code and create your user interfaces in
Interface Builder, which uses the proprietary XIB le format.

19

Objective-C is, as the name suggests, a C-based object-oriented
programming language. As a strict superset of C, it is fully
compatible with C, which means that you can use straight C
source code in your Objective-C les.

If you’re used to other object-oriented languages such as C++ or
Java, Objective-C’s syntax might take some time getting used
to, but is explained in detail at developer.apple.com1. What
seperates Objective-C most from these languages is its dy-
namic nature, lack of namespace support and the concept of
message passing vs. method calls.

A great way to get you started is Apple’s guide “Your First
iPhone Application”, which will explain various concepts and
common tasks in an iPhone developer’s work ow2.

Check out some of the sample code that Apple provides online3
to nd out more about various APIs that are made available
to you.
1) developer.apple.com/iphone/manage/overview/index.action
2)developer.apple.com/iphone/manage/distribution/distribution.action

20

Testing
As performance in the iPhone Simulator may be superior to
actual devices by several orders of magnitude, it is absolutely
vital to test on devices. If possible, test your application on
various different models, since the addition of the iPhone 3GS
to the lineup brought with it a faster CPU, GPU and more RAM
and may thus behave differently than previous iPhone genera-
tions.

You can distribute builds of your application to up to 100
testers through Ad-Hoc Provisioning, which you can set up in the
Program Portal1. Each iPhone (and iPod touch) has a unique
identi er (UDID – universal device identi er), which is a string
of 40 hex characters based on various hardware parts of the
device.

If you choose to test using Ad-Hoc-Provisioning, simply follow
Apple’s detailed set-up instructions2. Every single step is vital
to success, so make sure that you execute them all correctly.

1) developer.apple.com/iphone/library/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/
Learning_Objective-C_A_Primer/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/
TP40007594
2) developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/
iPhone101/Articles/00_Introduction.html
3) developer.apple.com/iphone/library/navigation/SampleCode.html

21

The iPhone SDK does not include support for unit testing out
of the box, but fortunately Google added support in Google
Toolbox for Mac (GTM)1 with detailed instructions available in
their wiki2. Also, iPhone developer Gabriel Handford has im-
proved on this work and released his project, GHUnit as open
source3. GTM runs the test cases using a shell script during the
build phase, while GHUnit runs the tests on the device (or in
the simulator), allowing the developer to attach a debugger to
investigate possible bugs.

Distribution
In order to reach the broadest possible audience, you should
consider distributing your app on the App Store. There are
other means, such as the Cydia Store for jailbroken iPhones,
but the potential reach isn’t nearly as large as the App Store’s.

In order to prepare your app for the App Store, you will need a
512x512 version of your app’s icon, up to ve screen shots of
your app as well as a build of your app that has been properly
signed. Log in to iTunes Connect3 and upload your app accord-
ing to the onscreen instructions.
After Apple has approved your application, which usually
shouldn’t take more than 2 weeks, your app will be avail-
able to customers in the App Store. The approval process is
the most complained component of the iPhone ecosystem.
A list of common rejection reasons can be found on
www.apprejections.com.
1) code.google.com/p/google-toolbox-for-maccode.google.com/p/google-tool-
box-for-mac/wiki/iPhoneUnitTesting
2) github.com/gabriel/gh-unit
3) itunesconnect.apple.com

22

Programming Symbian
Apps
The Symbian platform is an open-source software platform for
mobile devices. It consists of an operating system (formerly
known as Symbian OS), middleware and user interface layers
(formerly known as S60) and, since 2009, has been stewarded
by the Symbian Foundation1.
Close to 300 million Symbian devices (operating on 250 net-
works across the world) have shipped since the rst Symbian
OS-based device was launched in 2000. The rst of cial plat-
form release from Symbian Foundation was Symbian^2 in May
2009, devices based on Symbian^3 are shipped in 2010.

As a third party developer you can create applications and
middleware in Symbian C++, the native programming language
of the Symbian platform. Symbian C++ is a specialized subset
of C++ with Symbian-speci c idioms. It has a steep learning
curve and the rst steps here can be more frustrating than in
other environments, but there are lots of books and articles to
help you2.
Compared with many of the runtimes available for Symbian
devices, such as Java ME and Python, native Symbian C++
APIs provide the most comprehensive access to device fea-
tures and enable rich application development. They provide
ne-grain control over all aspects of the operating system,
including memory, performance and battery life; and deliver
a consistent performance advantage over other runtimes.

1) www.symbian.org
2) developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian_C%2B%2B_Quick_Start

23

Since late 2009 you can also create native applications
for Symbian phones using cross platform Qt (pronounced
“cute”) APIs and tools. Qt’s developer-friendly APIs allow
applications to be written once and compiled for Symbian,
desktop and windows mobile devices.
Please check www.forum.nokia.com/Technology_Topics/Devel-
opment_Platforms/Qt/QuickStart.xhtml for details.

Prerequisites
The of cial desktop development platforms for Symbian C++
are Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and Windows
Vista. All of the kits and tools supplied by Symbian are
free. If your computer meets the requirements, setting
it up for Symbian C++ development is as simple as down-
loading and installing the following (in this order):

1. ActivePerl (use ONLY version 5.6.1.638)1
2. The Symbian Application Developer Toolkit (ADT)
3. The Symbian Application Development Software
Developer Kit (SDK) (full installation)2

Linux and Mac OS X are not of cially supported platforms. One
way around this is to use a virtual machine that hosts
Windows. Other options are more complex, but information can
be found online3.

1) downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Windows/5.6/ActivePerl-

5.6.1.638-MSWin32-x86.msi
2) Items 2 and 3 are downloadable on developer.symbian.org/main/tools_and_kits/

index.php
3) developer.symbian.org and www.forum.nokia.com

24

Application Developer Toolkit (ADT)

If you have worked with S60 SDKs and tools, you’ll have installed
each of the tools you need for development (such as Active Perl,
the JRE and Carbide.c++) separately. The new Symbian platform
installs all the tools you need in one sweep.

The ADT is for developers who wish to create applications
that run on production phones - i.e. “on top” of the Symbian
platform. Typical users include professional application and
games developers, professional service companies, hobbyist
developers, students and research groups. The ADT is intended for
use with one or more SDKs.

The Carbide.c++ IDE, based on Eclipse, is installed as part of
the Application Development Toolkit (step 2 in the section
above). It is the only of cially supported IDE for Symbian
C++ development. The GCCE compiler is also supplied, as are
a debugger that allows debugging on both emulator and
production phones, analysis tools, and more.

Application Development Software Developer Kit (SDK)

The Application Development SDK contains libraries and header
les that enable you to develop applications. It should be used
in conjunction with the ADT. The SDK provides access to APIs that
are guaranteed to work across a broad range of Symbian-
based devices today and in the future. Once you have installed
the kits you can use the built-in application wizard to build,
debug and run your rst native application, and download it
to a Symbian phone, without writing a single line of code.

25

Porting to Symbian
The Symbian platform includes standard libraries that enable
developers to build POSIX-compliant C code and use near-
ISO standard C++, including the Standard Template Library.
These libraries can substantially reduce the time and effort
required to port POSIX-based software to the Symbian plat-
form. They are especially useful for porting existing C++ or
C-based software from the desktop environment and increase
the scope for cross-platform software development using
C/C++ code. Existing standards-compliant code will work on
the Symbian platform with some minor changes and a re-
build. Developers can bene t from an open-source code-
base instead of having to create everything from scratch.

The C language support comprises four ‘base’ libraries
(libc, libm, libpthread and libdl), ve additional libraries
(libssl, libz, libcrypto, libcrypt and libglib) and related
tools. For standard C++ support, the platform provides the
popular STLport version of the Standard Template Library
and a small but useful subset of the Boost libraries.

There are no standard C/C++ APIs for the UI or application
engines, such as Calendar, Contacts and Messaging, and no
access to most handset-speci c features such as multimedia
or telephony. However, if you develop using Qt on Symbian,
APIs will be made available for access to these features,
through the QtMobility project.

26

Signing
Symbian uses a trust-based platform security model. Native
C++ APIs, which could be deliberately or accidentally used to
compromise the end user’s private data, the mobile phone net-
work, other applications or the device itself, are protected by
platform security “capabilities”. If you use APIs protected by
capabilities, you will need to submit your application to Sym-
bian Signed1.

Many developers opt for the Express Signed option when using
Symbian Signed. This needs the developer to register for a free
Symbian Signed account and use it to purchase a Content ID,
which is needed to request the Express signing from Symbian.
A separate Content ID is needed for each application to be
signed, and each one costs $20. The developer then validates
the application against a set of published test criteria and, when
it passes, submits a digitally signed copy of the application
to the Symbian Signed portal, using a Publisher ID as the sign-
ing key. This Publisher ID may be purchased from a certi cate
authority for a one-off cost.

When submitting the application, the developer must con-
rm that the application passes all relevant tests, and list the
platform security capabilities it requires. The Symbian Signed
portal scans the developer’s submission and, if it is accept-
able, re-signs it for installation to customers’ devices. Symbian
Signed conducts regular audits on random applications submit-
ted for Express Signed, to ensure that the test criteria are met
by the developer.
You can nd out more on developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php
Express_Signed_(Symbian_Signed)
1) developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian_Signed_For_Distributing_
Your_Application
27

If you are writing a simple application or game, you might be
able to avoid using protected APIs to avoid Symbian signing.
You can simply distribute the application signed by a certi cate
you have generated for yourself, known as self-signing.
However, a self-signed application will present a warning to the
user when they install it, saying that the code is untrusted. To
reassure your users, you may therefore still prefer to Symbian
sign your application even when you don’t use protected
capabilities.

Distribution
Symbian Horizon1 is a service that helps developers to write
Symbian applications and publish them in app stores like
Nokia’s Ovi Store, the Samsung Applications Store, Sony
Ericsson’s Playnow, AT&T’s MEdia, and stores from China Mobile,
Handango and Orange.

Horizon has a single directory of Symbian Signed tools
available which enables developers to display and advertise
their applications, and allows users to discover them and nd
out which stores they are available from.
1) horizon.symbian.org

28 28

Programming J2ME / Java
ME Apps
Programming J2ME apps is a fun and rewarding experience.
The capabilities of the Java platform are constantly evolving
thanks to the Java Community Process1 that standardizes new
APIs (like the Advanced Multimedia API) and even whole plat-
forms (like the Mobile Service Architecture).

Right now J2ME development seems to be a bit unfashionable
compared to iPhone or Android development, but J2ME devel-
opment is still the one and only way to reach out to around
80% of the world wide mobile phone users.

Prerequisites
A mobile Java application (MIDlet) is compiled, obfuscated,
preveri ed and packaged. To implement your application you
need a couple of things:

— the Java SDK2 (not the Java Runtime Environment) and
an IDE of your choice, e.g. Eclipse3 possibly with Mobile
Tools for Java (MTJ), NetBeans4 with its mobility pack or
IntelliJ5.
— an Emulator, e.g. the Wireless Toolkit6, the Micro
Emulator7 or a vendor speci c emulator.
1) www.jcp.org
2) java.sun.com 5) www.jetbrains.com
3) www.eclipse.org 6) java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit
4) www.netbeans.org 7) www.microemu.org

29

— Depending on your setup you may also need an
obfuscator like ProGuard1. If you build applications
professionally you will probably also want to use a build
tool like Maven2 or Ant3.
— You may want to check out J2ME Polish, the Open Source
framework, for building your application for various
devices4.

A complete installation and setup guide is out of scope of
this guide, please refer to the respective documentation of
these tools. Beginners often like NetBeans with an installed
mobility pack. Also download and read the JavaDocs for the
most important technologies and APIs. You can download most
JavaDocs from www.jcp.org but there are a couple of useful
vendor speci c APIs that needed to be tracked down manually
from the vendor’s pages (Nokia UI-API or Samsung APIs, for
example).

Implement Your App
The J2ME environment is pretty much straight forward, the
basis is formed by the Connected Limited Device Con guration
(CLDC) and the Mobile Internet Device Pro le (MIDP), which are
both quite easy to understand. Similar to the good ol’ fashioned
Applets you extend javax.microediton.midlet.MIDlet in your
main class and then you are ready to go.

1) proguard.sf.net
2) maven.apache.org
3) ant.apache.org
4) www.j2mepolish.org

30

You can create the UI of your app in different ways:
— Highlevel LCDUI components: use the components
found in the javax.microedition.lcdui package, e.g. Form
or List.
— Lowlevel LCDUI: use javax.microedition.lcdui.Canvas for
controlling every pixel of your UI.
— SVG: Scalable vector graphics de ned in JSR 287
jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=287.

There are also different products out there to help you with the
UI development:
— J2ME Polish: compatible with the highlevel LCDUI frame
work, separates the design in CSS, you can also use HTML
for the user interface (www.j2mepolish.org).
— LWUIT: a Swing inspired UI framework
(lwuit.dev.java.net).
— Mewt: Use XML for de ning the UI
(mewt.sourceforge.net).
— TWUIK: A powerful “Rich Media Engine”
(www.tricastmedia.com/twuik)

There is a rich open source scene in the J2ME sector. Interest-
ing projects can be found via blog on opensource.ngphone.com.
You will also nd many interesting projects on Sun’s page1, for
example the Bluetooth project Marge2.

Testing
Thanks to the fragmentation, testing your applications is ab-
solutely vital. Test as early and as often as you can on real
devices.
1) mobileandembedded.dev.java.net 2) marge.dev.java.net

31

Testing on emulators cannot substitute testing on real devices
– you cannot compare your machine with 3GHz Dual CPU, 4 GB
of RAM and broadband internet connection with typical mobile
phones. Some emulators are quite good (my personal favorites
are BlackBerry and Symbian), but there are some things you
have to test in real:

— UI: the experience of the user interface can differ in real
sunlight when you’re out and about. It’s a mobile device
– most users will be on the move!
— Location: if you use location information within your
app: move – both fast and slowly.
— Multimedia: support for audio, video playback and
recording facilities can differ dramatically between
devices and their respective emulators.
— Internet connectivity: establishing internet connections
can take an incredible amount of time. Connection delay
and bandwidth depend on the network, its current
strength and the number of simultaneous users.

Thankfully some vendors provide subsidized or even free remote
access to selected devices:

— Nokia: apu.ndhub.net
— Sony Ericsson: developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/
techsupport/virtuallab/p_virtual_lab.jsp
— Samsung: innovator.samsungmobile.com/bbs/lab/view.
do?platformId=2

If you require to test network connectivity on a number of
carriers or if you need to access certain devices of a speci c
carrier, you can use Device Anywhere1 for your testing needs.
1) www.deviceanywhere.com

32

Mob4hire1 provides crowdsourcing services. Of course there are
various testing companies as well, that provide testing and QA
services, e.g. Absolute Quality2 or Mobiquest3.
Unit testing can be done with MoMEUnit4 or CLDC Unit5, cover-
age testing with Cobertura for J2ME6.

Porting
One of the strengths of the mobile Java environment is that it
is backed by a standard, so it can be implemented by various
vendors that compete with each other. The downside is that a
standard has to be interpreted, and interpretation causes dif-
ferences. Different implementations also suffer from different
bugs, which makes things not really easier. In the next sections
we outline different strategies for porting your J2ME applica-
tions to all J2ME handsets and to different platforms.

Direct Support
The best but hardest solution is to code directly for different
devices and platforms. So you create a J2ME app for MIDP devices,
a native BlackBerry app, a native Windows Mobile app, a Symbian
app, an iPhone app, a Web OS app, and so on. As you can imagine,
this approach has the potential to bring the very best user
experience, since you can really adapt your application to each
platform. At the same time your development costs will sky-
rock. We advise to use another strategy rst until your idea has
been proven to be a success.

1) www.mob4hire.com
2) www.absolutequality.com
3) www.mobiquest.net
4) momeunit.sourceforge.net
5) snapshot.pyx4me.com/pyx4me-cldcunit
6) www.cobertura4j2me.org
33

Least Common Denominator
You can prevent many porting issues by limiting the function-
alities of your application to the least common denominator.
In the J2ME world this means CLDC 1.0 and MIDP 1.0. De-
pending on the target region for the application you might
also consider to use either the extensions Java Technology for
the Wireless Industry (JTWI, JSR 185) or the Mobile Service
Architecture (MSA, JSR 205). Both extensions are supported by
many modern devices and provide a lot more power, though in
some regions like Africa, South America or India you should be
aware that you are limiting the number of your potential users
by taking this step.
Using the least common denominator typically is easier, as
there are less functionalities to care about. However, the user
experience may suffer when limiting your application in this
way. Also this approach won’t help you to port your app to
different platforms like Android or the iPhone. In short: use
the least common denominator for simple applications, but be
careful to use this approach for complex applications.

Player-Based Solutions
There are various player solutions on the market which mostly
provide a consistent set of APIs across various platforms.
Probably PhoneGap1 is the most popular solution among them.
The player itself has been ported to different platforms and it
interprets or executes the application code.
Player technologies provide an easy and compelling way to
realize solutions across a variety of platforms. One draw-
back can be that player concepts often need to use the least
common denominator for realizing a consistent API across
platforms, it can be dif cult or not possible at all to use plat-
form or device speci c functionalities in your application.
1) www.phonegap.com

34

Porting Frameworks
Porting frameworks automatically adapt your application to
different devices and platforms. Such frameworks typically fea-
ture the following ingredients:

— Client library that simpli es development
— Build tools chain that converts code and resources to
application bundles
— Device database that provides information about devices
— Cross compilers to port your application to different
platforms

In the J2ME world there are various frameworks to choose
from: Xpress Suite from JavaGround1 provides porting against
revenue sharing. Celsius from Mobile Distillery2 is licensed per
month. Bedrock from Metismo3 provides a suite of cross com-
pilers on a yearly license fee. J2ME Polish from Enough Soft-
ware4 is available under both the GPL Open Source license and
commercial ones. Going the other direction (from C++ to Java
ME) is also possible with the MoSync Open Source solution5.
Good porting frameworks allow you to use platform and de-
vice speci c code in your project, so that you can provide the
best user experience. In other words: A good framework does
not hide device fragmentation, but makes the fragmentation
manageable.
1) www.javaground.com
2) www.mobile-distillery.com
3) www.metismo.com
4) www.j2mepolish.org
5) www.mosync.com

35

Signing
The mobile Java standard differentiates between signed and
unsigned applications. Some handset functionalities are only
available to trusted applications. Which features are affected
and what happens if the application is not signed but uses one
of those features largely depends on the implementation. On
one phone the user might be asked once to allow this function-
ality, on another he’ll be asked every time the feature is being
used and on the third one you won’t be able to use the feature
at all without signing.

