PavingWays

As I was reading an older issue (#7 in 2008 from 17.03.2008, current one is 9) of Germany’s premier computer magazine c’t I spotted a mentioning of Frost, our open source Ajax library for mobile browsers.

The issue’s title topic was “The web in your hand” and the article starting on page 112 was about “Webdesign for Mobile Devices”. On page 114 Frost is mentioned in one sentence. Yay!

“Event the first JavaScript library for mobile browsers, that are getting increasingly mightier, has been released; Frost is supposed to make simple Ajax manipulations possible.” the article reads (translated from German).

Just a small clarification here: we’re still trying to get the first real release out of the door, shame especially on myself for not bringing up enough time to get this thing done. Anyways good to know we’re on the radar, stuff like this certainly encourages further developments, but time always is an enemy.

If you wanna know more, check out Frost here.

I totally forgot blogging about that and more or less for completeness reasons I want to mention that I have been attending the Google Android developer day in Munich (actually in Aschheim/Dornach) on January 29, 2008. I met Jason Chen, one of the presenters at the event, the day before at the Mobile Monday in Munich.

The people attending, at least most people I have been talking to, were mobile developers sent by their companies, pretty big ones. There were some start-up people there too, but not many. Comments and questions in general were pretty critical, detailed and practical. Interesting was the big interest of taking part in the Google Android development competition from the audience. Apparently mentioning 10 mio USD in price-money creates some interest ;)

I was of course mostly interested in the WebKit-based web browser in Android and I have to say it worked pretty well in the SDK emulator, it even has the same “bug” that I had experienced while testing the Frost library on the iPhone when it came out. So no surprises there too and one more browser to look at when developing mobile web apps, even though it’s almost the same browser as on the iPhone or Nokia’s S60 3rd edition phones (also exhibiting the “bug” mentioned above - so it’s apparently a WebKit issue after all).

Bottom line is: no surprises after all, Google leaves no event without mentioning that they’re looking for developers and if you’re interested in Android development, get the SDK and read the docs.

I recently wrote an article for dev.opera.com about Mobile Ajax and how the Frost Library can deal with that. There is a lot of introductory stuff in there and it might will be the longest and most comprehensive article I have been writing on the topic, there’s even code snippets in there. So it might be a good read for anybody interested in the topic of Mobile Ajax.Thanks to David and Chris from Opera for making that happen and giving me the opportunity.You can read the article at dev.opera.com.

In the first post this year we wish all of you a happy and successful year 2008!

We have not blogged in a while. The good thing about this is that we were busy working on our first product, Groupile.  Groupile will be a productive networking tool for groups. It is going to be ubiquitous, mobile-focused and web based. There will be a beta test soon, so make sure you sign up for that at groupile.com!

Another thing that we’ve been working on was our Mobile Ajax Library, Frost. We booked a domain for the project and installed a very basic homepage. http://frostlib.org will from now on be the official home of the Frost library providing all the available information about the project. A pre-release version of the library is available for download there too.

After submitting a position paper, today I got my invite to the Mobile Ajax workshop in Mountain View in late September (28th). I am really looking forward to this since it is one of the rare events that focus exclusively on Ajax on mobile devices and many important and interesting people that are involved in this topic are likely to be present. It’s also the first workshop (= not conference) on this topic. So I am very excited and happy to have the chance to attend this event and meet everybody.

My position paper is about the Frost Ajax library. The only other position paper I have come accross is the one from Mark Baker of Coactus Consulting. It’s entitled “The best mobile Ajax application … is the one that’s never written“, so there’s probably gonna be some interesting discussions.

It has been a busy month and our last post was already a long while ago. So here’s a quick heads-up …

Our Ajax library, Frost, is still in development, but we already received some good response and many requests for more info ranging from freelancers to people from well-known companies. There is a lot of interest out there and we try to get the initial library online within the next couple of weeks. There’s also a definite plan how users will be able to contribute by extending the library and by testing browsers. Let us know if you want to help either building the lib or the community pages around this (based on WordPress)!

For now we have a video on YouTube that shows how the demo page of the Frost library works and looks like on the iPhone (we actually found a bug in Safari), so check it out!

Meanwhile we moved to San Francisco, at least for the next few months. Our goals are to get in touch with like-minded people from the Bay Area, build-up some interesting contacts and cooperations and introduce Frost and our upcoming mobile service to as many people as we can. So, if you are also in the Bay Area, please let us know!

There are a lot of events happening and we gonna write about it and let you know what’s happening.

We’re currently looking for a space in an office (for 2 people) - we talked to Chris from CitizenSpace in downtown SF and might end up working there, but if you have a better idea or even a little space in your office, please let us know!

I am speaking at the Mobile Web Americas conference, in October in Orlando, Florida. The Mobile Web Americas conference will take place 2 - 4 October 2007.

I am pretty excited, because this conference is all about the mobile web. My presentation will be about “Pragmatic Mobile Ajax - an Ajax Library for constrained browsers in action”. I am speaking about Mobile Ajax and how it can improve the user experience in mobile web applications. I will introduce the Frost Ajax Library as a tool for Ajax development on constrained browsers, such as those on mobile phones or gaming consoles. The session will show how and why the Frost library came to life and sheds some light on the underlying approach, which is quite different from other Ajax libraries.

If you are attending or speaking at Mobile Web Americas too, and want to catch up, please let me know. There are still some spots open, so don’t miss out this cool conference and register!

See you there, Rocco