Key Features

As mentioned, the big feature that had been missing from webOS was video recording.  Palm has delivered with not only video recording but on-device editing and sharing of videos.  Check out the video below for a hands-on demo of video recording.  The other big feature we were told to expect is Flash 10.1.  While Flash 10.1 is not included with the software update you can visit the App Catalog to download a Beta version of Flash soon.

Here’s the official Palm blog announcement as well as the Palm webOS update feature page.

Enhancements

The most visible enhancement to webOS 1.4 is the new launcher animation:  When apps launch now a window with the App’s icon is shown until the app is loaded.  The next enhancement has been expected every update since it first appeared in the code: LED blink notifications.  Indeed, the patch to enable the notifications has been one of the most popular patches.  This feature causes the center button on the Pre (and the LED behind the gesture area in the Pre Plus) to flash periodically when the phone is off and there are pending notifications.

One area of improvement touted in the release notes is performance and battery life.  Specifically, the performance of the phone, mail and calendar apps has been enhanced.  Further, several of the apps have been enhanced to make it easier to e-mail or dial embedded contacts and phone numbers.  Additionally, you can now choose whether Wi-Fi turns off or not when the screen turns off.

Another enhancement is that the old POP e-mail behavior is back as an optional setting:  You can choose to have e-mail that is deleted off the POP server deleted from the phone.  A welcome change for those who only use their phone to check e-mail when away from a desktop.

Fixes

Several bugs were reported fixed with this version.  These fixes included mail attachment issues, contact synchronization issues  See below for the link to the version notes.

Under the Hood

As always, a number of enhancements did not make it into the official change log.  In particular, developers will likely have access to new features, though the official SDK has not yet been released.  What is visible is that the browser has been updated to a more recent WebKit release.  It now scores a 92 out of 100 on the Acid3 test.  Over the course of the next few days we’ll gather some of the other changes that didn’t make it into the release notes and update you with them here.  Please use the comments below to add new features you’ve found.

Version Notes

Here are links to the version notes:

• Sprint Palm Pre
• Sprint Palm Pixi
• Verizon Palm Pre
• Verizon Palm Pixi (Link please?)
• O2 Palm Pre (updated)
• O2 Palm Pixi (Link please?)
• Movistar Palm Pre (Not updated as of 1:28 AM EST, 2/28/10)
• Movistar Palm Pixi (Link please?)

Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s Chairman and CEO, took the stage in Las Vegas to recount where Palm’s been and tell us where Palm’s going.  Click on the video to watch the entire 50 minute presentation.

The follow are the key points:

Hot Apps Bonus Program

Katie Mitic, Palm’s SVP of Product Marketing, announced $1 million in prizes to be awarded to top webOS developers.  The prizes are open to both free and paid apps developed using Palm’s existing Mojo SDK.  The prizes are tiered as follows:  $100,000 each to the top downloaded free and paid app, $10,000 each to the developers of the next two most downloaded free and paid apps and $1000 each to the developers of the next 200 most downloaded free and paid apps.  The download period will be between February 1, 2010, and May 31, 2010.  Drop by the newly relaunched Developer Center to get started developing your app today.

3D Gaming Comes to the Palm Pre

The announcement that got the most reaction was the release of 3D accelerated games, made available by Palm’s new Plugin Development Kit (or PDK).  Joining Palm onstage to make the announcement was Travis Boatman, VP Worldwide Studios for EA Mobile, who introduced some of their new titles.  In all, twelve PDK titles are available in the App Catalog, including the much hyped Need For Speed Undercover, The Sims 3, X-Plane 9 and Tetris.  You can see a video review of Gameloft’s Ashpalt 5 on WebOS Roundup.

More important than the release of these twelve games, though, was the PDK itself.   The PDK allows for development of applications that work with webOS but that are developed with C and C++ — in other words, native applications.  One of the criticisms from some developers is that Palm’s Mojo SDK, based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, is too slow for some types of applications.  The PDK, and the fact that Palm has been testing this with some partners possibly since the release of webOS, indicates that Palm was well aware of this and has a solution.

While we’re excited about the release of the PDK we’re not sure that the capabilities of the Canvas element have been fully realized by game developers.  As Frank Zammetti pointed out, there is a tremendous potential for applications developed with existing Web standards.  Particularly as we see technologies such as WebGL get included in webOS.  Further, battery draw from games that tap the GPU will likely be big issue.

The PDK is scheduled for release in March on the Palm Pre and a later date for the Pixi.  In case you missed the significance of the statement, the 3D games available today in the App Catalog are only available for the Pre, not the Pixi.  Those missing 80 pixels could be very significant indeed.