Most implementations also differentiate between the certi ca-
tion authorities who have signed an application:
Applications signed by the manufacturer of a device enjoy
the highest security level and can access every handset they
desire. Applications signed with a carrier certi cate are on a
similar level.
Applications signed by JavaVeri ed1, Verisign2 or Thawte3 are
on the lowest security level. The mad thing is that not every
phone carries all necessary root certi cates. And some well
known developers have even stripped away all root certi cates
in the past. The result is quite a mess, so consider signing
your application only when required, e.g. when deploying to
an app store or when you absolutely need access to security
constrained features. You can of course consider working to-
gether with a testing and certi cation service provider and let
they do the job for you. The largest one here would be Intertek
NSTL4, others are Absolute Quality5 or Mobiquest6.
1) www.javaveri ed.com 4) www.nstl.com
2) www.verisign.com/code-signing 5) www.absolutequality.com
3) www.thawte.com/code-signing 6) www.mobiquest.net

36

Distribution
Unlike the iPhone, you can install J2ME applications directly
on your phone – either over bluetooth or over the air (OTA)
using a webserver. Thanks to the universal app stores,
nowadays distribution is easier than ever. They manage the
payment, hosting and advertisements and receive a revenue
share for that.

— Ovi1 targets Nokia users worldwide and provides a 70%
revenue share for the developer (of gross sales, net of
refunds and returns, less applicable taxes and, where
applicable, xed operator billing costs).
— Java Store2 plans to sell Java based content.
— The Samsung App Store3 distributes application for
Samsung handsets.
— LG also distributes apps on www.lgapplication.com
— Handmark provides a carrier and vendor independent
mobile store.4
— Carriers also get into the game, e.g. Sprint5 or O26.
Basically almost everyone has announced an app store.
— GetJar is one of the oldest distributors for free mobile
applications7.

An overview on the existing appstores (not only J2ME) can
be found in the appstore Wiki on www.wipwiki.com/appstores.
Furthermore there are various vendors who provide solutions
for provisioning of Java applications over Blueooth, including
Waymedia8, Futurlink9 and Broadburst10.
1) 6) www.o2litmus.com
publish.ovi.com
2) 7) www.getjar.com
store.java.com
3) 8) www.waymedia.it
applications.samsungmobile.com
4) 9) www.futurlink.com
www.handmark.com
5) 10) www.broadburst.com
softwarestore.sprint.com
37

Programming Qt Apps
Pronounced cute — not que-tee — Qt is an application frame-
work that is used to create desktop applications and even a
whole desktop environment for Linux — the KDE Software
Compilation. The reason many developers have used Qt on the
desktop is because it frees them from having to consider the
underlying platform — a single Qt codeline can be compiled to
run on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux.
When Nokia bought Trolltech — the company behind Qt — it
was with the goal of bringing this same ease of development
for multiple platforms to Nokia’s mobile devices. Today, Qt can
be used to create applications for Symbian devices and MeeGo,
an open source platform initiated by Nokia and Intel.
The challenge when developing with C and C++ is that these
languages place all the responsibility on the developer. For
example, if a developer makes use of memory to store some
data, the developer has to remove that data and free the
memory when it is no longer needed. (If this is not done the
dreaded memory leak occurs.)
Qt uses standard C++ but makes extensive use of a special
pre-processor (called the Meta Object Compiler, or moc) to deal
with many of the challenges faced in standard C++ develop-
ment. As consequence Qt is able to offer powerful features that
are not burden by the usual C++ housekeeping. For example,
instead of callbacks a paradigm of signals and slots is used to
simplify the communication between objects1, the output from
one object is a “signal” that has a receiving “slot” function in
the same or another object.

1) qt.nokia.com/doc/4.7-snapshot/signalsandslots.html

38

Adding Qt features to an object is simply a case of including
QObject (which is achieved by add the Q_OBJECT macro to
the beginning of your class). This meta-object adds all the Qt
speci c features to an object.
Qt then provides a range of objects for creating GUIs (the
QWidget object), complex graphical views (the QGraphicView
object), managing network connections and communications,
using SVG, XML parsing, and using scripts among other.
Many developers who have used Qt report that application can
be written with fewer lines of code and with greater in-built
reliability when compared to coding from scratch in C++. The
result is that less time is needed to create an application and
less time is spent in testing and debugging.
For mobile developers using Qt is free of cost. It bene ts also
from being open source, with a large community of developers
contributes to the content and quality of the Qt APIs, Should
you wish to get involved the source code is made available
over Gitorious1.

Prerequisites
Setting up a development environment to create applications
for Nokia’s Symbian devices was time consuming, although
things are improving. The Maemo environment is a little easier,
but if you had ambitions to create a cross platform version of
your application, then you would have required a Microsoft
Windows PC and Linux computer.
The Nokia Qt SDK installs everything you need to create, test,
and debug applications for Symbian and Maemo from a single
package. At the time of writing, only the Windows version of-
fers full functionalities while the versions for Apple and Linux
were still in progress.
1) qt.gitorious.org/

39

Creating your application
The Qt SDK is built around the Qt Creator development tool.
Using Qt Creator you de ne most of your application visually
and then add the speci c program logic through a code editor
with full completion support and integrated help. One of
the neat features of Qt is QML, a language for declarative UI
de nition. While QML generally simpli es UI development,
its biggest advantage is that the tools within Qt Creator en-
able the UI to be de ned by graphic designers who do not
have to be aware of technical programming aspects. In the
past, one of the challenges with cross platform applications
for mobile has been accessing platform features: Anytime you
want to nd the device’s location or read a contact record it’s
been necessary to revert back to the platform’s native APIs.
This is where the Qt APIs for Mobility come in. These APIs
provide a common interface to device data such as contacts,
location, messages, and several others. This means that if you,
for example, need the device’s location the same API will ob-
tain the location information on both a Symbian and Maemo
device. (The Nokia Qt SDK also enables you to integrate the
full platform SDKs so you can use native APIs if you want to.)
As with Qt in general, working with the mobility APIs is quite
straightforward. The following code, for example, shows that
only a few lines are needed to access a device’s current location:

!"#$%&"'#(#")*&$+(,$
-.")'(/0,"1"'#(#")2)3"45&'1"'6%7%%
%%%8+(#(9$,%:%5&'1"';.""<$#)+(,-6;8+(#(9$,-6=%
%%%8")5#(9$,%:%5&'1"';.""<$#)+(,-6;8")5#(9$,-6=%
%%%%>

40

Getting Qt
If you are already familiar with C++ development on the desktop,
creating Qt applications for Symbian or Maemo will be straight-
forward. Once you have mastered the Qt APIs you should nd
you can code much faster and with fewer of the usual C++ frus-
trations you are used to. Qt has many interesting features, such
as WebKit support enabling you to integrate web content into
your app and scripting that can be used to add functionality
quickly during development or change runtime functionality.
It is also worth pointing out that, because Qt applications are
compiled to the platform they will run on, they also deliver
very good performance and usability. For most application the
levels of performance will be comparable to that previously
achieved by hardcore native applications only.

Testing
The Nokia Qt SDK includes a lightweight emulator that enables
application to be tested and debugged on the develop-
ment PC. The emulator includes tools that enable device
data, such as location or contacts records to be de ned so
that the application’s functionality can be fully tested.
The emulator does not, however, eliminate the need for de-
vice testing. Aspects of the application, such as perfor-
mance and usability, can be fully assessed on a device only.
In addition, the Nokia Qt SDK includes the tools required to
perform on-device debugging on Symbian and Maemo devices.
This feature can be handy to track down bugs that come to light
only when the application is running on a device. Such bugs
are rare and tend to surface in areas such as comms, where the
Qt emulator uses the desktop computer’s hardware, hardware
that differs from the equivalent technology on a mobile device.

41

Signing
As Qt applications install as native applications on Symbian
and Maemo devices they need to comply with each platform’s
signing requirements. In the case of Maemo this means that
on signing is required. For application to be installed on
Symbian devices, signing is necessary. More information on
signing applications for Symbian is given in the Application
Signing section of the chapter Programming Symbian Apps.

Distribution
Ovi Store is Nokia’s answer to the iPhone App Store and An-
droid Marketplace. Importantly, once an application has met
Ovi Store quality requirements — beyond removing indecent or
illegal applications — there is no restriction on the application
that can be hosted. So you will nd many applications in Ovi
Store that compete directly against offerings from Nokia, such
as alternative browsers, music players, and email applications.
To use Ovi Store you need to register and pay a one-time
€50 fee. When your application starts selling you get 70% of
revenue after any applicable taxes and — where applications
are purchased through operator billing rather than a credit card
— the operator’s fees. Many developers view the operator’s fee
negatively, as it can account for up to 40% of the sale price.
However, the extra sales generated when this billing method is
available generally means that you will receive more revenue
than from credit card sales.

42

Programming Mobile
Widgets
We have mentioned that some approaches to mobile development
require you to learn multiple languages and the unique features
of individual platforms. One of the latest approaches to solving
this problem, and offering one development technology for many
devices, is web widgets. Web widgets are based on the script-
ing and mark-up languages used for websites (HTML, CSS and
JavaScript). To run a web widget a device needs to provide
browser runtime environment. Most devices have a browser that
supports web languages, so it is a small step in the technology
to make almost any device capable of running widgets. The big-
gest advantage of widgets is that they offer probably the easi-
est route into mobile development. Web developers are able to
create widgets using their existing web design skills and code
in the languages they already know. Equally, for anyone taking
their rst steps into mobile development or rst steps into
programming, HTML, CSS, and the JavaScript language are a lot
easier to learn than the relatively complex native languages.

