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Beta 6 release: Android Native Extensions, Froyo, Symbian on Mac, and more!
[See the content of ELIPS Studio Beta 6 release, and targeted content for next ELIPS Studio releases]
Today, this short article to give you some some idea about what's new in ELIPS Studio in Beta 6 release (out today), and what's coming next in the future ELIPS Studio releases.
Beta 6: contents of ELIPS Studio new release
Android native extensions
Native Android
They're out. As for the iPhone, you can now extend ELIPS Studio framework with your own native services. The tool will generate the mapping code and the java project, allowing you to implement the native part quite easily, with minimal knowledge about Android native dev tools.
The native extension tutorial has been updated, and now explains how to implement a native extension for music playback on both iPhone and Android. You will see that the Android setup is a bit more complex than the iPhone's, but it still does not require a strong knowledge in those tools.
You can now virtually do anything on both iPhone and Android. Enjoy the freedom!
Android "Froyo" Support - and installation of the app in the SD Card
Froyo
As you may know, Android "Froyo" update is currenlty being deployed, little by little, on the various phones on the market. It comes with a variety of new features, and specifically an interesting one: ability to install the app on the SD Card instead of on the phone memory. This will help user to have more and larger apps than before.
We've upgraded the Android native part, and Beta 6 supports Android Froyo. We've also tested the installation of apps on the SD Card, and it works great. Unfortunately this has been tested on Android SDK emulator, not yet on device, as we are missing today an Android powered phone.
Variant Management: almighty navigation model, now mapped on the iPhone
There are some things that helps you to tell, in 1 second, whether it's an iPhone or an Android phone you're looking to. One of those things is the application navigation, namely how you navigate from one screen to the other in a typical iPhone or Android app. An app is usually a set of screens, with rules to go from 1 to the other, and transitions between those. On iPhone there is a navigation bar which contains a “Back” button, enabling to go to the previous screen. On Android, there is a hardware “Back” button, and no navigation bar. Moreover, animated transitions between those states are different.
From Beta 5 release, we introduced the concept of "screen stack", in which you describe the set of screens of your app. This will automatically create the structure of your app, with transitions between screens, and an optional navigation bar.
As a new episode in our "variant management" series, the new beta 6 release brings the native mapping of this model to iPhone application navigation model, check more on this website - https://jatapp.com/services/mobile-app-development/. Android is already under way. This will enable you ultimately, from a single code base, to have 2 very different application navigation model, depending on where the app is running:
if you build for iPhone, it will behave like an iPhone app, with the navigation bar and its back button
if you build for Android, it will then by default not display the navigation bar, and react instead to the back and menu hardware buttons
Check out the updated application UI Catalog, which has been updated with this new concept.
Symbian: simpler setup, and now supported on Mac!
Symbian
In previous releases, a complex setup was needed in order to build an app for Symbian, involving the installation of additional SDKs and tools from Symbian foundation. We have updated ELIPS Studio so that setup is not needed anymore, Symbian is now supported out-of-the-box!
While doing this, we've also gained an improvement: Mac users, you can now build your application for Symbian. It was not easy to do, as Symbian tools are not natively available for Mac users.
So we could say that ELIPS Studio is the only way to develop an app for Symbian on a Mac!
Android improvements
Android
We're progressing on Android, and adding, in addition to the native extension and support for Froyo described above, several improvements in Beta 6 release.
Improvements include:
Android mandatory build settings are now checked before the build, so that user is warned at the beginning of the build, instead of the end...
Native activity indicator mapping
Other treats and improvements
Treats
In addition to the new features described above, we've added an amount of improvements and smaller features, mostly requested by users
You will find a full description in the release notes, here some of the most important ones:
No more "black screen" between the splash screen and your application first screen!!
BitmapData.copyPixels() is now implemented
Native extension improvement: we've added a mechanism to get a UIView from a UIComponent, in order for example to add native iPhone UI components to Flex UI containers (iPhone only in Beta6, we will add Android later on)
We've added an API to get a unique device ID:
function getDeviceUID():String in openplug.elips.services.SystemAPI
Matrix implementation improvement: Handle "tx/ty" for the "matrix" parameter in BitmapData.draw(), as asked by Terry Paton ;)
Native mapping on the iPhone of the navigation model and native screen transitions, check out the UI Catalog sample
Other improvements and bug fixes
As usual, quite a large number of improvements and bug fixes, either requested by users, of internally found. Release notes are detailing these changes.