Video Recording, Editing and Sharing

Those of you who’ve been following the homebrew announcements knew that video recording is possible on existing webOS devices.  It was only a matter of time before Palm incorporated the feature into the OS.  Palm demonstrated their upcoming video recording functionality at CES.  What they also demonstrated was the integrated video editing and sharing capability.  With a few clicks, Paul Cousineau, Director of Product Marketing at Palm, edited a video he shot live at the event then uploaded it to You Tube.  After it was uploaded, he used another feature to share the video with his Facebook feed.

Many have criticized Palm for not having the feature available before now.  Hopefully, this very slick implementation will go a long way towards smoothing any ruffled feathers.  What’s more important is that this feature will be included with webOS 1.4, another free update available to all webOS devices sometime in February.  Although it wasn’t discussed, we hope that audio recording will also be included in 1.4.

Flash 10.1

It was confirmed that Flash 10.1 will be available soon.  According to Paul Cousineau Flash 10.1 will be available for download from the App Catalog.  This feature will open up the Web even further for webOS devices.  Some have pointed out that the recently announced SlingPlayer, being Flash-based, will work on webOS, allowing you to watch and control your TV on your Pre or Pixi.

The Pre Plus and Pixi Plus

Palm also showed off the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus smartphones at CES.  The Pre Plus sports double the memory and storage (512 MB RAM, 16 GB Flash) of the original Pre and sheds the center button.  The Pixi Plus adds WiFi and more storage and memory.  Both devices will ship with Touchstone compatible backs.  These two phones will be Verizon exclusives (see below).  No doubt the increased memory and storage will be important for applications developed with the PDK, as many users have noted that the 3D apps sometimes fail to launch with the dreaded ‘too many cards open’ message.

Another Verizon exclusive will be the ability to use the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus as a MiFi hotspot, allowing up to five devices to share the 3G connection.  All you’ll need to get your laptop online is the app and a webOS device on Verizon.  What was not disclosed is how much the data plan for that will cost.

New Networks

Palm announced two new network partners at CES:  SFR in France and Verizon Wireless in the US.  As mentioned above, Verizon will be getting an exclusive on the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus (at least in the US).  Verizon currently has about double the subscriber base of Sprint in the US so this opens up a huge market for Palm and app developers.  What remains to be seen is how Verizon will promote the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.  If they are half as successful as they were with their Droid Does campaign then the more consumer-focused webOS devices will sell very well.

Analysis

It seemed that Palm’s announcements were targeted very strongly towards developers.  Palm realizes that in order to compete with Apple and Android its important to have apps.  The opening of the developer program, the freeing of the app distribution process, the Hot Apps program and the PDK all point to the fact that Palm is deadly serious about expanding its App Catalog.  Palm is actively courting developers and is making it clear that they embrace openness, even giving a ’shout out’ to the homebrew community at CES.  This is very exciting news and this strategy will very likely bear fruit.

What a strikingly different out-of-box experience awaits those users whose first webOS device runs webOS 1.4 as compared to those of us who started with the first release of webOS.  Certainly the underlying OS that we all love hasn’t drastically changed but the power, features and available apps have grown tremendously.  Kudos to Palm for the customer focus and rapid updates.  This is clearly one area where Palm outshines Apple and Android.  Many Android devices are stuck on older versions of the OS and are unlikely to ever see updates and Apple’s releases are slow in coming.

Prior to CES we predicted a number of things.  We got most of them right.  We missed on seeing a non-Palm branded webOS devices and we didn’t have any clue about the Hot Apps program.  However, what was most important about CES is that Palm has again generated buzz.  They showed that Palm was not to be ignored in the smartphone wars of 2010.  They reinforced that they are committed to extending the functionality of their devices through more updates to the OS.  They showed they’re committed to reaching more end users.  We think 2010 will be a great year for Palm and a great year for webOS users.

Other Reviews of Palm at CES

All Things Digital agrees that Palm has shaken things up once again.  Slashdot has some coverage of the Hot Apps Program.  Ars Technica ha a writeup about CES.  PC Magazine has a hands-on with the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.  About Palm Pre has some interesting thoughts on Palm’s developer strategy that mirror our own.  And, of course, PreCentral has a lot of articles about CES.

Overview

Palm has released webOS version 1.3.5.  Pre and Pixi users on select carriers can now download the latest version of webOS by launching their Updates app.  A quick note for those who dabble with patches and themes:  remove them before attempting to install the update.  This latest version of webOS uses a new patching process that keeps the size down by applying only the difference between the original files and the changed files.  This new update is only 13 MB, compared with the ~60 MB downloads from the previous updates.  In order to insure it works correctly, clear out any changes you’ve made to system files.