44

Widget characteristics
In general, a widget can be characterised as a small website
installed on a device. But if that’s the case, why not simply use
a website? Well, there are several advantages of a widget
compared with a web page:

— Widgets can be more responsive than websites: In a
widget you work with raw data not HTML pages, the
reduction in data overhead means widgets make better
use of mobile network bandwidth.

— Widgets are already rst class apps on some phones:
Although widget environments vary, a user can open a
widget in just a few clicks, there is no URL to type or
bookmark to nd. For example, Symbian devices from
Nokia place a widget’s icon in the device’s menu making
it as easy to nd and open as a native application.

— Widgets can look like native applications: Some widget
environments include features that replicate the device’s
native menus and UI. Widgets that behave like native
applications are much easier to use than websites.

— Widgets can run on a device’s home screen: Some widget
environments, such as Nokia’s Web Runtime (WRT), are
able to provide summary views users can add to their
device’s homepage.

— Widgets can use device data: The ability to use device
data, such as location or contact records, enables
widgets to offer information that has context, such as
identifying social net work contacts based on the entries
in the device’s address book.
45

— Widgets can generate revenue: They can be packaged and
distributed via application stores so you can sell them
just like native applications.

46

If there is a challenge in creating widgets, it is the lack of
a universal support of standards. W3C (together with many
major players from the mobile ecosystem) is pushing forward
with the de nition of standards. This standardisation is still
underway and information on its progress can be found in the
W3C Wiki1. Because the standards are not complete, it’s im-
portant to be aware that each widget technology has slightly
different ways of implementing the draft speci cations and
not all environments implement all of the draft standards.
In general, a widget that follows the speci cations given by
the W3C will enable you to target these widget environments:

— Nokia WRT (Selected S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2
and all S60 5th Edition devices): bit.ly/nokia-wrt
— Blackberry (min. v5.0): bit.ly/blackberry-widgets
— Windows Mobile (min. v6.5): bit.ly/winmo-widgets
— Vodafone360: bit.ly/vf-widgets
— J2ME, Blackberry, Android, etc.: bit.ly/es_skylight

To port your widget over to e.g. iPhone and Android, you
can use tools like PhoneGap2, Titanium from Appcelerator3,
and Rhomobile4 among others. Of these options, PhoneGap
offers a solution that is closest to the W3C approach.
1) www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/WidgetSpecs
2) www.phonegap.com
3) www.appcelerator.com
4) www.rhomobile.com

47

Prerequisites
Widgets, just like websites, are created entirely in plain text. These
text les are then packaged as a zip archive. This makes it
possible to create widgets using a text editor, zip application,
and a graphics application (to create an icon and graphics for
the widget). If you have a tool for web development it can be
used for widget development. The primary advantage of using
a web editor is the support these tools provide for composing
HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. Nokia WRT for example offers plug-ins
for Aptana Studio, Dreamweaver, and Visual Studio. These tools
provide template projects, preview environment, validation,
packaging, and deployment features.

Writing your code
In general, there are no special requirements for writing code
for a widget. The principal area where a widget differs from a
usual website is the variety of relatively small screen sizes it
has to work on. Devices running widgets may offer WVGA, nHD,
QVGA, or other resolution screens. CSS provides an elegant solu-
tion to reformatting information to accommodate these varying
screen sizes. By the way: Try to use CSS3 whenever possible and
remove any old compatibility code or you will run into issues.

You can start by simply:

1. Creating index.html and con g.xml les.

2. Zipping them at the command line using zip
" #$%&'()*+,(*"&-').+/*#0"12-3(+.#0+

3. Opening the ?@A#$5,(;B5(%ﬁle in Opera.

48

Of course, your widget can also use AJAX and one of the various
JavaScript libraries, such as jQuery, MooTools, YUI, or Dojo.
Depending on the widget platform you are targeting you may
be able to use more advanced technologies such as Canvas,
SVG, Flash Lite, or even HTML5 features such as the <audio>
and <video> tags.

In addition, each environment’s APIs for retrieving device
information, accessing user data, storing data, or other
environment speci c tasks will need to be mastered.In most
cases these APIs follow JavaScript conventions and are
easy to learn. For example, the following code uses Nokia
Platform Services 2.0 APIs to asynchronously determine
a device’s location:

',<!#.,CDE%:%)"F#+;$,!#.,;8"+$-G5,"8".+(#")H6=
%%
',<!#.,CDE;5,(I9<<,)(1"'#(#")-'9..,''J.+88D+.FK%
,<<"<J.+88D+.FK&"'#(#")C&('6=%%
L%%
39).(#")%'9..,''J.+88D+.F-<,'98(67%
% M+(%:%<,'98(;.""<$';8+(#(9$,=%
% M")5%:%<,'98(;.""<$';8")5#(9$,=
>%

While standards are still to be nalised, overall the APIs are
moving in very similar directions. The W3C Geolocation API
Speci cation proposes an almost identical API for the same
task:
)+!#5+("<;5,"8".+(#");5,(I9<<,)(1"'#(#")
% -'9..,''I+88D+.FK,<<"<I+88D+.FK%
% &"'#(#")C&(#")'6=%

All the widget runtimes are advancing quickly, with new
features being added regularly. While keeping up with these

49

developments may be a challenge it is certainly worth while
if you want to create leading edge widgets.

Testing
It is always good to be able to test on a PC and you can do this
for your W3C compliant widgets in Opera 9 or later. However,
if your widget includes device integration or platform speci c
features you will need to look to other tools and fortunately most
widget development tools provide a computer based preview
environment as well. These preview tools enable you to display
widgets in various screen resolutions and orientations, issue
device triggers (such as removal of a memory card) to the widget,
and testing against simulated device data (such as contacts and
location data). Of course, once you nished desktop testing,
nal testing on your own phone will be essential. The way a
widget looks and behaves can only be fully assessed on a real
screen, under realistic lighting conditions, and in a real network.

Signing
Currently most widget environments don’t require widgets to be
signed. This situation may change as the APIs to access device
features become more advanced. It is worth noting that the
W3C standards include a proposal for widget signing.

Distribution
While the W3C is working on standards that will enable widgets
to be discovered from websites, in very much the same way RSS
feeds are today, there is no universal mechanism for widget
discovery.

50

However, some widget environments enable you to add a link
to a widget on a website so that the widget installs directly
into the environments or device when downloaded. For
example, by identifying a Nokia WRT widget with the MIME
type AddType x-nokiawidget .wgz downloading the widget will
automatically initiate the installation process.

Distribution via a website is not the only option. Many appli-
cation stores welcome widgets. As we went to press, the only
store that supports W3C widgets is the Vodafone Widget store1,
but by packaging your widgets appropriately you can upload
them into Nokia Ovi store2, the Windows Marketplace7 or RIM
Blackberry AppWorld4. You can use tools, such as PhoneGap,
to port your widget to a native application environment, thus
gaining the option to use other stores, such as Apple AppStore
and Android Market among others.
1) widget.vodafone.com
2) store.ovi.com
3) www.windowsmarketplace.com
4) appworld.blackberry.com/webstore

51

Programming Flash
Applications
Developing Flash applications (and Flash animations within
applications) for mobile devices is the same methodology as
developing browser-based Flash applications for the desktop,
but you must be knowledgeable of the requirements of the
target device. There are two components to consider when de-
veloping Flash applications and animations: The Flash anima-
tion itself, that theoretically can be run on any device, and
the Flash engine or player installed in a device that has varied
operating functionality.
Adobe open sourced the Flash speci cation, permitting inde-
pendent developers and companies to develop Flash-compatible
engines and players. Authoring can be done using the Adobe
Flash Professional or Adobe Creative Suite (any edition with
Flash) software. There are also open source versions includ-
ing Gnash1 and GameSWF2 which are designed for the desktop
systems. Other commercial alternative Flash platforms exist
that provide good integration with the host devices. Many
of these Alternative Flash platforms run outside the browser
environment working directly with a device’s native APIs.
Pay special attention to how you design your Flash application.
Adobe Creative Suite provides you the option of developing to
run inside a web browser or as a standalone Adobe AIR appli-
cation. Alternative Flash-compatible SDKs go further and can
integrate Flash content into existing 2D and 3D software ap-
plications.
1) www.gnashdev.org
2) tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html

52

The Adobe Flash players installed in mobile devices are not
upgradable in the eld. This means that you must author the
Flash application to match the Flash player version in the de-
vice. Flash-compatible engines and players from Alternative
Flash-compatible SDK and tools vendors have a different range
of functionality, typically based on a vendor’s vertical market
focus.
Flash support on mobile devices varies widely from full support
to no support. We anticipate that Flash support will become
standardized on most mobile devices as the hardware platforms
include faster CPUs and as they add-in GPUs with OpenGL ES
graphics acceleration.

Prerequisites
If you are authoring or modifying Flash animations you
require:

— An authoring tool such as Adobe Creative Suite with
Flash;
— A Macintosh or Windows computer system that runs the
authoring tool;
— Animators, graphics artists and/or ActionScript
developers who understand how to develop for mobile
phones.

A Flash application (or Flash movie) can be comprised of
two independent software engines. The rst is the animation
engine that renders deterministic graphics to a display; the
second is the ActionScript engine that uses input events (time,
keyboard, mouse, XML) to make runtime decisions to play
internal portions of a Flash animation or to load and play an
external animation or video. ActionScript is a scripting lan-
guage based on ECMA-Script available in three versions.
53

Then you must decide exactly how the application is going
to operate and select the SDK that best supports your target
device(s).

