Author: George Henne

Google Glass is a wearable device: it looks like a pair of glasses with a small video screen by your right eye. Since it runs Android: we were automatically interested. Can AppStudio used to create apps for it?

It turns out the answer is yes!
Continue reading “AppStudio and Google Glass: Web Apps”

To date, we’ve encouraged our users to use PhoneGap Build to make their native apps. It’s quick, easy to use and meets the needs of most users. PhoneGap Build is a wrapper built on top of the open source Cordova engine. PhoneGap CLI lets you work directly with Cordova, which has a few advantages:

• Build takes place on your local machine – no uploading to a service
• Free – PhoneGap CLI is open source.
• No limit on number of projects
• Use the latest plugins: Sometime developers have newer versions of their plugin that are not in PhoneGap Build yet.
• Use PlugIns which are not in PhoneGap Build at all.
• Use custom PlugIns you have developed yourself.

But there are a few downsides too:
Continue reading “Using the PhoneGap CLI”

ServerStorage is an easy new way to save data in your AppStudio App. It works just like localStorage, but instead of saving the data locally on your device, it saves to the server.

This opens up many new possibilities: Companies could upload and download data, teachers could publish information for students, games could share scores or moves. It could even be used as a backup in the cloud.
Continue reading “Using serverStorage to save your data”

We now have a set of YouTube videos available. They’re short – just a minute or two each – but help with how to get started with AppStudio.

They are:

• A Short Tour of AppStudio
• Your first AppStudio App: Hello World!
• Run your AppStudio App on iOS
• Run your AppStudio App on Android
• Use PhoneGap to make an AppStudio App native

English: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3NpfXo8K7xoYZENHvhShYw

Arabic: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5g_DTUUJnTthlF6-5pPR7Q

Ever had to code a messy statement like this?

    sqlList[j]="INSERT INTO customerData (name, age, sales) VALUES _
        ( " & "'cust" & j & "', " & j & ", " & j*10 & ");"

Here’s a more elegant want to do the same thing. Load your values into an array, then put a question mark in your query string where you want them to be substituted:

    args=[cust, j, j*10]
    sqlList[j]=["INSERT INTO customerData (name, age, sales) VALUES _
        (?,?,?);", args]

Notice that we also had to put the query string into an array, with the first element being the query string and the second our array of arguments.

(This is only for SQLite strings. If you would like to do something similar to your other strings, check out the Format function.)

The NSBApp Debugger (AppStudio 4.2.2+) is based in the Weinre (“WEb INspector REmote”) app. It looks like a subset of the Chrome Debugger. That’s no surprise: both are based on the same Web Inspector software. This debugger does not have the ability to view code or set checkpoints, but otherwise is quite functional.

It’s a great way to debug your app when it running on an actual device.

Use it in the following cases:
Continue reading “Using the NSBApp Debugger”

(Guest post from Mike Burgher – thanks!)

I’ll share my experience using the Android camera; hope this doesn’t cause confusion. I wrote an NSBasic app that uses the camera to do motion detection on the area. It does time-lapse, auto-shoot the camera, and compares portions of the images over time. You use it, for example, if you are in a sketchy hotel room and you want some peace of mind. While you sleep, it will detect if the door starts to open, and alarms loudly and summons help.

It’s all NSBasic except the “getpicture” camera operation, which is a custom PhoneGap plugin. I know of no way to do this whole thing from JavaScript. The Android camera API sequence is non-trivial, but there is good documentation and code examples.

In a plugin, it’s fairly easy to select which camera, set the parameters, shoot the picture when the camera is ready, and save it.

The camera preview is more of an issue. The Android API sequence requires you to display a preview on the screen before the camera is ready to take a picture. For many applications, you don’t want to see that preview; you want to see your app. There are several approaches to hiding that preview, from making it ultra small (1px by 1px) to making it transparent on >= Android 4.0. But there is no single solution that works on all Android cameras. And there are various undocumented limitations on cameras, dictated by the manufacturer.

And it’s hard to debug a camera app! Things will work on the device, that won’t work in the Android emulator, and vice versa.

I started with an existing custom PhoneGap plugin called Foreground Camera, who’s purpose was to keep your app from going to the background and getting killed off by Android when you called the standard “getpicture”. It was modified to select the camera, hide the preview, and take the picture without user intervention.

Unfortunately, I’ve been living in an ancient PhoneGap 2.5 world for a long time. I suddenly have to bring all my stuff up to the current PhoneGap level. But I’d be happy to share my mods to this plugin. It’s not 100% stable yet, and I’d welcome any improvements.

— Mike