Adobe CreateNow Camp | June 1, 2013, 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM, Anaheim

Come hear the latest about Creative Cloud and new features in some of your favorite, or soon-to-be favorite, software applications!
They’ve pulled out all the stops to gather a great group of speakers for you!

They will have a morning keynote from Colin Smith of photoshopcafe.com, and then an afternoon of two concurrent sessions packed with information. Detailed schedule on Eventbrite! I will be presenting on the Edge Tools and Services. Come learn about Edge Animate, Edge Reflow, Edge Inspect, and more!

Lunch is included, parking is free, raffle prizes too! Including one 12-month subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud!

You won’t want to miss this special Orange County Adobe Community Meet-up!

One of the missing feature in my ConfiGAP utility was the ability to manage the access elements. For those who do not know what the access elements are, here is the definition from the documentation:

The access element provides your app with access to resources on other domains – in particular, it allows your app to load pages from external domains that can take over your entire webview.

Although I do not have the interface controls enabled for this feature, I do have in the place the code to properly read an existing config.xml file that  contains access elements, and the ability to then resave the file with that data still intact. So I releasing this version with this simple support in place. I hope to have the completed version done in about a week. Again, thanks to all that have used ConfiGAP and found it useful.

I also tweaked the Android SDK selections as well. The old design just had an SDK number. Pop quiz, Android SDK 12 is also known as ______? Right, I can’t tell you either. So, the list now shows the SDK number and the matching version number & naming (FroYo, Jelly Bean, etc).

Thanks to all who took the time to submit session feedback for my three workshops at this year’s Adobe MAX. Overall, I am happy with the responses. There were some very nice comments from folks. Unfortunately, there were a few that did not have the best experience. To them, I am sorry. One of the challenges of this lab was trying to find a proper starting point to take you from a blank html document to a native app in 90 minutes. I wish I had more time to explore PhoneGap more, but alas we did not. To that end I am working on the follow on exercises that I promised. Another challenge with a lab like this is what is the audience’s background. For some it was too easy, for others too hard, but for most it was just right. I had hoped to get session feedback earlier (like years past), so maybe the Tuesday or Wednesday labs might have been tweaked, but no such luck.

To the one person who found the typo, sorry. I must have read over the lab a hundred times, and my brain just did not see it, nor did my reviewers.

But overall, I am pleased with the results of my workshop, and hopefully you are using the things you learned. If you have any questions on the workshop, feel free to ping me. And if you build something based on what you learns, please take a moment and share it!

As an instructor of an introductory mobile application development course, I am always on the lookout for materials that can be used as resources for my students. Creating Mobile Apps with jQuery Mobile is just such a resource that I can recommend to my students. Shane Gliser begins the book by introducing the reader to the value of prototyping. I applaud him for reinforcing the idea that we should first spend some time with paper and pencil before we open our favorite editor (either code or design) to create our next mobile masterpiece. From there, the author lays down some foundational information on meta viewports, recent changes to the jQuery event model, and some CSS/media query structure. Then he takes the reader through the process of creating a jQuery Mobile app for a restaurant. Although he does touch on some jQuery Mobile basics, he does assume some working knowledge of jQuery Mobile, and HTML/CSS/JS in general. That might prove to be an issue to some.

What I did like is that he does address some common issues that new users to jQuery mobile might face, such as adding custom icons within jQuery Mobile, working with Google Maps, and form validation. I also enjoyed the fact that he introduces client-side templating to the reader. jQuery Mobile apps can become quite heavy with all the markup that is repeated.

However, I do wish the author had spent more time exploring the use of HTML 5 video with a jQuery Mobile app. He does cover HTML audio nicely, but the coverage of video did not address enough of the challenges of video playback in a non-Flash based world. I also found the section on HTML5 manifests a bit light. Manifest files can be a bit tricky to create and debug, so some guidance for the reader might have proved useful. The section on compiling your project with PhoneGap Build was another section that seemed far too short. Often, jQuery Mobile is part of a workflow that includes using PhoneGap as a solution to create a native application. It would have been helpful to guide a reader to some of the modifications one should make to have a better performing application.

Overall, I think the book is a nice companion to another Packt publication, jQuery Mobile Web Development Essentials written by Ray Camden and Andy Matthews (one of the technical reviewers) and think it will be a useful addition to those seeking to expand their use of jQuery Mobile as a solution to their mobile application toolkit.

One of the traditions I like to keep at Adobe MAX, is sitting down with the gang at Nerd Radio. This year I was again able to spend a few minutes talking with Garth and Leif about my workshops that I was doing at the conference, my latest side project (ConfiGAP), and hinted about a really cool project that I am working on for the day job. You can listen to my interview here. Make sure you take the time and listen all the great conversations they had throughout the entire conference.

Thanks again for having me on the podcast!

Where the world’s creative minds collide.

At this year’s Adobe MAX, I taught three workshops on Creating Mobile Applications with jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap Build. It was a lot of fun, and hopeful worthwhile for those who attended. As promised here are the files: the workbook, the slides, and the resources. Even if you did not attend, maybe the workbook and lab files might prove useful.

I will be posting enhancements to these files over the coming weeks to cover a few advanced features that I knew I would not be able to cover in the 90 minutes.

Many of you are aware of the recent announcement of the sunsetting of Adobe Fireworks. This has generated some incredible passion and anger among the community. I love Fireworks, it has been a staple in my digital workflows for years. But, I know that the only constant in the software industry is change. I have seen myself migrate from developing in HyperCard to Director to Flash/Flex, and now to the web platform. This is how our industry works. Heck, there are still times when I miss SuperPaint or SoundEdit, but I use the tools that I have. Unlike the removal of the Touch Apps from the app stores, Adobe Fireworks remains available as part the Creative Cloud, and will keep working just fine on your machine.

So keep calm and carry on…

I will write more later on the show, but I want to jot down a few thoughts on the train ride back to San Diego. This year’s MAX was another memorable event. Obviously the focus of Adobe has shifted, but even so there was still a large collection of familiar faces mingling throughout the conference halls and after hour gatherings.

I am proud to have had the chance to present three workshops this time. For those who attended, I hope it was worth your time. I will be posting the slides and other materials shortly. In addition, I will post the ‘enhancements’ that I promised as well.

I am looking forward to next year’s event (where ever it maybe).

One of the challenges with a utility like ConfiGAP, is the variety of directory structures each project could have. You try to plan and test for what you think are the ‘probable’ structures, but you never know. I have been working on some improvements to the reading and writing sections of the app. One thing you have to remember is that the config.xml file needs to be included in the same directory as the index.html file when the entire package is zipped up and sent to the PhoneGap Build servers.

When loading a saved config.xml file, the application will scan for an index.html file. If one is not found, it will report an error. All the referenced assets need to based on the directory that the index.html file is located.

Another change I made was I dropped support for 1.9 and lower as a PhoneGap version. The PhoneGap Build team made the announcement that due so some new requirements from Apple, they decided to drop the older support.

I am starting work on adding the user interface to add in access elements. I hope to have this done shortly.

Thanks again to all that have downloaded and used ConfiGAP, and to those who have let me know of issues and suggestions. Keep ‘em coming!

One of bigger challenges in developing a utility like this is writing the parsing code for user generated config.xml files. You never know the internal formatting of the xml.

Recently I got a tweet from @stan_programmer about a valid config.xml file that ConfiGAP was unable to parse. Thankfully, he posted his file, and could begin to resolve the issue. It took a little bit, but I think I have a more robust parser in place.

Unfortunately, I still am not saving any user added comments in xml.

The new build is now posted at: http://aj-software.com/configap/