It has been reported that Abobe Creative Suite 5 will support
ActionScript 3.0 and Flash 10.1 with the full 3D and 2D feature
set, and smartphones. If you want utilize the maximum features
like 3D and ActionScript 3.0 compatibility, this is the way to
go. As stated earlier in this guide, one drawback is poor per-
formance: Large binary les may run too slow on less powerful
devices.

Abobe Creative Suite 3, 4 or 5 can be used to author Flash content
that runs on Alternative Flash-compatible SDKs, engines and
players. These Alternative Flash-compatible SDKs generally sup-
port ActionScript 2.0, and Flash 8 or Flash Lite 3.1 with a full
2D feature set. Note that video and audio playback support was
a feature introduced in Flash 6.1, so all players have the ability
to support video playback.

Flash is supported or installed on these devices:

— Feature phones
Many feature phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony and a host
of others have included support for Flash Lite. The Flash Lite
player is compatible with Flash 3, 6 or 8 depending when the
device was manufactured. These are perfect for simple Flash
games (e.g., puzzle and card games).

— Smartphones
Some smartphones have a Flash engine or player pre-installed.
This is a critical factor in developing Flash applications for
these devices, and all applications must comply with the device
manufacturer’s license terms and API speci cations.

54

Full Flash support has been announced for Android-based
devices, and RIM’s Blackberry. Developers should clearly un-
derstand the restrictions of each platform and also under-
stand that there are a number of Alternative Flash-compatible
products that can enable Flash to operate on a number of
these devices.

Now that you have selected tools and the target device(s), you
need to license the development kit and follow the manufac-
turer’s process for publishing to that platform. You will also
need to purchase one of the target devices to do testing or you
can use a web-based device testing service. See the Chapter
Programming J2ME / Java ME Apps under Testing for more on
testing resources.

55

Developing Flash Applications for
Smartphones
The new Adobe Creative Suite 5 has a new, built-in smartphone
emulator. This enables developers to test their application on
a supported target device. For devices not supported by Adobe
Creative Suite 5, a developer may want to seek out Alternative
Flash-compatible SDK and tools vendors for testing.
An important consideration for developing smartphone applica-
tions is saving your Flash animation in a format that is compat-
ible with your target device. A developer needs to be aware of
the implications of saving their Flash animation in Flash 10.1,
Flash 10, or Flash 8 (Flash Lite 3) and of using ActionScript
2.0 or 3.0.

Tricks and Traps:

— Avoid Flash animations that have very fancy visual effects,
simply for the sake of fancy effects. Test on the target smart-
phone to know what works well, and what does not. A Flash an-
imation using ActionScript 3.0 will be 3-4 times larger in binary
size and will likely result in poor performance. Decide carefully
if you really need to use a feature that is only in ActionScript
3.0, as it is a completely different scripting language than
ActionScript 2.0. ActionScript 3.0 is more complicated to learn
and to program, and all object oriented languages require a lot
more software developer experience to use effectively.

— Avoid sliding a Flash object across the screen unless you
know it performs well. Redrawing every pixel multiple times
a frame without a GPU is a performance killer. Select a SDK
toolkit that minimizes CPU utilization to preserve battery life.

56

If the Flash animation is not changing, the SDK toolkit should
show 0% CPU utilization.

— If the target smartphone has one display resolution, use
2D bitmaps to replace SVG objects that will never change size.

— Test on your target phones to know how much memory is
being use during the application runtime. The more memory
being used directly results in more CPU power required to ex-
ecute the code, which affects the device’s battery life.

— Minimize network connectivity to when it is absolutely
required. The more OS APIs and independent software you use,
the more work is being done, again the faster the battery runs
out of power.

— Design the application to recover gracefully from power
failures. Many of the Alternative Flash-compatible SDKs have
additional APIs to support power failures and include database
tools for the developer to implement in the application. So
your user doesn’t need to re-key data after a power failure
(save and restore settings).

57

Testing
How your Flash application is architected and on what target
device your application will run has a direct impact on what
testing is required. If you have developed an Adobe Flash
browser-based application or Adobe AIR application, then it
is best to test the application using the Adobe tools. How-
ever, if you have developed a Flash animation (with or without
ActionScript) or Flash animations that will be integrated into
another 2D or 3D application, then you should consider testing
the application with one of the Alternative Flash-compatible
SDKs or tools.

Distribution
Every manufacturer has a different method of publishing your
application, and distributing it. Since you have selected your
primary platforms, it should be fairly easy to determine the
rules and revenue sharing amounts.

Things to keep in mind:

— It may take a few weeks from the time you submit your
application to an app store until you receive a response and/or
your application becomes available for purchase. Use that time
to talk to other developers and media and get your marketing
plans together. Once your application is available for purchase
from an app store, the hard work begins to market it so that
your application rises “above the noise” and gains attention
and you start to build a user base. Of course your masterful
application submission may also fail. Manufacturers’ can re-
ject it for multiple reasons. Know what they expect before you
spend development time.

58

— During the submission process, you should plan you bug
x release schedule. The rst release must be well tested, and
free from all obvious or easy to nd bugs. Your second release
cycle starts the minute you publish the rst release.
— Above all, listen to customer feedback, and adjust your
application to ful ll those requirements. Customer loyalty is
the ultimate goal for an application developer.

59

Bringing Your Content to
the Mobile Web
„Don‘t make me think!“- this title of one of the most popular
books about usability1 still summarizes very well what usability
is allabout. The developer should always keep in mind that it
does not matter how fancy his mobile website might be:
The user should be able to easily and intuitively use it.
These 10 basic hints should help you to adapt your content
properly for the mobile user:

1. Mobilize, don’t miniaturize: Create a concept that
utilizes the possibilities of the technology. You won’t
satisfy nobody by simply offering a smaller version of
your classical website.

2. Keep all paths open: Leave it up to the user to access
either the mobile or the desktop version of your website.

3. Keep it simple: Avoid complex navigation structures,
the user won’t dig that deep anyway while he is on
the go.

4. Avoid text input wherever possible: Text input on
mobiles sucks. If you really need to implement it, make
sure to use wide input boxes so that the user sees what
he is typing.

1) Steve Krug: “Don’t make me think - A Common Sense Approach to Web

Usability”, New Riders, 2nd edition, 2005

60

5. Adapt the media: Adapt all pictures, videos etc. to
be displayed properly on the handset (check the
corresponding chapter in this guide: „Implementing Rich
Media“). Avoid formats like .doc or pdf.

6. The user is a creature of habit- respect that: Adapt
usage patterns from classic websites like linking logos to
the starting page or offering corrections of mistyped
search requests.

7. Think of stubby ngers: When optimizing your content
for touchscreen phones, never use clickable areas smaller
than 1cm x 1cm.

8. Use sharp contrasts: Use contrasts, font and back-
ground colors which guarantee legibility in any
surrounding, including bright sunlight.

9. Re ect continously: Ask yourself if you would use the
implemented features yourself. Ask your friends and
colleagues as well before realizing your ideas.

10. Again: Don‘t make the user think!: Try to implement
intuitive navigation, don’t force the user to make
decisions more often than necessary. He will often
click the rst link in a list anyway.

61

Mobile usage patterns and its
consequences
The usage pattern at a desktop computer is often described as
„Hunt & Gather“. The mobile usage is totally different. When
using internet on the mobile handset, the user is usually on
the move. He wants to know more about his surrounding or
just ll some minutes. Therefore, mobile internet usage is
often described as „Quick Enjoyment“.
Applications have to take these differences into account. For
example, a search mask for stationary users has to offer com-
prehensive options, on the mobile handset it has to be more
straight-forward, focused on the certain action.
These adjustment cannot be realized by a machine. This
is one reason why it is indispensable to create special
mobile versions of websites.

The mobile user has no mouse, often he has no real keyboard
and the size of the screen is very limited. This means the
content of a mobile website has to be arranged accordingly:
Images should not be too large, all relevant elements should
be easily accessible although the user is not able to move a
cursor freely along the site.
It is best to test the usability of a site under real-life circum-
stances: Take your mobile handset to a busy public place and
try to nd all relevant info of your application by just using
one hand. You will see very quickly where your mobile site
shall still be trimmed.
But apart from things like markup, image formats and naviga-
tion, you should never forget about the most valuable good of
the mobile user: Battery power. Complex websites with a lot
of JavaScript, CSS and Flash elements need a lot of processing
power which means battery power.

63

Some History on the Mobile Web
WAP: The stone age of mobile internet
In the beginning, everybody in the business expected the
mobile internet to be a cashcow. The WAP technology made
it possible to send small texts on monochrome displays and
b/w images in the WBMP format to the user’s cellphones, the
industry charged him for that by inventing complicated data
transfer rates or strange subscription models. Many players ex-
pected to get rich by selling information which was already
available for free on the internet.
The Wireless Markup Language WML which was used by that
time was another reason why the expected breakthrough did
not happen as fast as some were thinking: While the different
internet browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape) allowed a
„dirty“ html, WML requested a valid XML structure and proper
UTF-8 encoding. The usage of images was limited to black and
white pictures which were a lot less sexy than what the users
knew from their home computers.
The rst tries to lift the mobile internet to the next level were
made by NTT DoCoMo by inventing CHTML and Microsofts Windows
CE which worked best with HTML/3.2. But both of them were
just interludes which were replaced by XHTML/MP 1.0.

