Faisal Iqbal's Blog

I am really happy to be part of Nokia Developers Workshop which was jointly organized by Nokia Pakistan and Telenor, in Telenor’s premises in Islamabad.

It was a two day workshop (28-29 Feb 2012) where I talked about Qt Quick runtime and QML for designing and developing great looking apps and games, with focus on game development for Symbian and Meego based Nokia devices, such as Nokia N8, E7, X7 and the recently announced Nokia PureView 808.

The 2nd day of the was even more fun as we explored the Box2D engine APIs using QML. One interesting thing I’d to share was that I did not practiced making Ping Pong using Box2D before the workshop. But I was confident enough as I’ve been playing with Box2D and QML for some time, to do it live ;)

Download slides and code from my regular blog.

// chall3ng3r //

I believe this is the biggest mobile technology news since announcement of Apple iPhone back in 2007. And to be honest, I am all excited as one Apple fanboy would have, on such big news!

There are reasons why I am so much excited, but first let me start with the fact that many developers showing concern that Nokia made a mistake for selecting Microsoft Windows Phone 7 as it’s primary mobile OS.

I have been reading lots of news, reviews, analysis and comments around this partnership, positive and negative. I gone through official Forum Nokia’s blog post "Letter to Developers about Today’s News" and in comments I see many developers not so happy.

I would like share some of the facts and personal experience about Symbian OS.

Please read complete article on my regular blog at http://www.orison.biz/blogs/chall3ng3r/?p=2881

// chall3ng3r //

This post will help you for preparing yourself for the first Forum Nokia Developers’ Workshop 2011 in Karachi – Pakistan from 31 Jan to 3 Feb 2011. 

The workshop focuses on two mobile technologies, J2ME and Qt available on Nokia’s S40 feature-phones and Symbian S60 smartphones. With countless Nokia devices around the world and over 3.5 million downloadsfrom Ovi Store every single day, these technologies are highly profitable for mobile developers.

Continue reading on my regular blog at:

http://www.orison.biz/blogs/chall3ng3r/?p=2874

// chall3ng3r // 

After struggling a lot with SVG-T icons for our own Symbian projects, we came up with an idea to develop a really easy way to produce cool looking SVG icons which can be used for Symbian games and applications (i.e. Symbian C++, Qt for Symbian and Flash Lite). We ended up with SVG2Go.

SVG2Go is the easiest way to make a SVG icon which looks exactly same as the designer have designed it.

Read more about it on my other blog http://www.orison.biz/blogs/chall3ng3r/?p=2869

Or start using it right away at http://www.orison.biz/apps/svg-icon-maker/

Don't forget to give us your feedback and share with fellow developers.

// chall3ng3r // 

I have been recently playing with Nokia Qt SDK, and so far it's been really great experience and I would like to thank and congratulate Forum Nokia and Qt teams for their great efforts for making it really a smooth developer experience.

ChatMX Qt is a port of original Flash based ChatMX application available at http://www.orison.biz/products/chatmx_web.aspx.

It's done in my spare time and my boss @ch3ckmat3 helped me with the UI while I worked on the networking and XML part. We were looking to post it within month of November to be part in Forum Nokia wiki contest. But due to load of other projects, we have to delay it.

We missed the chance to get a shiny new N8 from the wiki contest, but we still learned a lot during development of this application. We are quite happy with the outcome and excited for some cool application ideas we have after learning how powerful and easy Qt is.

We are sharing ChatMX Qt full source in hope that it's code will be helpful to beginners for learning basic UI manipulation, making HTTP network requests and handling XML response. I'm not an Qt expert (yet :)), so if you find any mistake, let me know.

Enough talk, below is the link to project souce hosted on FN.Projects, download-able SIS to directly download and test ChatMX Qt on your device and some screenshots :)

• FN.Projects: https://projects.forum.nokia.com/ChatMXQt
• Download SIS: chatmxs60.sis

 

  

The first and final release of Qt SDK 1.0 marks a big day for Nokia. I believe now Nokia is on right track for developer offerings. Creating engaging, powerful and beautiful looking apps is not iPhone only trick anymore.

I am very delighted with the overall experience of Qt SDK, but also with the output it produces. I haven’t made any serious applications with it yet, but initial experiments are great. Being a Flash Lite developer, trapped in sandboxed world, Qt gives good free feel to me :)

The good thing about Qt is, the developer targets two platforms, MeeGo and Symbian S60. I have personally used the beta bits on my Nokia N900 and later Nokia 5800 XM devices. The performance is superb, UI animations and transitions were really smooth.

I have some application ideas I’ve been working around using initial beta releases Qt SDK. I am now planning to finalize them, and give them a shot.

Forum Nokia made this news a bit more enticing by offering a free Public Beta of Nokia Signing Symbian Apps service. So, if you’re developing something targeting Symbian devices, you’re in luck ;)

// chall3ng3r //

Hi,

First I'd like to apologize for not updating this blog for long time.

I have been following Qt developments for some time now, and was very keen todo some experiments. Tonight, I finally decided to start some experimentation. To my surprise, I followed some simple instructions, and viola! I made my first Qt "Hello World!" application.

