George McKinney Adventures in Software Development

July 4, 2014

Create, Build & Install BlackBerry WebWorks 2 Mobile App via Command Line

Filed under: BB10,BlackBerry,Cordova — Tags: , , , — georgemck @ 12:25 am

With the coming release of BlackBerry 10.3, there is renewed interest in BlackBerry app development. This is a quick example of how to build and install the default BlackBerry 10 application that comes with WebWorks onto a mobile device.

WebWorks command line leverages Apache Cordova so many of the same commands work. Cordova requires Node.js. When you install the WebWorks SDK 2.0, it will come with Node.js. Get the WebWorks SDK at https://developer.blackberry.com/html5/download. I always install with administrator privileges.

Open up terminal or a DOS command prompt and make sure that you can type WebWorks and see that it is installed

webworks

WebWorks in the command line

WebWorks in the command line

Next you can create your mobile application project,

webworks create firstapp com.example.firstapp

and change to its project directory

cd firstapp

If you go a little further you will see the config.xml inside the www folder. This file gives instructions to the compiler when it builds your mobile app. To test this default application, you don’t need to change this. You can build the app with the following

webworks build

and this is what you will see:

Created a BB10 Mobile App Bar file

WebWorks in the command line

To install the application, you can change directory to where it built it and then install it from there. Your device may need a debug token to install, it will let you know if you do.

blackberry-deploy -installApp -password your_password_goes_here -device 169.254.0.1 bb10app.bar

Since I put my device in developer mode, the IP address it gave me was 169.254.0.1.

Install App by Command Line

Install App by Command Line

We can see installed app:

App Icon

App Icon

Just tap on it to open it:

App running

App running

So, pretty nice… Some extra thoughts: To install the app on a device, you will need signing keys. you can get them for free from BlackBerry: https://www.blackberry.com/SignedKeys/codesigning.html Be sure to register as a BlackBerry developer first, https://developer.blackberry.com which will attach your developer account with your BlackBerry ID; this can be the same one you use for BlackBerry Messenger!

Hope you enjoyed it. Have any comments, send me a message on my Twitter account, @georgemck.

August 25, 2012

Create a Mobile App in 30 Minutes!

Getting Started with PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build

This is a brief overview of how to build mobile applications using the PhoneGap framework.

Using a text editor and a web browser and a few images, a Hello LA PhoneGap application will be built

You can download the project at http://laphonegap.org/HelloLAPhoneGap.zip

June 18, 2012

Windows Phone 7 Apps with Metro UI

Filed under: PhoneGap,PhoneGap Build,Windows Phone 7 — Tags: , , , , , — georgemck @ 3:54 pm

April 24, 2012

Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 on Samsung Nexus S

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — georgemck @ 11:56 am

Last fall, I attended the Sprint Open Solutions Conference for Developers http://developer.sprint.com/dynamicContent/devcon2011. It was a great experience for me since I first became a customer in 1997. My first cellphone was a Samsung way back then which was a huge step up from my Motorola beeper!

Anyways, they gave all conference attendees the Samsung-manufactured Google Nexus S, which is running the unmodified Gingerbread Android operating system with NFC and a beautiful screen. Lots of fun.

Unfortunately, the phone only came with 1 month of service and then it became a wifi only device for me. Fast forward a few months and Google released Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich. I wanted the new OS for my phone but I didn’t want to root it so I have been waiting for the Over-the-Air (OTA) update from Sprint.

That day has come. In order to get the update, I went to a Sprint Service Center Store in Los Angeles. There, the staffperson swapped out my old phone and did a hard reset on the Nexus S wiping out all the data . After entering a few codes on her computer and into the phone, the phone came back to life. Within an hour the OTA update was ready. I installed without issue transforming it from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich.

Since I am a developer I figured it was high time for me to start programming this phone. This required installing the right Samsung device driver.

The basic instructions are 1) get the device driver. I used this one for Windows: . You could also find it from the Samsung website thought it’s a little more difficult to navigate. Next, 2) you have to connect the phone via USB and get to the Device Manager. It will show that the driver is not installed properly. 3) You open it up and select update driver. Browse and then select from the List of installed drivers for Samsung’s and then find the one for ADB Interface. I followed the instructions from this Youtube video.

First thing I did was put a Cordova (HTML5 PhoneGap) game I wrote onto the Nexus S. More on that later…

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