Another aspect of the update is that it will take some time to complete, so don’t be impatient and definitely don’t pull the battery during installation.  The solution to the app install limit requires that apps must be migrated to the USB partition.  This process takes place after the phone boots for the first time and can take a while to complete.  This process will slow the phone down so be patient if the phone seems a bit sluggish at first.  This is normal.  You’ll be able to enjoy the speed enhancements as soon as it completes.

Homebrew Notice

As mentioned, be sure to uninstall all patches and themes before updating.  For those who rely on Preware for patches, themes and homebrew apps, be sure to update the Package Manager Service and reboot before starting the over-the-air update of webOS.  Also, once 1.3.5 has updated, be sure to use the ‘Update Feeds’ menu option to update to the 1.3.5 feeds.

If you have already updated to webOS 1.3.5 and Preware or the App Catalog has stopped working for you, use WebOS Quick Install to re-install the Package Manager Service from the WebOS-Internals (all) feed.  Included with the latest version of Preware is an app called Emergency Migration Helper (EMH).  This app will fix the problem.  Please read this post and this one for more information.  For those confused by the Aussie-ism, here’s a link to some information on dog’s breakfast.

This problem can also affect homebrew services applied with WebOS Quick Install as well.  If you don’t use Preware and have installed services with WebOS Quick Install you may want to either uninstall all services or install Preware and use the EMH.

Update Information

Here are the update highlights:

• Downloaded apps can now take advantage of all of the phone’s storage capacity
• Better battery management in areas with poor coverage
• App Catalog has been improved, including background downloading of apps and one-touch updates of installed apps
• Improved speed in Calendar day view
• Pixi (and Pre) users can now download updates in areas without 3G coverage

You can read the details for Sprint customers:  Pre and Pixi versions.   The only difference we could spot between the Pre and Pixi updates was the following additional Pixi item:

This release includes improvements to help ensure consistent phone response to user actions, including times when the user is using multiple applications/features at the same time.

There are likely a number of under-the-hood and undocumented changes that occurred.  We’ll try to update the post later with the new information.  In the meantime, you can check out this PreCentral post.

OpenGL Appears

We were tipped off by Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals that within this OS update were the drivers necessary for OpenGL support.  For those who don’t know, OpenGL is a cross-platform library for creating 2D and 3D graphics.  The Palm Pre and Pixi smartphones include a GPU for hardware accelerated graphics.  These drivers will allow certain applications to take advantage of that GPU.  As you may remember, there was a leaked video of a Pre running Need for Speed.  This article over at PreCentral points out that the video seems to be the genuine article.  This should mean that developers will now be able to produce much more graphics-intense apps.

Update Issues

Some users have reported problems with the update hanging during the install.  Please be aware that the update process does take a long time (30 minutes or more according to some).  My own Pre got stuck for over an hour.  To resolve the issue I rebooted the Pre using Orange-Sym-R.  After restarting the install process was able to continue and complete.  This should only be used as a last resort, though.  Be certain the process is stuck and not just slow before attempting it.  There’s a thread at PreCentral discussing webOS 1.3.5 update issues.

SDK

[Update]  The official webOS 1.3.5 SDK has been released.  Developers can now download the SDK and take advantage of the new features.  One new feature available to developers is the ability to set the accelerometer to high-speed mode, hopefully allowing for smoothing control on games that use tilting for control.

CC Photo by {eclaire}

Welcome to the Wednesday News Roundup. This week marks the first Roundup shared with our new friends over at webOSroundup. This week the big story is Palm’s new legal woes.  After that, we’ll cover some news for webOS developers.  Lastly, we’ll cover the good news in the Roundup.

Troubled Waters for Palm

Legally speaking, it was a rough week for Palm:  Palm received notice of two pending lawsuits.  The first was filed by Artifex Software, a California based company that develops, among other things, muPDF, which Palm used in developing the PDF reader application included with webOS.  Artifex claims that Palm included their muPDF software without either purchasing a commercial license or complying with the terms of the GPL.  There is no indication that Artifex has approached Palm regarding this.  Palm acknowledges using the muPDF and has even made available the changes they have made to that and other Open Source projects.  The crux of the problem seems to be that Palm did not make their entire PDF application source available online.  Depending on how Palm is using the muPDF software Artifex may be correct that Palm has not fully complied with the GPL.  However, it seems like this is likely an oversight on Palm’s part and a strong-arm tactic on Artifex’s part.  Artifex is no doubt hoping to get some headlines and possibly coerce Palm into a commercial license.  Palm will not likely be able publicly to respond given that the suit has been filed.