Current Situation
Today, 99% of all mobile browsers are still supporting XHTML/
MP 1.0, for many low-end devices this language still delivers
the best results. On the other hand, the so-called Full Web
Browsers have to support HTML/4.0, but they still have their
differences when it comes to content-type or doctype and
choose different views for distinguishing between mobile and
desktop websites.

64

How to adapt content for the mo-
bile user
Static Version
Of course you can simply ignore the possibilities of automatic
optimization and leave it up to the user: Create different
versions of your content, let the user start with the most low-
level version and let him decide manually which variation is
the most comfortable one for his device and usage patterns
in a next step.
But since you are dealing with a user who is on the move and
does not want to spend a lot of time with nding out how to
see properly what you are delivering, this is probably not the
best way to go…

Automatic adaption technologies
To adapt the content to different devices, you basically need
two components: One logic that detects the device, knows
about its browser and its characteristics — a device database.
The second component interpretes these characteristics and
adjusts the content accordingly.

The most popular Open Source device database is the WURFL
project1 which offers comprehensive information via XML. A lot
of tools deliver APIs for detecting the browser, delivering
its properties and adjusting the content, the markup and
the images. One example for an Open Source project which
adjusts content is MyMobileWeb2, nanced by public funds and
Telefonica.
1) wur .sf.net
2) mymobileweb.morfeo-project.org

66

But of course there are also purely commercial providers. Again,
some are concentrating on device data and detection, others
are focusing on offering software platforms which adjust the
content accordingly.

Examples for commercial device data and device detection
providers:

— dotMobi1 offers several APIs to access their device data-
base DeviceAtlas2 and intelligent detection
— DetectRight3

Some commercial content adaptation software providers:

— Sevenval4, a platform independent technology which
works via HTTP and markup. This solution is available as
a Service or can be installed on Linux systems.
— Volantis Mobility Server5 is running on a variety of
Java-based web application servers and SQL-compliant
databases. There are two versions available: one Open
Source Community version and one professional version.
— Mobile Interaction Server6 is running on BEA,
IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat and Caucho Resin.
1) www.mtld.mobi 4) www.sevenval.com
2) www.deviceatlas.com 5) www.volantis.com
3) www.detectright.com 6) www.mobileaware.com

67

Satisfy the Interpreter of Your
Content: The Browser
Markup
Of course it would be great if there would be one universal markup
standard — unfortunately this is not the case. There are many stan-
dards, so be sure of validating your markup by using one of these tools:

— W3C Markup Validator: validator.w3.org
— W3C mobileOK checker: validator.w3.org/mobile
— dotMobi testing tool: mobiready.com
— Korean MobileOK Test & Validation Service: v.mobileok.kr

As a genereal advice, it is always good to stick to UTF-8 encoding.
You certainly can also consider going low-level and create a XHT-
ML MP/1.0 site with WCSS/1.0 and without JavaScript.

Page width
Always use dynamic layout. Avoid static width settings in pixels,
better use percentage values. Even when using device databases,
the browsers still have different display methods (fullscreen,
landscape, portrait) and only some allow displaying a scrollbar.
The web is dynamic, so is the hardware landscape — keep your
layout dynamic as well!

Images
Not everybody has a mobile data atrate, so do not use images
too excessively, avoid any unnecessary images. To reduce data
and processor workload, the images should always be scaled
on the server and not by the browser. ImageMagick offers the
possibility to easily scale your images1.
1) www.imagemagick.org

68

When thinking about the image format, GIF and JPEG are still
the most solid choice. Of course PNG offers more exibility, but
when it comes to transparency, you cannot always be sure to what
degree it is supported. And some operators still use image proxies
which might not be able to handle this.

Tables
For stationary web, tables are no longer used for webdesign. In
the mobile environment they are still an effective way to create
simple layouts — just avoid unnecessary nested tables and col-
span / rowspan.
Even though it breaks the rules for valid XHTML MP/1.0, some
browsers need the attributes cellpadding=“0“ and cellspacing=“0“
for not displaying unmeant spaces. CSS is simply not capable to
assure this with all browsers.

CSS
Do not use CSS excessively. CSS interpretation is sometimes not
properly implemented and shortens battery life. If you stick to the
WCSS/1.0 set, you are on the safe side.
When determining sizes, avoid to de ne them in pixels, use per-
centage values.

Fonts
Do not deal too arbitrarily with fonts: all browsers just dispose of
a limited set of font-types. Better focus on the font size. Use rela-
tive values (small/medium/large) rather than xed values (pixels)
— the browser knows best how many pixels to use for displaying
a large, a medium or a small font.

Cookies
You can of course use cookies and should do so, but only when really
needed. And never trust too much in them: although it might work
ne during one session, the cookie might get lost afterwards. This is

69

why you should always offer alternatives like an URL based
parameter or a personalised bookmark for permanent settings.

Script / AJAX
According to www.device-trends.com, 93% of the mobile web
users who visited the associated websites, were using a browser
which supports JavaScript, 70% were able to handle AJAX. So
it would be wrong not to use the possibilities of these tech-
nologies. But you should make sure that your side works ne
without them as well.

Let’s do some pigeonholing:
Device categories
You have no idea what kind of devices your visitors mostly use?
Then you should start low-level and implement a tool which
detects the devices who are accessing your site.

Several providers are offering this kind of analysis software:
— AdMob www.admob.com
— Bango www.bango.com
— Sevenval www.device-trends.com
— TigTags www.tigtags.com/mobile_analytics/mobile_site_
tracking

Some providers also offer access to the collected data which
give you an idea of which devices are actually using the mobile
web:
— AdMob metrics.admob.com
— mobiForge mobiforge.com/designing/story/
effective-design-multiple-screen-sizes
— Opera www.opera.com/smw
— Sevenval www.slideshare.net/sevenval/tag/devicetrends
70

When using this data, keep in mind where they come from
and how they have been generated: In which region have they
been collected, are they really re ecting the users’ mobile web
usage or just the pure general market share of the devices?
Does the data maybe only re ect the user base of certain op-
erators or techology platform? Is it about page impressions,
visits or unique users?
Never trust any report blindly. Use several sources and make
your own picture out of it.

Simple Devices
Probably the vast majority of your users will access your site
with a basic handset like described by the W3C in the Default
Delivery Context1 or by Luca Passani in his baseline device
description2.

To t their needs, these are our recommendations:

— XHTML MP/1.0
— screensize: 176x144
— GIF or JPEG image format
— max. 20kb page size (incl. images, CSS)
— basic Table Support, without „rowspan“,“colspan“ - no nested
tables
— minimal CSS (WCSS 1.0)

Of course even these basic characteristics exceed the possi-
bilities of many older handsets, but people who tend to use
the mobile internet usually own handsets who should properly
display pages that follow the guidelines above. Sur ng the
internet with much older devices is no fun anyway.
1) www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#ddc
2) www.passani.it/gap/#baseline

71

Full Web Browser-supported Devices
Full Web Browsers are characterized by their capability to
display any website. These are all webkit based browsers, Opera
Mobile, Microsoft
Internet Explorer, Netfront (version 3.4 and later), UCWEB,
Nokia Web Browser or Fennec. Devices who use a Full Web
Browser do not necessarily require any technological conces-
sions regarding website design, but we suggest to follow these
guidelines:

— HTML/4.0 Strict
— GIF or JPEG Images, PNG without alpha transparency
— basic table support, without „rowspan“,“colspan“ - no
nested tables
— keep CSS simple, tables are not bad
— script is allowed, but not needed (avoid unneeded script
or animation effects – think of the battery)
— if available, use AJAX to get content

72

Touch Devices
Here it is referred to modern devices with a powerful browser
like the iPhone, Android or Symbian handsets. The touch-
sensitive UI offers the possibility to move more freely within
a website. At the same time,it makes it more complicated to
chose one line from a list or any other smaller element within
a page.

If your mobile site complies with the following requirements,
any touch device user shall be able to navigate properly:

— HTML/4.0 Strict
— GIF, JPEG, PNG (with alpha transparency)
— full table
— script is allowed, but not needed
— use CSS, especially the so-called webkit styles for
rounded corners
— if available, use AJAX to get content
— keep the linited battery life in mind
— use a large font size (as example 18px) for links and
clickable lists
— set a default viewport (N?,(+%)+?,%:%G!#,B&"<(H%
% .")(,)(%:%GB#$(O%:%$,!#.,PB#$(OHQ)

73

Use GPS in the Browser
Devices like the iPhone ( rmware version 3 and later), the
Blackberry ( rmware 4.2. and later) and browsers with Google
Gears allow you to use the GPS information from within the
browser. The W3C published a speci cation about this1, but
unfortunately this is not supported by all devices. Neverthe-
less you can still use a simple Java API which is laid over the
different implementations2.
For further information about how to use GPS location informa-
tion for web-based Apps and services, check out mobiforge3.

