August 29, 2009
QuickConnectiPhone 1.5.0 is now available
QCiPhone 1.5.0 has just been uploaded to sourceForge. They are saying that it may take about 15 minutes to become visible as the default download for OS X machines.
A note to 3.0 API users. The dashcode QC template no longer appears as an option. I am looking for ways to get it to show up again.End
Because of the 3.0 Dashcode changes I have not been able to update the Dashcode examples to the latest QC source. All of the Xcode examples are updated.
The release includes examples of how to use the video and audio tags in booth QCiPhone and QCMac applications.
QuickConnectMac 1.0 is also included in this release. It allows you to create hybrid applications that run on Mac machines just like you do for the iPhone and iPod touch.
QuickConnectPHP 1.0 is another template that can be used on the Mac side. It isn’t used to create hybrid applications but is used to create PHP web applications.
Also included, for those interested, is QCErlang 1.0. It is an updated version of an Xcode template for developing erlang applications. It includes auto-completes for most of the commonly used functions.
Defect fixes in this release include:
1. UIWebView no longer ends up with a black background after re-displaying the Default.png file while the page loads.
2. DataAccessObject in-browser database use fixed and updated to new methodology for the retention of which BCF in the stack is to be called next.
3. Updated the embedded map code to use the current data passing scheme from and to Objective-C
4. HTML Elements with touch events inside of Elements made scrollable no longer react to ontouchstart, ontouchmove, and ontouchend unless the event is not due to scrolling
August 28, 2009
HTML 5 Video and Audio in UIWebView and WebView
I have been playing with the video and audio tags in the UIWebView on the iPhone and WebView on the Mac. I tried them in the QT WebView as well on linux. I am pleased to announce that they work great! I have tried it with mp3, mp4, and wmv. All worked on all three platforms.
It looks like this is a good way to display videos for your users to play in your hybrid applications.
Let’s say you have a video called someCrazyMovie.mp4 that you want to display to your users. On the iPhone or the Mac put it in the Resources group of your Xcode project that uses a UIWebView. Point the UIWebView to a local html file, also in the resources file.
In this html file put the following code.
<video src=”someCrazyMovie.mp4>A movie description as an alt</video>
When you run your application you will see the first frame of the video used as a representational image. You can play it by clicking it. On the iPhone and iPod touch the movie player launches to play the movie.
The tag lets you size it, display or not display the video controls, etc.
The audio tag is used much the same way.
I’ll include an example for both the iPhone and the Mac in the 1.5.0 release of QuickConnectiPhone 1.5.0
August 20, 2009
Belkin Skype phone not connecting
My son purchased the Belkin Skype phone and it came today. He was very excited to use it. We spent hours trolling the internet, trying to install updates as was suggested in many places and all kinds of goofy ideas to get this thing to work.
It turned out that the device reacts very negatively to WEP wireless access points. We had chosen WEP since the early iPod touchs and iPhones didn’t react well to WPA. Of course they do now.
To fix the “cannot connect to Network” problem all we had to do is switch from WEP to WPA. The Skype phone works great now. He also reports that the FaceBook iPhone app is working better now as well.
Go figure.
Turning off copy-paste in a UIWebView
This defect is now fixed. To turn off copy-paste for both mobile Safari and the UIWebView put webkit-user-select:none; in the CSS class of the body. To turn it on use webkit-user-select:none;
Or if you are using QuickConnect you can call copyPaste(false); to turn it off and copyPaste(true)to turn it on.
It looks like the latest version of iPhone OS 3.0 no longer allows you to use webkit-user-select:none; to turn off copy-paste. This is unfortunate. Hopefully this is only a defect. Granted, I have only tried this on the Simulator at this point, but it used to work there.
I have submitted this as a bug to apple (Bug ID# 7164604).
August 13, 2009
QuickConnectErlang now available for OS X
The latest version of QuickConnectiPhone includes QuickConnectErlang in the installer. QCErlang uses an Xcode plugin to speed and ease Erlang development on OS X. The plugin is based on the great work of Jón Grétar Borgþórsson and his xcode erlang plugin. I have used it to create a project template for erlSim. erlSim is a massively parallel discrete event simulator written in Erlang.
The plugin allows you to run your Erlang application from within Xcode and all terminal input and output happen in the Xcode Debugger Console. Compilation errors and warnings are displayed as bubbles in the source code files just like all other Xcode project types.
The plugin is not as complete as I would like it. I am identifying and fixing defects related to Code Sense. Currently the functions in the standard modules such as io, math, etc. are not working correctly with code sense. Hopefully I can identify the underlying problem soon and it will be fully up and running.
The installer also includes a template for a standard Erlang application without the QuickConnectErlang framework if you want to go that route.
QuickConnectiPhone 1.5 RC_4 Released
The latest release candidate for QCiPhone 1.5 is now available. It adds in the missing makeScrollable code in the QCUtilities.js file. If no new defects are reported this code set will go release on August 18th.
August 4, 2009
I’m going to be speaking at a Voices that Matter
I’ve been asked to speak at the Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference on October 17th and 18th. It is going to be in Boston. I’m looking forward to speaking and meeting with those who attend. It would be a great time for me to get more feedback from you about QuickConnectiPhone and the book.
I’m speaking about hybrid application iPhone development
If you register before September 12th you can get $200 off the price. I’m also distributing my speaker discount code, PHASPKR. That will get you another $150 off.
Here is the link to the conference page. http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/iphone2009/.
Hope to see you there
New License
Because of the confusion over the LPGP license of QuickConnectiPhone it is now available under the MIT license. It is still open source and free to use to create either open or closed, free or for-cost applications.
I hope this clears up any licensing issues you may have had.
August 3, 2009
QuickConnect 1.5 RC 2 now available
Release Candidate 2 is now downloadable from sourceForge. It fixes a dashcode template corruption error and decreases the download size.
Teton Technical 