For the development of business web applications GWT is a tool of choice.
Since most business applications are based on a Java Stack, GWT empowers Java-Developers to write business ready, robust cross-browser applications in their favorite language.
Certainly there are powerful JavaScript frameworks around to achieve such, but you need a lot of experience to tackle all the quirks and oddities the ambient browser language comes with.

Now these days more and more businesses are seeking for mobile channels of their applications.
Flexibilizing their businesses, supporting new business cases and increasing efficiency are the main reasons driving that process.
When it comes down to the technical realization of these channels most companies are facing significant difficulties.

Developing and maintaining native applications is normally not a choice. Costs are simply too high to acquire and maintain expertise on all different mobile plattforms.
Cross-plattform technologies are seeking to solve this problem for most business cases. But what framework to choose?
Web technology based applications are a common sense, best supported among all devices and most future-proof. Sencha Touch, JQuery Mobile and others are leading this area and good results can be achieved deploying them.

But how great would it be if you could – with moderate effort – turn your existing web GWT app into a mobile app?

A mobile app written mostly in Java, simply testable, with all the power of the GWT framework and last but not least supreme performance on the mobile device.

Well, look no further: m-gwt.com is coming to rescue!

mgwt is a ligthweight extension to GWT basically providing mobile widgets and mobile plattform integration.
mgwt has been developed over the last 3 years and went open source in 2011. According to creator Daniel Kurka many commercial products have been developed using the framework.

Canoo was lucky to have Daniel Kurka himself in for a workshop recently.

Whats mgwt all about?

There have been a few attempts to mobilize GWT in the past. They were all focusing on different aspects, like HTML5 storage. Non of them really succeeded.

Now, mgwt has a few very important design goals which makes it a promising candidate to become THE standard mobile GWT extension:

• integrates well with GWT MVP
• keeps the DOM lean
• leverages the powerful optimizing JavaScript cross-compiler
• does as much as it can in CSS3 (hardware supported)
• native support for touchevent the GWT Way
• animations built in with GWT MVP
• integrates well with PhoneGap

Compared with JS based cross-plattform frameworks mgwt advances in:

• generation of isolated mobile plattform permutations makes client-side if/else statements obsolete
• different plattform interaction patterns can be supported (i.e. Android back button)
• integrates naturely with PhoneGap
• integrates smartphone, tablet and web app development!

Curious?
Check out the kitchen sink app and give it a try.

Btw. Daniel Kurka can be contacted for consulting, workshops and advice @dankurka

At the end of last week I received a comment concerning my MobileTech blog posts, which cast doubt on my objectivity: The tone of my posts was almost exclusively positive and contained too little critical analysis of the conference’s content.
Well guys, if the tone was positive it’s simply because it was a great conference; both from my perspective and from the perspective of the many other participants that I spoke to.
So what makes for a great conference? Most importantly, of course, is that you come away feeling that you’ve learned useful stuff. And I learned a lot. For example:

• I got a great introduction to the Android platform from the chaps at Open Knowledge.
• I got an extraordinary sense that we’ve only just begun to see the potential of mobile technology. Case in point: Mind-blowing demos from Reality Jockey and Wahwah.fm, Andy Abgottspon and others.
• The fact that UI design is even more critical in mobile than in traditional apps was made crystal clear to me. The necessary clues as to how to create successful UI designs were provided by Werner Jainek (design process) and Stephan Gillmeier (iOS APIs Core Animation, Core Graphics, Quarz Core)
• Finally, Heiko Behrens reminded me of the growing power (and relative simplicity) of web technology and that it’s possible to exploit this power in the context of native apps. This is certainly something I’m going to pay more attention to in my future mobile project.

With all the new information and valuable reminders, there was naturally a lot of brainstorming and networking going on at MobileTech 2012. Facilitating this were the more general aspects of the conference – accommodation, catering etc. – which were as smooth as silk in their execution. Kudos to Sebastian Meyen of Sands Media and his team as well as Holiday Inn München.

So to return to the comment above: I stand firmly by my statement that this was a conference of exceptional quality. If anyone has a different take on it, please feel free to comment.

Native iOS-Apps: Was können wir vom Web lernen? by Heiko Behrens – getBeanApp.com

Heiko states that, despite the fact that native apps generally provide a better use experience, we can learn a lot from the Web world.