Testing your Mobile Website
There are several ways to test your mobile website:

User-Agent / Browser
Several desktop browsers offer the opportunity to change the
user-agent and emulate a device detection for automatic adaption.
For Firefox users, the User-Agent Switcher is available on
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/ refox/addon/59. mobiForge offers
a con guration le for this Add-On which contains some
properties of mobile handsets4.
1) dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html
2) code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript
3) www.mobiforge.com/developing/blog/location-location-location
4) www.mobiforge.com/developing/blog/user-agent-switcher-con g- le

74

Emulators / SDKs
The better option to test your mobile site are emulators or
SDKs of the manufacturers. We made good experiences with the
following tools:

— Apple iPhone: developer.apple.com/iPhone/program
— Palm Pre: developer.palm.com
— Android: developer.android.com
— BlackBerry: www.blackberry.com/developers/downloads/
simulators
— Windows Mobile:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmobile
— Opera Mini: www.opera.com/mini/demo
— Symbian SDK: developer.symbian.org/main/tools_and_
kits

More emulators can be found on mobiforge.com/emulators/
page/mobile-emulators

Remote and Real Device Testing
As mentioned in the other chapters in this guide, the best is
always to test your product on as many real devices as possible
under real-life conditions. The alternatives are always remote
testing (by using services like www.deviceanywhere.com or
Nokias RDA1 and crowdsourcing the testing with the help of
www.mob4hire.com for example).
1) apu.nbhub.net

75

Learn More — On the Web
If you want to dig deeper and learn more about how to satisfy
the mobile user with your web-based service, check out these
websites:

— Mobile Best Practices / W3C
www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp
— dotMobi Mobile Web Developer‘s Guide / dotMobi
mobiforge.com/starting/story/dotmobi-mobile-web-
developers-guide
— The Wireless FAQ / Andrea Trasatti and others
www.thewirelessfaq.com
— Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web /
Luca Passani
www.passani.it/gap

And always remember:
The mobile website is not the small website, it is the mobile
one! Keep it simple.

76

Implementing Rich Media
„So many handsets, so many standards”— Again this is true
for the list of supported media formats on mobile phones. The
majority of them can be found in the table on the next page,
however multiple variations amongst handsets even within one
vendor or phone type rmware.

Streaming
Depending on your choice of offering streaming or download-
able contents, there are some restrictions. To offer streaming
content, the easiest setup is to use Apple’s open source Dar-
win streaming server1 which can serve streaming video and
audio with highest compatibility (except for Windows Mobile)
and reliable Realtime Streaming Protocol (RTSP). For Windows
Mobile, Windows Media Server2 is the easiest choice (available
as a free download). Typical frame rates are 15 fps for MP4 and
25 fps for 3gp with up to 48 kbps for GPRS (audio only), 200
kbps for Edge, 300 kbps for 3G/UMTS. RTSP is a protocol which
is designed for low-bandwidth mobile devices. If you need a PC
player to read 3gp rtsp streams, use QuickTime or Real player.

Progressive download
To avoid setup of streaming servers, a good alternative is to
offer progressive downloads, for which your media les can be
served from any web server if you hint your les. Hinting is the
1) developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streaming
2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Services

77

process of marking several locations in the media, so a mobile
player can start playing the le as soon as it has downloaded
a small part of it (typically rst 15 seconds).
So far the most reliable open source hinting software found is
Mp4box1. Use mp4box –hint –latm for mobile phone compat-
ible hinting (note: -latm is only needed by AAC audio codecs).
mp3 les do not need to be hinted.

Ringtones
To use audio as a ringtone or within a J2ME application, make
sure that the audio format is supported by your target devices.
Within J2ME .wav or .mid is the best choice for maximum com-
patibility, however the le size might restrict you as it is un-
compressed. There are more than 10 le formats for ringtones,
but we suggest to use the MP3 format, 64 or 128kbps, max 30
seconds and a le size of between 300kb and 500kb or AAC/
AAC+ 24 kbps (mono) or 48kbps (stereo) on high-end phones
to ensure maximum compatibility.

Flash
Flash is very popular on the many mobile devices today and it
can be really fun to integrate Flash animations into the mobile
applications. Flash animations can be used to create “eye-
popping” graphics in 2D user interfaces (UI).
Flash animations are based upon Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG). This means the developer or designer can create a Flash
object once, save it in the SWF le format, and that Flash ob-
ject can be rendered to any size display.
1) gpac.sourceforge.net

78

The same Flash animation will render with high quality on a
mobile device or on a 1080p HD display screen.

Flash games and applications are very popular, and in some
cases, Flash can be used for UI menus and icons. Flash-based
rich media UIs can scale to any display screen resolution
automatically. This sharply contrasts with implementing
standard 2D bitmap graphical UIs which require separate de-
velopment for rendering to typical display resolutions, and
resizing those UI elements at runtime results in pixilated
(jagged) images as the bitmap is simply being stretched pixel
by pixel. An application developer can utilize Flash animations
to call attention to various UI elements within an application
including prompting a user selection and showing intensity
levels. Examples could include using Flash animations to dem-
onstrate the draining of a device’s battery level, show an in-
coming call, or to prompt the user for a selection or action, like
responding to a calendar alarm or reminder.

79

Video Audio Typical
OS/Brand Container Protocol
Codec Codec Resolution
Windows .wmv or
http:// H264
MP3 or 320x240
Mobile .mp4 AAC 176x220

Symbian, .3gp or rtsp:// H263 AMR_nb or 176x144
Nokia .mp4 AAC 320x240

iPhone/ .mp4 http:// H264 AAC or 320x240
iPod AAC+ 320x480

Android .mp4 http:// H264 AAC lc 320x480

Blackberry MPEG4
.avi / .mp4 http:// AAC lc 480x320
=<OS 4.2
Blackberry .avi / .mp4/ rtsp:// MPEG4 AAC lc 480x320
=>OS 4.3 .3gp
ADPCM or 352x288
Palm OS . v / . mp4 http:// MPEG4
MP3

Mobile .3gp
Other 3G
Devices
Video rtsp:// H263 AMR_nb 176x144

80

To display video streams on a mobile device, the video player
needs to connect to the streaming server. This sounds easier
than it usually is.
First of all, for many players a special APN (Access Point Name)
needs to be con gured. If this con guration is not correct, the
videoplayer will not be able to connect with the server.
But even if the APN is con gured well, some operators are
blocking the RTSP protocol. This leads to the situation that
the streaming will work within the operator portal and prob-
ably even on youtube, but your own server cannot be reached.
Actually you cannot really do anything about this, you are to-
tally depending on the user’s know-how: He needs to manually
set the APN to an open Internet connection.

But even if you do not use RTSP, there are strange things that
might happen when streaming video on the mobile handset: If
a Blackberry device processes video via WiFi, even large videos
usually are displayed consistently. But if GPRS is used for data
transmission, the content is processed by the RIM servers which
de ne maximum values that may vary from server to server1.
As a consequence, content might behave differently even if the
same device, same operator and same APN are used.
And now? Don’t panic! Offer video to your users if you like to,
but inform them if something is going wrong and if you use a
device database, give them the option to chose manually.

1) www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=

KB10264

81

Media converters
To convert existing media of any kind to mobile phone compat-
ible formats and adjust the frame rate, bitrate and channels
at the same time, FFMPEG is a must have (open source) media
format converter1.
Make sure you build or get the binary with H263, AAC and AMR
encoder support included. For MAC users,

QuickTime pro (paid version) is a good alternative to encode
and hint 3gp les. A good alternative for converting video is
“Super” from eRightSoft2. If you are looking for a complete
server solution with a Java / Open Source Background, check
out Alembik3.

1) www.ffmpeg.org
2) www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
3) alembik.sourceforge.net

82

Implementing Location-
Based Services
An interesting area for mobile development are location
aware services, where the delivered information is adapted to
the user’s location. Applications could be anything from
nding parking spaces nearby, analyze pollen reports for your
area, nd friends at the trade fair et cetera. There are two
basic ways to go for it; either process geo information on
the server-side or obtain location data for a device to use it
directly. Doing everything on the server-side allows thinner
clients, while fatter clients are more self-suf cient without
constant network access.

How to obtain location data
Basically there are four ways to determine the user’s position:

— Manual input
The user states the phone where he is, by choosing a
location on a map, an area code, a city on a list. This is
often an overlooked method.

— Cell tower (GSM triangulation) or WiFi-based positioning
The phone locks to a base station, and its unique ID can
be looked up from a list that the operator keeps. There
are also more advanced cell-based methods based on
GSM/UMTS traf c, which requires a relationship with
operators. Alternatively the received WiFi signal patterns
can be used for determining the user’s location. In both
cases, the accuracy depends largely on the cell / net
83

work density. In urban areas a higher accuracy is
obtained than in rural areas.

— GPS positioning
The built-in GPS module in the phone (or an external
one) gives you a reading of 5-50 meters, depending on
the terrain, canopy and wall materials.

— Short range positioning
Systems based on sensors, like NFC (near eld
communication) marketed by Nokia and others, where
active or passive sensors are placed in the near proximity
to points of interest, such as a museum or a shopping
mall. Good for smaller, con ned areas.

How to obtain mapping material
There are several public map sources out there and the static
map type (distributed as bitmap tiles) is the most widespread:
Free maps like Open Street Map or CloudMate and also maps
that require partnerships and/or money like Navteq or Micro-
soft. Google Maps is released free of use at the time of this
writing. Interestingly enough, several of these sources share a
similar map format based on an origin (e.g. the North Pole),
numbering like three tiles down and ve to the left, and a
scale. This allows the map sources to be interchangeable.