Perhaps more troubling is the lawsuit seeking class-action status against Palm and Sprint over the recent loss of information stored in users’ Palm Profiles.  If you haven’t heard about it there is some information in this PreCentral article.  In short, Palm does not keep multiple backups of  information backed up to the cloud.  If the data on the phone becomes corrupted or the phone did not back up properly the data may be lost when replacing phones or upgrading the operating system.  For those who are concerned about data loss we recommend looking to third-party solutions for local backup, such as The Missing Sync (PC or Mac) or Chapura PocketMirror (PC only).

Although the data loss has apparently only affected a small number of people it can be devastating to lose any information.  Hopefully this push Palm towards developing a more robust system for protecting data stored on webOS devices.  We also hope it won’t unnecessarily line lawyers’ pockets.

Developers, Developers…  You get the idea

Two stories from the past week bode well for webOS developers.  First, mobile ad company AdMob (recently acquired by Google) has released an open-source SDK for webOS developers who want to use the AdMob network.  AdMob is one of the largest players in the mobile ad space.  This will allow developers to more easily integrate ads, which should translate into more free applications (or, ad-supported trial versions of paid applications) in the App Catalog.  Second, mobile application development tool PhoneGap announced support for webOS.  PhoneGap is a cross-platform tool that leverages Web technologies (much like Mojo development itself) to create native apps for multiple devices.  This should lead even more developers to look at webOS as a platform for distributing applications.

Roundup

PC Magazine (They still print magazines?  Who knew?) selected the Palm Pre as the most innovative new platform in their list of Best Tech Products of 2009.  It’s not surprising then, that Ellen DeGeneres gave away the webOS based Palm Pixi with the tech bundle she gave out on the first day of her 12 Days of Giveaways (see the video below).  Finally, if you’re interested in setting up Google Voice, PreCentral has an excellent article on setting up visual voicemail with webOS using the service.  Did you hear about something we didn’t cover?  Have some comments?  Sound off in the comments below or hop over to our twitter feed.

For those not familiar with webOSroundup, they are a site dedicated to providing reviews of webOS applications.  Their reviews not only discuss the merits of the apps but also include videos so you can see what you’re getting.  We’re very excited to have their content featured here.

We welcome your feedback so please feel free to speak up.  You can follow us both on Twitter: @Pre101 and @webOSroundup.

Photo by {eclaire} CC

This week brings us more news of updates to webOS:  Pixi users have already received webOS 1.3.2 and there are rumors of webOS 1.3.5 coming soon.  These were the two big stories.  Read on for the details and the Roundup at the bottom.

webOS 1.3.2 for Pixi

It seems like just yesterday webOS 1.3.1 came out and now Palm has released version 1.3.2.  The version notes indicate that there were “several security issues” that were fixed.  As the fix did not simultaneously come out for the Pre we can only speculate that the problems either did not affect the Pre or the other fixes to the Pixi were significant enough to require the early release.  Pixi owners who have not received the update notification are urged to hit the Updates app to begin the download.  Just be sure you have an EVDO signal!

webOS 1.3.5 Rumors

As if 1.3.2 weren’t enough, Palm is reportedly preparing webOS 1.3.5.  Although details are sketchy PreCentral reports that the app download limit we’ve discussed before will finally be eliminated.  If true, this is certainly welcome news for developers, many of whom have told us they have been losing sales due to customers not being able to download more apps for their Pre and Pixi smartphones.  People will need the extra install space as the App Catalog (in the US) is now up to 519 apps.

Roundup

The WebOS Internals folks have been busy again.  This time, they’ve previewed a Game Boy emulator running on the Pre.  Check the bottom of the page for links to videos of the emulator running on the Pre.  Our friends over at Self Aware Games have finally gotten Word Ace printed cards for those times your friends are actually over in person.  Supplies are limited so order now if you want them!  That’s the big stuff for this week.  If you know of anything else please send us a tip in the comments below or tweet us on Twitter.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to Palm. Who is Chuq?

I’ve been with Palm since February 2009. Prior to that I was a web developer and community manager for Laszlo Systems. Prior jobs included Strongmail, 17 years at Apple doing lots of different things, four years at Sun Microsystems, and jobs at a number of startups that no longer exist. I took my first computer job around 1978 and I’ve never regretted it.

I came to Palm because I really felt webOS and the Pre had a lot of potential and I was really interested in getting involved in mobile computing. I owned one of the first Palm Pilots and over the years I’ve tried pretty much every phone platform and never felt any of them did everything I wanted them to do. I have a chance here to influence some of that.