A couple of impressive HTML5 demonstrations bring home the point that we shouldn’t underestimate what modern web technology is capable of. The question is: Can we make use of this? Heiko brings us three reasons which show how we can:

1. There are Web tools and SDKs out there, which we can use directly within our iOS apps
2. We can take a leave out of the REST world and use this to improve the communication between apps (and between the Web and our apps) – and hence the user-experience
3. We can make direct use user authentication strategies developed for the Web in our apps

As for tools and SDKs, Heiko demonstrates Hype – a tool for creating HTML5 keyframe animations – and shows how we can utilize the result directly without our apps, essentially by piggybacking of the UIWebView. This is certainly a lot easier to develop than hand-coding with Core Animation and related APIs. Secondly, he also shows Weinre – a tool for remote debugging Java Script.

Inter-app and app-web communication can realized using an app’s custom schemes. This mechanism enables an app to be registered for invocation, when the device is confronted with a URI, which specifies the custom protocol. What follows the protocol can be flexibly defined and exploited un a number of ways.

Heiko finally draws our attention to some clever strategies for enabling user-authentication. His example is based on Facebook. Many apps need to access the user’s Facebook account and this, of course, cannot occur without the user authentication. What Heiko shows is how an app (a simple example in this case – but it’ll work for any app) invokes the Facebook app (using a custom scheme) pin order to obtain an access token. Assuming the user has already logged into Facebook, then the Facebook splash screen is briefly shown before the devices switches back to the current app. If the user is not already logged into Facebook, he’ll be prompted to do so. Furthermore, this prompt comes from the Facebook app – an app he can (presumably) trust – which means phishing is less likely to be successful.

A very nice presentation from a gifted presenter. If Heiko comes to a conference near you: Go see him!

Visuelle Gestenerkennung by Andy Abgottspon – The Foundry

Andy begins by classifying various types of visual gesture recognition. Cites Xbox Kinect and other tools are proving increasingly popular.

He demos a simple app which tracks the user’s motion after he has configured it to track the position of his face and a couple of colourful gloves.

His implementation ia based on OpenFrameworks, OpenCV. The latter has been ported to Objective-C for use on iPad 2.

A simple algorithm is preferred because poerformance on the portable device is limited. The problem with 2-hand recognition is that the the recognised contours overlap. To deal with this, we need to consider the previous position of the contour. The size of the identifed contour can be used to recognise grab gestures.

Head tracking is supported by OpenCV.

Using colours to track hands is great except in situations where the colour can change. Even a grab action can cast a shadow which effectively changes the colour – potentially breaking the tracking.

Andy (with an assistent) demos a 3D game. This seems to work reasonably well.

He then goes on to describe possible applications. One interesting area is medicine, where touch screens cannot be used for hygene reasons.

Given what I’ve seen, I’m not actually sure there are that many applications of this technology (given it’s current state) beyond gaming, which may in itself be a gimmick and not much more. On mobile devices in particular, the “touch” paragim seems to be sufficient – and in practice far more performant – for most situations.

However, I’m not famous for my imagination, and I’ll probably be proven wrong sooner rather than later.

Still – a great talk, because I feel it has given the audience an opportunity to sense what the future may hold.

Entwicklung eigener Frameworks am Beispiel QuartzMaps by Felix Lamouroux of Biosphäre GmbH

This was a pretty technical talk about how to construct professional, reusable frameworks for use by other parties.

Felix talked firstly about how to create intuitive APIs by following the maxim WWAD – What Would Apple Do? He went into some detail about how best to handle internationalized elements, provision of constants etc. Finally, he described how to best package the framework.

This was first class presentation… a MUST for everybody who wants to learn how to create reusable components for themselves and others.

Big thanks to Felix Lamouroux and the creators of QuartzMaps!

Schönere Apps verkaufen sich besser! from Dr. Stephan Gillmeier

My good friend and colleague Stephan shares his deep experience in the creation of gorgeous looking graphics and animation.

Key message: It’s all about the experience! From the first encounter with the product though to daily usage and beyond.

According to Stephan, Interface Builder (the drag and drop UI designed built into XCode) on its own is not flexible enough for the creation of truly stunning UIs. However, Apple provides APIs which enables programmatic realisation of such interfaces: QuartzCore, CoreGraphics, CoreAnimation.

Stephan shows how – with relatively little programming effort – subtle but profound improvements in the UI experience can be achieved.

To finish up, he recommends that as much up-front preparation of images as possible should be made. The reason for this is that despite the power of the aforementioned APIs, their use comes at a relatively high cost in terms of computing power. Graphics can be prepared in advance using tools like Keynote, Photoshop, Preview.

After seeing this presentation I feel both inspired and empowered to make big improvements in my UIs. Still, it’s not clear to a geek like me how one comes up with ideas in the first place. I remain convinced that not everybody possesses an aesthetic sense. Not everybody is like Stephan G or, for that matter, Steve Jobs.

Thomas Dohmke @ashtom presents “Der nächste Crash kommt bestimmt” = “The next crash is guaranteed”

This is a highly technical talk, the primary focus of which is how to capture crash data.

