The Space For App Developers

I just thought I will share some of my findings around drag and drop support in WebKit, HTML5 and PhoneGap apps running on iOS and Android devices.

To make the story short drag and drop is NOT support out of the box in the current versions of WebKit that run on iOS or Android devices although you can simulate it using mousedown, mousemove and mouseup events.

When I clean the code a bit you can expect and update to this post

This time in the video below you will find a quick review of PhpStorm/WebStorm IDEs. As I mention in my recording this is one of those tools that I will stick with at least for now

It has really great debugging support (IMHO Firebug or WebInspector can’t even compete). Also because it is built on top of IntelliJ IDEA platform it has great code completion, rich set of refactoring features, and many others. Check out the video for more.

Below is the third episode of my HTML5 for App Developers series. In this episode, I cover how you can debug your JavaScript applications inside of Eclipse.

Debugging is available through a set of plugins that are available for Eclipse from the ChromeDevTools project on Google Code. So, you will need either Google Chrome or Chromium to make it all work.

Below you will find the second episode of my HTML5 for App Developers series. In this episode, I cover how you can use Eclipse, which is a free and open source IDE, to do your HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS work.

In the video, I point out a small bug that comes with Mac version of Eclipse. To download the patch you can use this link. You can find Eclipse itself here; I encourage you to download the Eclipse IDE for JavaScript Web Developers version.

OK, I finally found some time to give HTML5 a try. Since Adobe (my employer) is actively participating in its development, I wanted to learn more about the actual state of the technology, understand what all the hype is about, and really not fall behind.

I have to be frank here. That the first three days were really hard for me I cursed a lot and pulled my hair out of my head. Well IMHO the learning curve is a bit steep, especially when you are coming from an OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) world like Flex/AS3, Java, or .NET. What I’m trying to say here is that things are just different and you need some patience to get used to it. But after those first few days I actually started enjoying it and I’m sure you will too if you give it a try.

So, to alleviate the pain for others that are taking their first steps with HTML5 I decided to record a series of short tutorials that should help The series will be titled “HTML5 for App Developers” and I will concentrate mostly on app development aspects – so things like tooling/IDEs, debugging, HTML layouts, JavaScript frameworks, architectural and design patterns, and much, much more.

The first video, which you can find below, is about Adobe Dreamweaver and how you can customize it to make it a more developer-centric tool/IDE. The next one will also cover tooling and it will be about Eclipse (the free and open source IDE). I think it is extremely important that when starting with a new technology to have the whole environment set up comfortably so it doesn’t get in your way. So go ahead and enjoy the video below.