Your title is Developer Community Manager. What exactly does a Developer Community Manager do?

I view my job as having three three major components:

First, I manage the technical pieces of the developer portal and administer the forums. The goal is to have a good environment for developers to get the information they need to develop their applications and learn from each other. I also spend time trying to see what works in other communities and looking for new tools and new techniques to improve the developer portal and the community.

Second, I am one of the conduits of information from Palm out into the developer community. Part of that is to try to identify information that the developers should have and convince people to release it or otherwise get it where they can access it.

Finally, I’m a contact point for developers and part of my role is watching what is being said and written about Palm and identifying issues that need to be communicated to people within the company. Sometimes that’s helping someone find the right person to talk to, sometimes that’s filing a bug that’s been reported, sometimes that’s seeing a discussion start and making people aware of it. It’s part listener, part filter, part editor and sometimes part amplifier. A big part of my job is listening and putting the pieces together and then passing them around.

Why is it important for the average user that Palm has a Developer Community Manager?

An important aspect of the success of a smartphone like the Pre and the webOS platform is the applications available for it. You need a platform developers want to write applications for and create a platform that allows them to write the best applications they can. Part of my role is to make that happen (and the rest of my role is to help everyone else at Palm make it happen).

Recently Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer joined Palm as co-leads of Developer Relations. How does their position relate to yours?

They are my co-bosses. I’m in the marketing side of the company, reporting through them up to Katie Mitic.

Palm recently announced some major changes to the way the App Catalog and app distribution will work. Would you say these changes were directly the result of Ben and Dion or that these changes reflect Palm’s original goal?

Yes and no. Much of what’s been announced with the App Catalog and our distribution plan has been in the works for a while; a number of people in engineering have put in a lot of time and energy in figuring this out. Ben and Dion coming on board has given us access to their experience as well, and they have a vision for how this can all work that is helping us refine our plans and expand what we want to offer to developers down the road.

Will Palm’s embracing of open source extend to open sourcing the Mojo framework?

At this point, we haven’t announced anything on this.

There was some criticism of the state of the documentation when the SDK was first opened to beta testing. What plans have been put into place to improve developer resources?

It’s still a work in progress, but we’re looking to improve this in a number of ways. We’ve been talking over ways to allow the community to help us expand and improve the documentation. We’re looking at how best to make the documentation available and in what formats. We’re working to add resources to the writing team and make sure the engineering teams help us document what they’re building well, and we want to find the best way to make beta versions of the docs available to developers as part of the early access program. We still have work to do here.

How different is the experience for a developer joining the program today versus the experience for those who were part of the Early Access Program?

Early on, webOS was a brand new platform, and I don’t think anyone really understood well what made a “good app” or a “great app”; now I think everyone is learning how to take advantage of the platform and the apps are getting better and more complex. Sharing knowledge on technique is an important aspect of this, which is why I love how our communities have come together to help each other learn. Initially we tended to see everything as a “webOS app”, but we’ve realized different types of apps have different needs, which is why documents like our Immersive Apps Guidelines are helping us adopt and share techniques as we understand how developers are taking the platform in directions we weren’t expecting.

The SDK is maturing and the software is getting needed functionality, and so now developers coming to the platform have a more stable and functional base to develop on, and more knowledge to help avoid the pitfalls that exist on any platform. The earliest developers were real trailblazers, and I don’t think most people realize just how far the platform has grown and matured in the last few months.

What role can Palm play, outside of http://developer.palm.com, to encourage and participate in the development of an active user and developer community?

One of the things I love about what I do is our relationship with the homebrewers. Even the fact that they define themselves as “homebrewers” instead of “jailbreakers” says a lot about how both sides view this. My management has allowed me to get some of the homebrew developers into our early access program and the homebrew community has been very supportive of us, and I want to do everything I can to see Palm and these developers continue to work together to make the platform better.

I’ve also tried to encourage people to get involved with non-Palm-managed communities where I think it makes sense to work with a group rather than have Palm try to duplicate what is already being done elsewhere. Many companies feel they have to “own” everything; I’m trying to encourage a mindset that it’s more important to make sure it happens and that it’s well done, and as long as we all work together, we’re working for the common good.

Anyone who’s followed you on Twitter knows that you’re very interested in birding and photography. How did you get interested in them?

I’ve lived with a bird for a couple of decades now, currently sharing a house with an umbrella cockatoo named Tatiana. I was a photographer in high school and earlier in life, but gave it up to focus on other things, but the digital camera revived my interest and my interest in nature photography, my current passion — the two came together, and I’ve really gotten interested in birds in the wild and their habitat and behavior and documenting that through the lens.

