14 DAY TRIAL // Following the release of webOS 1.4 for all Palm Pre and Palm Pixi handsets available on the market today, Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm has also released the webOS SDK 1.4 for developers for the platform. The same as with the operating system, the new SDK comes around with a wide range of enhancements over the previously available flavors, and developers will also enjoy numerous tool fixes, Palm notes.
The highlights of the newly released webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419 include: - webOS now incorporates WebKit 4, which features enhanced CSS support and numerous other improvements. - The webOS implementation of the HTML 5 Media API has been updated, bringing closer conformance to the specification, and improvements to audio performance. - The Camera API has been extended to let an application initiate video capture, in addition to image capture. - The V8 JavaScript engine used in webOS has been updated.
According to Palm, the emulator ROM has been updated to webOS 1.4, and the emulator now has location services enabled by default. At the same time, the company notes that the emulator should now launch in Windows 64-bit even if no args are supplied, that palm-package won't fail anymore if directory name has spaces, and that there are many incremental improvements over the WebKit version previously used in webOS, most notably enhanced CSS support.
The Mojo Framework has been updated to revision 330 in the new webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419, the template rendering performance is improved, and there are great changes in the Framework when compared to previous updates, Palm states. Among these changes, we can count modified private APIs and internals, though the company tried to keep public APIs the same as before. According to Palm, developers should try not to use undocumented framework APIs or to override framework functionality, since this might result in issues with the application.
The full release notes for the new webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419 are available on Palm's website here. Those interested in downloading the new SDK version will find it available in the Palm Developer Center website, as well as on Softpedia, via the links below:
Download webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419 for Windows Download webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419 for Mac Download webOS SDK 1.4 Build 419 for Linux