Here are a couple of news items around Windows Phone we didn’t want you to miss:
On October 11, Todd Brix of Microsoft announced updates and improvements to the Windows Phone Dev Center. He also announced the enabling of 13 additional countries for Windows Phone Dev Center registration. Great news!
If you’re planning to be in Espoo, Finland on 7-9 November, be sure to register for WOWZAPP, a developer conference hosted by Microsoft, Nokia, and others, and focusing on Windows Phone 8 app development. There will be a Windows seminar, workshops on app and game development, and to cap off the activities, a 24-hour hackathon. Hope to see you there!
Protractor is a HTML5 application for Windows Phone. As the name suggest this application allows the device screen to be used as a protractor to measure length and angles of a geometric object. It also has the option to change the measuring units to Inch and mm.
HTML5 Canvas is used to perform all the drawing in the application which runs on Silverlight WebBrowser element. This project could be a nice example for newbie to have a hands on experience on HTML5.
Nokia is dedicated to the Open Web, and for that reason we are proud to be among the Stewards of Web Platform Docs. This is a new community-driven site for web developer documentation, now in its alpha release.
Web Platform Docs was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in collaboration with Nokia and several other technology companies. The site will save web professionals both time and resources by providing them with a single location for cross-browser and cross-device best practices, including:
How to use features of the Open Web platform — with syntax and examples.
Interoperability of various technologies across platforms and devices.
Standardization status of each technology specification.
Stability and implementation status of features.
W3C, along with Nokia and other fellow Stewards Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera, have launched Web Platform Docs with initial documents contributed as raw material for the community to shape. Yet anyone will be able to contribute content to this new site. The W3C will serve as the site’s convener. And as the open web platform evolves, the entire community—including both the original and the new Stewards—will help maintain and improve the content. What’s more, the site will foster sharing and reuse by making all materials on the site freely available and licensed.
“Nokia is pleased to be a Founding Steward of the W3C’s Web Platform Docs activity,” says Timo Ali-Vehmas, VP of Compatibility and Industry Collaboration at Nokia. “Web Platform Docs provides a unique Web site for professionals to save time and resources by consulting a single site for current, cross-browser, and cross-device coding best practices. Nokia supports commonly used web standards, and has shipped hundreds of millions of devices supporting various Open Web standards. With a strong foundation of documentation oriented towards web authors and developers, we believe web developers can build solid mobile web experiences for the next billion mobile consumers.”
We encourage all developers who are interested in web technologies to sign up and participate to move the Open Web forward at Web Platform Docs alpha site: http://webplatform.org/docs.
If you have any questions for the Nokia Developer team, please contact us at: web.apps@nokia.com
If you’re a photography buff, you’ll want to check out the latest challenge over at Ideas Project. Ideas Project helps bring consumers and developers together to make connections, start conversation, and get creative together. Our latest challenge is designed to further enrich mobile photography by creating and sharing ideas to make the next killer photo app or service.
At SXSW 2011, we launched ideasproject.com, an experimental project to co-create technologies with consumers. Over the past year, we’ve started to see the power of co-creation and the benefits it brings. By bringing greater focus to the consumer to developer connection, we are seeing great results. Our success stories include:
Blood Sprint, the app for location-based blood donations
Pre-School Aid for getting your toddler on the right track
A free Nokia Developer webinar, Introduction to Xpress Web App Builder for Series 40, will feature live coding demos that show you how to use the new Nokia Xpress Web App Builder to create a Series 40 web app in mere minutes. You will also learn how to import your web app into other Nokia tools for customisation.
Through live coding demonstrations of the new Nokia Xpress Web App Builder, this webinar will show you how easy it is to create a Series 40 web app from RSS feeds, social media content, and even clipped live web content. You will learn how to customise your app with a unique look and feel, advertising, and other features. You can also submit your resulting web app to Nokia Store for access to millions of consumers around the world.
Join Tapan Acharya, lead developer consultant and evangelist with Nokia. He will explain the architecture of the new Xpress Web App Builder and describe how it relates to the Series 40 web apps platform. Tapan will also demonstrate the tool as he creates and tests high-quality web apps.
Web apps created with Nokia Xpress Web App Builder are suitable for publication to Nokia Store without the need for further development. For developers who want to add features to web apps created with Xpress Web App Builder, Tapan will explain how to use Nokia Web Tools 2.0 to import the apps for customisation.
Nokia has published a number of software updates for Asha and other Series 40 over the past couple of weeks. The device models include Asha 200, Asha 201, Asha 300, Asha 303, Asha 311, C2-02, C2-03, C3-01, X2-02 and X3-02. These updates feature various usability and performance improvements, as well other fixes. For more information about the update, go to http://www.nokia.com/support and select your device model.
The recommended update method for the mentioned devices is to use Nokia Suite, but many of the updates are also available as a FOTA (Firmware Over-The-Air) update. You can refer to this video to learn how to update using Nokia Suite.
As usual with such updates, there may be some regional or country based differences in the availability of these updates. Enjoy!
Walter Wong, our Nokia Developer Champion for October, is one of the coordinating forces behind the Software Developer Reality Show. In this one-day tournament, to be held in Malaysia on 13 October, developers will compete on six challenges covering Windows Phone. One of the challenges promotes the Nokia Places API, which is required to complete the task.
By day, Walter works as the technical lead for Gain Secure, a software developer based in Malaysia. He is also a frequent speaker at Asian technology events. Walter joined the Nokia Developer community this past March, where you can find him online as WalterW.