What do you want Pre101’s readers to know?

A big part of my job is listening — listening to developers and finding out what they need, listening to users so I can help developers write apps that users want and will use. I love having developers bounce possible project ideas off me. If they have questions, the developer forums are the place to put them, both because it allows the community to get involved in answering them and it helps create a knowledge base that others can benefit from later when they have similar questions. Developers who have questions or issues they can’t seem to resolve should track me down and talk to me about them — I’ll see what I can do to help.

Last question:  What’s your favorite pizza topping?

These days, I’m trying to eat healthier, so I’m eating more Canadian bacon (Hawaiian style with pineapple). In the bad old days, it was sausage or pepperoni.   But my REAL favorite… which is a bit bizarre, is smoked salmon. Do a pizza with a sauce based on creme fraiche and a bit of tartar sauce, and top with smoked salmon and capers.

Sounds good to me!  And with that, thank you, Chuq.

Chuq Von Rospach can be reached at pdn@palm.com, you can follow his official Twitter feed: @webOSdev.

Pixi Cometh

The Palm Pixi will officially be released on the 15th. However, it’s already making appearances and there are a number of reviews of the new smartphone. We’ve seen the a Pixi commercial (see below), which we like a lot better than the Pre commercials. Two things of note: Wal*Mart is pricing the Pixi at $30 (unbelievably low for a smartphone) and Palm has announced the availability of the first artist series back covers. Check out the links for more information about its features.

Developers Wanted

Developers who signed up with Palm to receive the SDK but who were not yet part of the pre-release program received e-mails today inviting them to participate in the developer program before it goes live in December. We have heard from internal Palm resources that they’ve got a good handle on the app process and should be able to process apps without the long delays that some developers have seen. If you want to know more about developing apps for webOS, check out webOS 101 or watch the videos of webOS School’s sessions at Iowa Code Camp.

Ares Makes War On Complexity

Recently Palm demonstrated a new webOS app development tool called Ares. Ares allows developers to create, test and deploy apps within a browser. It supports dragging and dropping of components and provides a means for developers to apply actions to them. Although developing for webOS is already very simple (requiring knowledge of JavaScript, HTML and CSS) it does require downloading and installing an SDK. Ares should open up app creation to developers with fewer resources or training in webOS. Whether this translates into better apps or not remains to be seen.

Roundup

This week also saw a couple of developments in the homebrew scene: An irc client was released and Preware updated to a new version that is capable of installing patches on webOS versions 1.1.3 to 1.3.1, so Pixi owners will be able to install on day one and have access to over 90 patches, 680 themes and 250 applications. In a welcome change, Sprint did away with conditional call forwarding tariffs so now users of Google Voice and similar services can forward calls from their phones. Lastly, Merrill Lynch had a meeting with Palm management who convinced them to upgrade Palm’s stock. As always, check us out on Twitter and feel free to comment below!

In the old days, in order to make HTML look the way you wanted, you used more HTML. Every element had to be individually styled, using ribbons of FONT and CENTER and B tags. Then CSS came along and gave web developers the ability to group elements into classes with similar display characteristics. The world heaved a sigh of relief, and developers started making more complicated websites, confident that site styling would not get in the way of functionality.

Then JavaScript and AJAX became popular, and suddenly it became commonplace for elements to have their classes modified by JavaScript, based on the results of AJAX calls from the server. When an element’s class changes, it is updated instantaneously to reflect the styles associated with the new class. That’s fine for some stuff, but sometimes you want the transition between classes to be a bit more, um, classy. Let’s say your site has a login box that remains hidden on a page until a user clicks the “log in” link. If you switch the box’s style from opacity: 0; to opacity: 1;, it will appear right away by default. If you want it to fade in, you have to write a JavaScript function that increments the opacity bit by bit until it reaches 1, and you have to call that function at the same time as you change the class of the login box. If you have a bunch of login boxes on your site, you have to attach that transitional behavior to each one of them manually. Because CSS doesn’t have the concept of transitioning through time, animation-heavy websites are stuck in the same place that pre-CSS websites were before CSS came along.

CSS transitions solve this problem by bringing styles into the 4th dimension. CSS transitions allow web developers to specify that if an element has its style modified, the browser should smoothly transition its appearance to the new style, rather than shifting it abruptly. They’ve been available in WebKit for about two years now, and just appeared in Gecko a few weeks ago. Since they’re not available in most browsers, webOS developers are among the privileged few who can take advantage of them. Here’s how.

The Basics

Suppose your login box is 300px wide and you want it to hide offscreen until a user clicks a link, at which point it should get the class active and appear onscreen.

