Palm's Project Ares Goes 1.0

Late last year, Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm unveiled a new mobile development environment for those interested in building applications for its webOS platform, namely Project Ares. Initially available in a beta flavor, the mobile development environment, which is the first one to be hosted entirely in a browser, has just reached version 1.0.

“Like webOS, Project Ares embodies Palm's belief that the future of mobile will be built on the web. Project Ares aims to enable a next-generation mobile development workflow, in which developers move quickly and seamlessly from editing in a browser, to debugging on a device, to selling applications in Palm's App Catalog or on the web. Project Ares is now available to all developers. We invite you to join us in Project Ares – try it out, build apps, and give us your feedback as we work to make the Ares vision a reality,” a recent post on the Palm Developer Center reads.

Project Ares is meant to offer an easy solution for those web developers who are interested in delivering applications for mobile phones. The browser-based development system offers a drag-and-drop interface builder, a code editor, visual debugger, log viewer, source control integration and a great deal of other features any webOS developer would need. Not to mention that developers can access the full library of Mojo UI widgets.

Some of the new features added to Project Ares in version 1.0 include:
- Ares now has Components, which are widgets that provide functionality, but without any user interface. The palette now contains the service calls, sensors, etc that are in the webOS SDK.
- Undo and Redo in the interface builder!
- Cut, Copy, Paste in the interface builder!
- New shortcut buttons to swap between the designer and code assistant for a given scene
- Improved support for drag and drop between panels and at the top and bottom of the canvas
- New FeedList widget for RSS feeds
- Google Maps v3 wrapper widget for including multi-touch enabled maps in your applications
- Improved Debugger functionality, including viewing all variables in scope in a tree control, updated as you step through your code

Additional details on Palm's Project Ares are available here. Those interested in learning what has been added into the mix in version 1.0 of the development environment should head here.