— Open Street Map: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_
map_tilenames
— Cloudmade: developers.cloudmade.com/projects
— Navteq: developer.navteq.com
— Google Maps: code.google.com/apis/maps/
— Microsofts Bing API: www.microsoft.com/maps/
developers
84

Implementing location support on
different platforms
Location API for J2me is probably the most wide-spread method,
outside of using the web browser. In there you nd criteria for
accuracy, response time, altitude, and speed, allowing even ad-
vanced location services. Other platforms like Symbian, Windows
Phone and Android have similar offerings, even though they some-
times required signing of the application to access the location
functions. A special case is the Apple iPhone SDK, offering an inte-
grated support for location, even though there are restrictions on
what map sources are used and how the location data is generated.
The maps are often overlaid with geodata, which is available
in a number of formats. One of the simplest is called geoRSS1,
and could look like this:

N#(,?Q
" 4*&*0)560).78"9:;2<&*)"38/&-("=0:1)4>*&*0)5
% N$,'.<#&(#")QA")$,<398%&8+.,%3"<%'+8?")
" 4>')81<&=*&2-5
" 4()2<88?=2&-*5@A+BCD"CE+EB4>()2<88?=2&-*5
N#(,?Q

It represents a point of interest described as its latitude and
longitude, along with some metadata. There are many more for-
mats for geodata, but the basic idea is the same, and more and
more sources are harmonizing their data streams for interoper-
ability.
1) www.georss.org

85

Tools for making map apps
Several players in the industry provide developer-friendly tools
and APIs as a value added service, such as map data providers,
handset manufacturers and third-party developers. Using these
dramatically speeds up the development and deployment of
location-aware services. Each tool normally focuses on one or
a few mobile platforms.

— Nutiteq: www.nutiteq.com
— Spime: www.spime.com
— Mobile Gmaps: www.mgmaps.com
— Garmin Mobile XT SDK: developer.garmin.com
— Keymap SDK: www.mapsdk.com
— iPhone SDK: developer.apple.com

86

Now what - which
Environment Should I Use?
The short and crystal clear answer: it depends.
The longer answer: think about your target users, about their
needs, about their devices and their dataplans. And about your
vision and the requirements for your idea. Remember that you
are not necessarily restricted to a single application environ-
ment. A practical approach is to use the environment that you
are most comfortable with and then move on to other environ-
ments for increasing the market reach of your app. Sometimes
it also makes sense to combine different environments, for
example by providing a mobile website for casual users and a
J2ME app for your power users.

87

The following table provides a very rough overview about the
individual strengths and limitations of each application environ-
ment. Green stands for good coverage, yellow for limited and red
for bad coverage of the respective topic:

rs
pe
lo
rfo ols eve
D
De bili e
la f in

n
of
ra ch

io
lin ity

ag ance
vic ty

at
a

Av / O
In Re

On ctiv

Pe To

nt
rm
me
et

e
e
rk

ai
te
Ma

Fr
SMS

Bada

Windows Phone

BREW

Flash Lite

Widgets

Native Blackberry

Native Symbian

iPhone

Windows Mobile

Android

J2ME

Web
88

You can also compare application development with web devel-
opment in a more general manner:

App Development Web Development

Approval 2–8 weeks in app stores Instant updates
process
Portability Complex Easy

Complexity Complex Easy

Monetization Sale, Advertisements, in Advertisements
app purchase

Web development beats application development in many but
one crucial area: monetization. Internet services are mostly
free and the only reliable business model is often advertise-
ments. In contrast, app stores shine in this area. All stores
support charging for application, the iPhone app store
nowadays also supports in app purchases. And of course you
can embed advertisements in your application as well.
If you need to earn money today, it will be easier with an
application unless you want to earn money purely with ads.

89

Epilogue
Thanks for reading this fth release of our mobile developer’s
guide. We hope you’ve enjoyed this and we helped you to
clarify your options. Don’t be put down by the dif culties in
entering the mobile arena — once you’re in the water, you can
and will swim.
Would you like to contribute to this guide or sponsor upcoming
editions?
Please send your feedback to developers@enough.de!

90

About the Authors
Robert Virkus / Enough Software
Robert works in the mobile space since 1998. He experienced
the Java fragmentation rst hand by developing and porting
a mobile sports betting client on the Siemens SL42i phone,
which happened to be the rst mass market phone with an em-
bedded Java Virtual Machine. With this experience he launched
the Open Source J2ME Polish project in 2004 that aims to over-
come the device fragmentation barrier. He is the founder and
CEO of Enough Software, the company behind J2ME Polish.
www.enough.de www.j2mepolish.org

Roland Gülle / Sevenval
Roland joined the mobile industry in 2001. At Sevenval he is
responsible for the development of the adaptation technology
and the FITML Platform which allows developers to create mo-
bile internet portals. Roland is an active member of the the
Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and several open source projects.
www.sevenval.com

Thibaut Roufﬁneau / WIP
Community and passion builder with a mobile edge, Thibaut
has been conversing with the mobile developer community for
the past 5 years as the head of developer engagement at
Symbian, where he spearheaded the migration to open source.
Today he is the VP for Developer Partnerships at WIP (Wireless
Industry Partnership).
www.wipconnector.com
91

Chris Brady / Animated Media Inc.
(AMI)
Chris is an expert on graphics and GPUs and has been devel-
oping software since the 1980’s. He founded ALT Software
Inc. growing it to the leading provider of safety critical, real-
time, OpenGL 3D device drivers and software in the aerospace
market. As AMI’s CEO, he is now leading the charge to bring
Flash technology to devices and markets outside of Adobe’s
focus – including Flash on the iPhone.
www.animatedmedia.ca

Wolfram Kriesing / uxebu
Wolfram has more than twelve years professional experience
in IT. With two equivalently experienced experts he founded
uxebu, a software consulting company focused on mobile
cross platform solutions and web2.0, AJAX-oriented front-end
engineering. He has been an active open source contributor
on multiple projects and is currently a member of the the Dojo
Toolkit project.
www.uxebu.com

Friedger Müffke / OpenIntents
Friedger is following the development of Android since the rst
announcement of the Open Handset Alliance in late 2007. As
lead developer, CEO and co-founder of OpenIntents he promotes
the building block philosophy of Android and tries to connect
developers. He also organizes the Android conference droidcon.
www.openintents.org

92

Michel Shuqair / 24access Solutions
Michel built his experience with Telecoms since 1999 where he
closely watched the mobile development space evolving from
Japan. Starting with black and white WAP applications, iMode
and SMS games, he is now leading the mobile social network
m.wauwee.com with over 850,000 members and supported by
a team of Symbian, iPhone, Blackberry and Android specialists
with headquarter in Amsterdam.
www.24access.nl

Alexander Repty / Enough Software
Alexander has been developing software for Mac OS X since
2004. When the iPhone SDK was released in 2008, he was
among the rst registered developers for the program. Since
then, he has worked on a number of apps and written a series
of articles on iPhone development. He is working as an iPhone
developer for Enough Software since October 2008.
www.enough.de www.alexrepty.com

Benno Bartels / InsertEFFECT
Benno’s entry to the mobile space was his diploma thesis about
porting J2ME applications. Afterwards he founded InsertEffect,
a company focues on mobile web development, together with
two friends. Today, the team consists of 10 people focused mainly
on usability optimization of mobile websites, social network
applications and widgets.
www.inserteffect.com

93

Marco Tabor / Enough Software
Marco is responsible for PR, Sales and a lot more at Enough
Software. He is coordinating this project as well and takes care
of nding sponsors and of merging all the input we get from
the mobile community.
www.enough.de

Alex Jonsson / MoSync
Alex likes anything mobile, both apps and web technology and
connecting physical stuff to digital stuff. He holds a doctors
degree in on-line publishing and distributed education. Behind
this tech surface lies an eclectic urge to create new value by
exploiting aspects of communication and media to bring people
closer together. Alex holds a position as VP Creative Products
at MoSync Inc.
www.mosync.com

Richard Bloor / Sherpa Consulting Ltd
Richard has been writing about mobile applications develop-
ment since 2000. He contributes to popular websites, such as
AllAboutSymbian.com, and assists companies in creating
resources for developers. Richard brings a strong technical
background to his work, having managed development and
testing on a number of major IT projects, including the Land
Information New Zealand integrated land ownership and survey
system. When not writing about mobile development, Richard
can be found regenerating the native bush on his property
north of Wellington.

94

published by
Enough Software GmbH + Co. KG
Sögestrasse 70
28195 Bremen
Germany
www.enough.de

ENOUGH ENOUG
SOFTWARE SOFT
Robert Virkus Robert Vir

An initiative by: Vor dem Steintor 218
28203 Bremen
Germany
Vor dem S
28203 Bre
Germany

Tel +49 (0)421 98 89 131 Tel +49 (0)42
Fax +49 (0)421 98 89 132 Fax +49 (0)42
Mobile +49 (0)160 77 88 203 Mobile +49 (0)16
robert.virkus!enough.de robert.vir
www.enough.de www.enou

www.enough.de www.wipconnector.com

»A knowledgeable read for anyone trying to understand the difference
between programming for different mobile platforms. Kudos to the authors!«
— Mob4Hire Blog

«This guide is the best short document I have read ever about mobile
development.«
— David Contreras Magaña, Director I+D+i, Esidea

»Wow, what an awesome guide. It gave me an excellent overview of the
alternatives available with their pros and cons.«
— John Klippenstein, CTO, Cascading Glass

»Congratulations! A well written, very interesting little book with lots of good
references and addresses. Fun to read.«
— Jean-Marc Jobin, R&D, Datamars RFID Systems

»Short and sweet! Worth to read for beginners as well as decision makers when
entering the mobile business.«
— Ralph Buchfelder, CEO, i-locate

»A handy introduction and basic reference for the mobile development world.«
— Kevin Farnham, java.net Blog Editor, O’Reilly Media

»Really cool.«
— Carlos Bernardi, Team Leader Handset Embedded Programs, Gameloft

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