#loginbox {
  width: 300px;
  position: fixed;
  left: -300px;
}
 
#loginbox.active {
  left: 10px;
}

Here’s a version of that with transitions:

#loginbox {
  width: 300px;
  position: fixed;
  left: -300px;
  -webkit-transition-property: left;
  -webkit-transition-duration: .5s;
  -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in;
}
 
#loginbox.active {
  left: 10px;
}

And here’s how it’d look if you wanted the box to fade in and slide in at the same time:

#loginbox {
  width: 300px;
  position: fixed;
  left: -300px
  opacity: 0;
  -webkit-transition-property: left opacity;
  -webkit-transition-duration: .5s .25s;
  -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in linear;
}
 
#loginbox.active {
  left: 10px;
  opacity: 1;
}

Here’s a brief overview of the three -webkit-transition properties used above;

-webkit-transition-property

A space-seperated list of the properties that should be animated when they change. You should only use numerical properties. “top”, “width”, “border-width” and “opacity” work, but “display”, “text-decoration” and “list-style-type”, for instance, do not. If this property is omitted, all the properties of an element will be animated. This is probably not what you want.

-webkit-transition-duration

A space-seperated list of the durations of the transitions of the different objects. “s” stands for seconds. This is 0s by default, so you need to set it.

-webkit-transition-timing-function

From the W3C Working Draft:

The ‘transition-timing-function’ property describes how the intermediate values used during a transition will be calculated. It allows for a transition to change speed over its duration.

“ease-in” starts slowly and picks up speed at the end. “linear” keeps the same speed all the way through.

And here are some things that aren’t supported in webOS (as of 1.2.1), but probably will be eventually, since they are part of WebKit 4:

-webkit-transition-delay

Allows you to set a delay before the start of the animation.

Events

Currently, there’s no way respond when a transition animation finishes, and this is the main drawback of the CSS approach to transitions. WebKit 4 lets objects listen for animation events, which will let you string a bunch of animations together without needing to call setTimeout() to activate each part of the animation.

In addition to the reduced code clutter, CSS transitions can speed up your app, since they are run from native compiled code, rather than from interpreted JavaScript. Don’t expect miracles, though — I’ve found that webOS can only handle a few animations at one time before things get choppy, and the size and complexity of the elements being animated also makes a difference. I was unable to animate a 320×480 image without choppiness. While there is no programmatic way to cancel the animations, they are smart enough to smoothly reverse themselves if an element’s properties change in the middle of a transition. If the active class is removed from our login box while it’s still sliding in, it will slide out starting from wherever it happens to be at the moment the class was removed.

For more on the basics of transitions, check out the W3C docs, and keep in mind that all the properties should be prefixed with -webkit- in webOS.

Advanced Tricks with -webkit-transform

There’s another advanced CSS property in webOS, called -webkit-transform, that, when combined with CSS transitions, allows for some neat stuff. -webkit-transform is…well, I think of it as a mini-CSS within CSS. It lets you apply transformations to an element after it’s been rendered. In webOS, The available transformations (to my knowledge) are translate, scale, rotate and skew. To scale an element to twice its height and rotate it 30 degress (something that’s been impossible in HTML until now!), do like this:

#myDiv {
  -webkit-transform: scale(2, 1) rotate(30deg);
}

The crucial difference between scaling a div with -webkit-transform and scaling by manipulating its width and height is that -webkit-transform will scale (or skew or rotate) the entire rendered div and its children smoothly. For more on -webkit-transform, see this post at Art of Web.

You can animate -webkit-transform by passing it to -webkit-transition-property. If you’re using a WebKit browser, hover over the card below to see an example.

#cardexample {
  -webkit-transition-property: -webkit-transform;
  -webkit-transition-duration: 1s;
  -webkit-transform: rotate(0deg) scale(1, 1);
}
 
#cardexample:hover {
  -webkit-transform: rotate(180deg) scale(1.5, 1.5);
}

Our games Word Ace and Card Ace use this technique for pretty much every animation in the game. It’s a lot of fun to describe the behavior of a class in CSS and have elements automatically move around when they’re changed. There were times when I’d forgotten that I had set transition properties on an element, and was surprised when it started moving around of its own accord.