I won’t go into the details here but, speaking as an iOS developer, I found Thomas’ hints and tips extremely useful.

Anyone who’s developed apps for iOS knows that the typical stack trace is all but incomprehensible. Furthermore, now that stack traces are being generated on mobile devices, the potentially valuable information that the stack trace provides should not be kept secret.

Thank’s to Thomas, I have now learned about a number if tools, services and techniques which can be used to tap into this treasure chest of information.

To name some of these briefly:

AirBrake, Bugsense, HockeyApp, JIRA Mobile Connect, TestFlight, PLCrashReporter, atos, symbolicatecrash, CodeRunner.

This was my talk and so I can hardly deliver an objective opinion regarding content and other quality attributes.

What I can say however, is that the questions raised during and at the end of the talk were very interesting. I even received a couple of of personal compliments – with no questions attached – which is (a) very generous; (b) received with extreme gratitude.

Should any of the participants read this post… please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.

Thanks to everyone who came and thanks to Stephan Gillmeier for giving me the opportunity!

“Prototypen im UI-Design” from Werner Jainek (Cultured Code)

Werner comments that books on UI design don’t emphasise the design process.

The Things app won Apple Design award.

Key points:
- Communication/interaction with the user
- Iteration: required to move from vage ideas to something useful

Werner correctly observes that programming the UI in order to get user feedback is expensive. This is especially true of iOS apps. In prototyping, just as important as time-savingis the avoidance of concern with irrelevant details. Prototying enables you to focus on the “essential”. Therefore: Start with paper prototying.

Trade-off example: Safari on iPad: Use tabs (quicker) or use the “desktop” (more intuitive) metaphor? iOS5 moved to tabs.

Werner describes some of the iterations that the Things app went through.

Interesting is that the ideas – from iteration to iteration – are actually quite different. It’s important not to be afraid to throw away stuff that doesn’t work.

Be aware, Werner says, that the 80/20 rule doesn’t always work. The rule being: If 80% want the feature it’s in; otherwise, don’t bother. You need to be aware of who the 100% is. Finalcut: The 100% is the movie editing professionals – or at least those that want to edit professionaly. Here is not appropriate to exclude features because they’re not required by 20%.

Now Werner takes up through several aspects of the iterations, which were experienced during the development of the Things app.

Introduction from Sebastian Meyen, Chief Content Officer of the conference.

States the main theme of the conference. Roughly: “The mobile revolution is over. Now we’re in the middle of a “mobile transformation”. Why? Because the expectations of today are that Mobile services deliver real substance and business value; forthermore, user-expectations have increased dramatically.”

For example, app designs must address very specific use cases. Functionality must be focussed on this. There is no room for “ok” usability. Furthermore, technology must be performant, robust, secure.

Next up: “Jetzt gibt’s auf die Ohren: Sound wird Mobile” with Maks Giordano

Maks delivers a nice reminder how mobile voice has developed over the years. Lots of nostalgic pics previous generations of mobile devices. Maks reminds is that sound one of several factors important in the user-experience, the importance of which is being demonstrated by many recent apps.

Next up: Manfred Lutzky of Fraunhofer IIS

Frauenhofer responsible for Mp3 and AAC-ELD.

Manfred talks about full-HD voice: Up to 20’000 hz, which means it sounds like you’re hearing the sound directly. AAC-ELD is a full-hd codec. Facetime (apparently) uses this.

Interesting observation: Conventional phone or any sub-20’000hz audio quality relies on the human brain’s capacity to compensate for ambiguities resulting from the information loss. This requires an effort – even if subconscious – to process. Improving sound quality therefore improves the user-experience in a very profound way.

Next up: Philipp Eibach of wahwah.fm Nunatak

Presents wah-wah fm. Philipp critices the modern music experience: It has isolated listeners from one another. The Wah-wah app enables different parties to hear the same music at the same moment. It’s a a kind of decentralised personal radio.

Next up: Michael Breidenbrücker of Reality Jockey Ltd.

Michael describes the mobile device as music platform as opposed to player. Cool demo: Uses his iPhone as a mixing desk by rotating, shaking it etc. In “jogging mode” the beats adapt to the rhythm with which the device is being bounced. Very nice! Reality Jockey worked on one aspect of the “Inception” app – an app based on the movie of the same name.

The central concept is to adjust the music to the environment in realtime.

Michael describes how some early concepts arose before the social Internet wave. But it turned out that was too early. The culture changed and now the kind of experience this app offers matches user-expectations perfectly.

All in all: This was a great kick-off for the conference. Inspiring ideas and concepts. A great mix of academia and coolness!