MobUser

It has been a roller-coaster ride these last couple of months. We’ve made some amazing progress on our Mojax platform. I feel confident that we will be releasing Mojax v1.0 sometime during the month of November. Our first release of Mojax will include support for MIDP 2.0 devices as well as Blackberry. A BREW version is extremely close and will be released to the public sometime in December. The Windows Mobile version is delayed until Q1 next year.

New Features

• Numerous Security Enhancements
• Full Support for Modularized Moblets
• Animated GIF Support
• Full Branding Control (Load Screens, Application Icons, etc.)
• Performance Enhancements
• Fine Grained Error Handling
• Added “onTimeout” Event
• Added “onClear” Event
• Added “onReset” Event
• Screen Transitions
• Full Cookie Support
• Configurable Loading Screen
• Enhanced Resource Management
• Access to Containing Screen from Any Child Box
• Ability to Pass Parameters between Moblet Modules
• XML Entity Support

Last week mFoundry announced that Spotlight, which runs on Mojax, would support the iPhone. The question of how we would enable a Mojax Moblet to run on an iPhone has been a discussion topic around the expresso machine for several months. Mojax as a language is comprised of an XML based markup, CSS, Javascript, and a “Mobile” object model. By design, there is substantial overlap between the Mojax language and standard AJAX. As a result, the task of supporting iPhone will be the task of “transcoding” Mojax AJAX into standard AJAX.

Many approaches to transcoding Mojax were considered, but at the end of the day we decided that we would use OpenLaszlo as the target for the transcoder instead of directly transcoding MJX files into DHTML. I could list many reasons why OpenLaszlo is the better method of generating DHTML, but at the end of the day it came down to the fact that we all really hate working with HTML. OpenLaszlo’s language constructs and object model is pretty close to our own which will make the task of transcoding much simpler. An additional benefit to creating an OpenLaszlo transcoder is the fact that the Moblet, once transcoded, could also run as a Flash application.

It should be noted that by having a DHTML/AJAX transcoder for your Moblet also means that, in addition to running on an iPhone, your Moblets could also:

• Run within an iFrame on your website
• Run as a Gadget on your iGoogle home page
• Run as a portlet in Netvibes
• Run as a Widget on your Mac

Pretty cool stuff!

Technorati Tags: AJAX, mFoundry, mobile, mojax, OpenLaszlo, transcoding

We’ve been using Google Analytics to track the usage of all of our web sites for a while now and I must say that it is one of the best web analytics tools I have used. Lately I’ve been digging into the Javascript code that I have to include into a page so that it can be tracked to see if it is possible to leverage Google Analytics to track Moblet usage.

mojax applications are effectively Javascript applications that run on a mobile device and as such share many of the characteristics of a browser with a few notable exceptions. As a result it should be possible to make all the same asynchronous calls that a web browser makes to the google tracking service within a mobile application. The implications should be obvious but a solution like this would provide the best insight into how a moblet is used as well as ways to improve upon it. I’ll post again on this issue once I have something up and running!

With the release of GMail Mobile, Google is changing the way the mobile industry distributes mobile applications and is validating the demand for non-entertainment based mobile application services. Along with Google Maps Mobile, Google is distributing mobile applications for free and directly to the consumer. As companies start to see the success of Google’s mobile applications more will start to look to mobile as the natural extension to their existing web applications. The reality, however, of building a mobile application for mass-market devices is not something a typical company can deliver due to the expense of developing a mobile application that will actually run across so many different devices.

mojax was designed from the start to enable companies and individuals without the resources of Google to create equally compelling mobile applications that run across most mass-market devices. In effect, anyone with AJAX development experience will be able to create applications of the quality of Google in a fraction of the time and with the resources they already have. The future is looking very bright!

This is a question I get often from “techies” when I refer to mojax as a Moblie AJAX application framework. There is much confusion about this point, enough so that I think it deserves discussion.

First off (for those reading that are new to the concept) AJAX is an acronym that stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML and was coined by Jesse James Garrett to describe the use of client-side Javascript to create a rich user experience that rivals a desktop application but deployed within a browser. The power of an AJAX application over traditional software development is the fact that the code is relatively portable across operating systems, versioned and distributed from a central location, and authored in a high-level scripting language.

True AJAX support within all mobile browsers is a myth.
Mobile AJAX is what it sounds like, the use of AJAX concepts within a browser running on a mobile device. Companies like Opera, Mozilla, Nokia, and Access have all developed and deployed browsers capable of running an AJAX enabled web site … but these browsers only run on a handful of devices. True AJAX support within all mobile browsers is a myth. The leader in AJAX enabled browsers (IMHO) is Opera Moble by Opera. Opera Mobile however only runs on Series 60 and some Windows Mobile devices. Their Opera Mini product, which runs on most J2ME devices, is nothing like Opera Mobile and doesn’t support AJAX.

mojax is not a browser
mojax, conversely, is one of the worlds first Mobile AJAX Application Frameworks. Unlike traditional AJAX Web Frameworks, mojax Moblets do not run within a browser and are not subject to the availability and quality of a network connection. Also, unlike a web application running on a mobile device, a mojax moblet has access to lower level device features such as Camera API, Push Messaging, Bluetooth, Location Services, Contacts and more. mojax enables an AJAX savvy developer to produce an true mobile application that will run on most J2ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BREW devices without any need to port or test across the devices they wish to deploy.

Moblets are applications … not web sites
In fact, because mojax runs as an application and not a website, an mojax Moblet offers distinct advantages over a Mobile AJAX application running within a browser:

1. Local Data Storage (Caching)
All Moblets have access to a global object called Cache. Via this object, Moblets can persist state across application sessions. It can be used to store simple string values, large XML data models, or even images.

2. Offline capabilities
Unlike a browser based application, Moblets can be written to work offline. All the application logic is cached upon install and unless the application requires access to an internet resource (e.g. Web Service) then it is fully capable of running offline and without a network connection of any kind.

3. Access to device specific features
Browsers running on a mobile device are strickly limited to rendering a web page. Granted, in concept AJAX provides a very rich experience, but it doesn’t provide access to device specific features like Audio and Video playback, camera, LBS, and Bluetooth. These are all things that a Moblet running on mojax can access.