Caveats

Advanced animations are tricky with CSS. For example, the timers in Word Ace and Card Ace use transitions. In order to start a timer countdown, the yellow timer bar gets two classes set: one to set the bar to “full”, and another that sets it to “empty” with a transition, so that the width of the bar decreases slowly. My first pass at the code was something like this:

// CSS
#timer-bar.full {
  height: 22px;
  background-color: yellow;
  -webkit-transition-property: width;
  -webkit-transition-duration: 10s;
  width: 100%;
}
 
#timer-bar.full.counting-down {
  width: 0%;
}

// JavaScript
function startTimer() {
  var timerBar = $('timer-bar');
  timerBar.addClassName('full');
  timerBar.addClassName('counting-down');
}

It didn’t work. The timer bar never went to “full”. After some research, I discovered a blog post explaining that changes to element styles are batched during an event, and are processed all at once after an event has finished, for performance reasons. In this case, WebKit sees that the classes I’m adding would set the element’s width twice, so it only bothers setting the second width — 0%. If you need to do a multi-step transition this way, you need to chunk the DOM manipulation into different events:

function startTimer() {
  var timerBar = $('timer-bar');
  timerBar.addClassName('full');
  setTimeout(function() {
    timerBar.addClassName('counting-down');
  }, 0);
}

Tricky, huh? This also applies in cases where you need to set a hidden element to display: block; before you move it around.

In Short…

CSS transitions make our games smoother, more lively, and easier to maintain. They’re not without their pitfalls, but once you master the basics, they’re an easy, elegant way to add a bit of zest to your UI. For more information (not all of which applies to webOS, unfortunately), see the Safari reference and the W3C working spec.

Dan Kurtz is the webOS developer at Self Aware Games, makers of Word Ace and Card Ace for the Pre and Pixi. Both are online multiplayer card games that make extensive use of the advanced JavaScript and CSS techniques available in webOS.

Palm Announces Pixi Release Date

Monday, October 26th, just as the Sprint Open Developer Conference was going to get started, Palm announced that their next webOS smart phone, the Pixi, will hit Sprint on November 15th.  For those unfamiliar with the Pixi, it is planned as a replacement for Palm’s Centro smart phone.  It features a ‘candy-bar’ configuration with an exposed keyboard.  It differs from the Pre in that it has a slightly shorter display (with fewer colors), it lacks WiFi and reportedly has less RAM.  As you can see from the image, it’s a thin and stylish device.  However, with the Pre hitting $100 and the Pixi announced at the same price, it’s not a sure thing which phone people will opt for.  For those who dislike the slider in the Pre, though, it will be attractive.  There are some complaints that the Pixi is also a Sprint exclusive.

Australians and Asia Must Wait

Those who were waiting for the Pre and Pixi to appear on the shores of Australia were saddened to learn that Palm will not be targeting that region soon.  According to the e-mail:

At this moment in time, we do not yet have any plans to launch the Palm Pre or any of our new WebOS products in Asia Pacific. Our focus right now is to establish a strong presence in North America and Europe. However, we do not discount the possibility of offering this new range of products at a later date.

Sad news indeed for all those in the affected countries.  What we’ve heard, though, is that many are turning to on-line shops that are selling unlocked German versions of the Pre to get their webOS fix.

iTunes Moves to Block

The latest update to Apple’s media player iTunes has once again turned off syncing with webOS devices.  While many expected that to happen sooner or later I think we were all hoping Apple would give up.  I suspect the folks at Palm haven’t played all their cards on this one yet, though, so perhaps we’ll see a new solution with the forthcoming release of the OS.  In the meantime, there are lots of syncing options other than iTunes, so don’t be shy about investigating them.  Also, don’t forget you can buy tunes from other sources, too.

webOS 1.3.1 Released to Developers

According to many reports webOS 1.3.1 was delivered to developers for testing.  Palm has taken the step of providing developers with an early release in order to ensure a smooth transition.  Given that a few apps were caught flat-footed when 1.2.0 was released we think that’s a good idea.  Not only does Palm’s pool of testers increase but developers can act early to prevent users from having broken apps on release day.   There’s been no news on when the new OS will appear on the Updates app but many are speculating on some time around November 15th — the day the Pixi is released.

Roundup

Those were the major stories.  Some other webOS related musings:  There’s been much speculation about the as-yet unused GPU in the Pre (and Pixi).  Two interesting tidbits turned up:  First, Palm has hired one of AMD’s core engineering managers Matthew Tippet, a person responsible for Linux graphics drivers.  Second, Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith mentioned the GPU at two recent conferences, suggesting that enabling the GPU will speed up webOS.  Some suspect the speedup will occur with webOS 1.3.1.  We suspect that with Matthew just starting at Palm it may be a while before that GPU gets full use.  For those keeping track, the app catalog now has 320 apps.  And while fully 1/3 are tip calculators, it’s still impressive!  Sound off below with your favorite app picks, news stories or just a simple hello.  Also, check out our Twitter feed for up-to-the minute stories.