The latest version of JavaScript (ES2015, or commonly called ES6) is packed with modern features, including classes, lambda expressions (“arrow functions”), block scoping, template strings, and much more. Using a transpiler like Babel, you can use these features in your Tabris.js app today. Quick Start The fastest way to a working ES6 project setup is to generate it. Just install Yeoman, a popular project generator for JavaScript,...
Read MoreWriting mobile applications is not only about the UI. Apps also need content. Often times they fetch dynamic content over the network. This post introduces the basic mechanism for network access in Tabris.js: XMLHttpRequest. The post also explains how higher level networking API can be used. Tabris.js supports a subset of the W3C browser APIs. Part of that API is the XMLHttpRequest. You can use it...
Read MoreWelcome to the third episode of the "Tabris.js Examples" blog post series. In each post we provide some background on one of the coding examples shipped with Tabris.js, our new framework for developing native mobile apps in JavaScript. After we explained a couple of UI elements in the last issue, now let's take a look at how you can store the acquired data. For this purpose...
Read MoreWelcome to the second episode of the "Tabris.js Examples" blog post series. In each post we provide some background on coding examples shipped with Tabris.js, our new framework for developing native mobile apps in JavaScript. This time we want to take a look at user input - a fundamental ingredient of most applications. Tabris.js supports a variety of native input widgets you can choose from. The...
Read MoreWe are working at full steam on the new features for Tabris 1.4 which we will release on June 26th. One of those features is Pull to Refresh. The mechanics of this feature are simple and have already become a standard for mobile users: Pull the user interface down to force the app to refresh its current view. In Tabris you can enable this for a Tree/Table with...
Read MoreThe upcoming Tabris 1.3 release will include visual improvements to the Tabris Android client. Most notable is an updated animation for the TabFolder appearance and an improved user experience when dealing with pages in the Tabris UI. TabFolder gets smoother The TabFolder always had a nice look to it but with the recent changes it also became more pleasant to use. Inspired by the tabs in the...
Read MoreHere is a widespread way of creating a label with a bold font: [raw] Label label = new Label(shell, SWT.NONE); Font boldFont = new Font( label.getDisplay(), new FontData( "Arial", 12, SWT.BOLD ) ); label.setFont( boldFont ); label.setText("Bold Label"); [/raw] Everything seems to be fine with this code. A Label is created with the default font "Arial", the default size "12" and our desired style "BOLD". So what's the problem with this snippet? With the...
Read MoreWe love doing mobile apps and we love excellent UIs. That's the reason why, 1.5 years ago we created Tabris. Today we are proud to unleash Tabris 1.2. It's the best and biggest release so far and in this post we want to show you the highlights. Free for...
Read MoreI have to admit that I am a little bit frustrated with Firefox OS, so here comes my RANT. I am not complaining that the system is at a very early stage with lots of issues, this has to be expected. I am complaining that the project is making it really hard to find out what's going on. [caption id="attachment_15903" align="alignright" width="120"] Firefox Peak - First...
Read MoreFrom my point of view bootstrapping a new application is always tricky. Especially when you want to bootstrap an app that uses technology you are not yet familiar with. With this post I want to give you a step by step tutorial on how to bootstrap a Tabris application using Eclipse and Maven. So, let's get our hands dirty! IDE Setup The first thing you need to...
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