I am specifically impressed with MADDE (Maemo Application Development and Debugging Environment) which allows to compile Qt based applications for Nokia N900 or any Maemo 5 device from within Windows without going through Linux VM. MADDE team is working to enable same for Mac OSX and other flavors of Linux. Find out more at http://wiki.maemo.org/MADDE

Here's how I did it:

• I downloaded and installed Qt for Windows SDK from http://qt.nokia.com/downloads
• Next, I installed latest build of MADDE from http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/MADDE.php
• Finally followed this simple guide http://wiki.maemo.org/MADDE/QtCreator_integration_for_windows
  • Installed latest build of Qt Creator 1.3.81 in separate folder from the snapshots link in guide
  • Rather using PC Connectivity tool to connect my Nokia N900 via USB cable, I used IP on WLAN interface. Which worked fine.
  • Configures the connectivity as described in guide, and it worked!

Nokia's push for Qt on MeeGo (or Maemo) and Symbian now making a lot of sense. And after some initial experiemnts I think it's the right direction, where developers will not have to learn new programing language for each platform, but just select the target platform to compile for. And best of all, the application is compiled natively, so no major performance drop and sandbox issues.

With Qt on Symbian and MeeGo, there's now even bigger opportunity for mobile developers to target greater audience with less development efforts.

I am already quite excited, and going to continue my experiments with Qt. I will try to share some more tips and my findings on the way.

Have any beginner Qt questions? post them in comments, I will try to answer.

// chall3ng3r //

Never be afraid of saying anything anymore, type it in and let your phone say it for you. But be careful, don't cross the limits ;)

This application is freeware, made using Flash Lite and Python for S60 (PyS60) and packaged using SWF2Go v2. It demonstrates how to make powerful and engaging mobile applications using Flash Lite and PyS60 on S60 3rd Edition platform.

Symbian S60 3rd Edition SIS files and full source code is available under free source license (no license at all, have fun ;)).

Download Be My Lips and read more about it at SWF2Go Wiki

Couple of screenshots:

// chall3ng3r //

I have posted another article on FN.Wiki, where I show you how you can easily enable OTA SIS installation from your own mobile websites. You can read the article here.

I have also uploaded the scripts along with article, which you can use without modification, or also can add more functionality to them.

// chall3ng3r //

Today, I'm very excited to release my latest free source project. Oxygen Toolkit for Flash Lite developers. It is a set of ready-to-use components for helping optimizing Flash animations, runtime memory.

The toolkit also contains Signal Meter and Battery Meter components for use in regular applications. Using these component requires zero-coding. Yes, just drag the component to Stage, and you're good to go.

I have posted detailed information about using the components and customizing them at FN.Wiki.

Download and read more here.

I have managed to post it before 1st April, so I hope the entry will be included in Contributor of the month and 2008 Code Example Challenge :D

Any comments or feedback is welcome.

// chall3ng3r //

Hi guys,

This is a great news, as we will get another technology on Nokia devices to play with.

I have posted my initial thoughts on my regular blog.

What you guys'n girls think about this?

// chall3ng3r //

Hey all,

This is my first post regarding the Flash Lite tips'n tricks I am planning to share on this blog. So, lets get started.

As Flash Lite 1.1 supports pre-AS1 Flash 4 scripting syntax, the developer have to use tellTarget statement to access objects from deferent object.

For example if there are two objects on the stage, menu_mc and controller_mc. To perform a quick gotoAndPlay action from controller_mc to menu_mc, you might be using the following code:

tellTarget("../menu_mc")
{
    // play SlideUp frame
    gotoAndPlay("slideUp");
}

While this works pretty well, but you can also do this via just a single gotoAndPlay call. gotoAndPlay and gotoAndStop also accepts paths, so you can simply pass the object path along with frame label or number to goto command. Like the same operation we did with tellTarget above can also be done as follows:

// play SlideUp frame
gotoAndPlay("../menu_mc:slideUp");

You can use relative paths as well as absolute paths with this approach.

This trick is quite useful when you have to do a quick goto action, but if you need to perform multiple actions, then you're good to go with tellTarget.

Update: BTW, you can use the same trick with latest versions of Flash / Flash Lite.

Update: Scott has posted a nice example use of this tip on his blog, check it out.

Stay tuned for more!

// chall3ng3r //

Hello everyone,

I just discovered that I also have a Nokia Champion blog. This is my first post here, so let me introduce myself and what type of contents I will be posting here.

I am Faisal Iqbal a.k.a chall3ng3r, working as Lead Application Developer at Orison Technologies (www.orison.biz). I have experties in developing applications in Adobe's Flash & Flash Lite, MS WinForms & ASP.Net, S60 C++ and PyS60.

I also happen to be developer of the popular Flash Lite developer's tool called SWF2Go Professional (www.orison.biz/products/swf2go), which have been recognized by industry experts as standard tool to make professional Symbian SIS installers for Flash Lite based games and applications. There are now many Symbian Signed, and Self Signed games and applications published which are made with SWF2Go.

I'm a technology reseacher, I like new mobile and web technologies, and doing research & development to explore new possibilities and to blend them with eachother is my favorite hobby.

As I also have my regular blog at www.orison.biz/blogs/chall3ng3r/, where I mostly dicuss anything I like to post about. But here, Forum Nokia have provided me a new blog, and I'd like to use it to share my findings and experience in mobile technologies including Flash Lite, PyS60, S60 C++ and even MS .Net CF.

// chall3ng3r //