14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia announced recently that it had introduced three time-saving mobile development tools aimed at offering a helpful hand to desktop designers and developers of Internet content. The new solutions should allow for a fast conversion of standard web code and scripting languages into mobile applications and services and works with three software development environments that are available on the market.
The three solutions are the Nokia WRT plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, the Nokia Web Runtime Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver, and the updated WRT plug-in 2.0 for Aptana Studio. According to the company, the new tools are meat to enable web developers and designers that make use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax code or other technologies to provide their content to mobile phones as well, by creating mobile widget applications.
The Nokia WRT widgets deliver instant access to customizable information and are based on the industry standard WebKit project environment included in the Web Browser for S60. The most popular widgets available include news headlines, social network status updates, localized daily weather, and much more. Developers using Dreamweaver, Visual Studio and Eclipse-based Aptana Studio, the phone maker says, can now provide feature-rich widget-based content to mobile users through Nokia's WRT widget plug-ins.
“These new Nokia WRT tools open up the mobile market to web developers and creative professionals worldwide who work every day in these widely used development environments to create web applications and content,” said Craig Cumberland, director of WRT Tools and Technologies, Nokia. “WRT plug-ins enable the easy creation of feature-rich widget applications for the enjoyment of mobile consumers around the globe, providing new horizons to untold numbers of individuals and organizations seeking to extend their web content and Internet presence into the mobile space.”
According to Nokia, developers won't need to have previous experience with its software development tools to be able to create on-device Nokia WRT widget applications. In addition, the company also says that within the following 30 days it plans to offer multi-language support for the WRT Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver and the Nokia WRT plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio. The tools will come with eight languages, including traditional and simplified Chinese, English, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish.