14 DAY TRIAL // Handset vendor Palm announced recently that it opened the Project Ares to the developer community. According to the company, the new project comes with a new approach towards the application development process, bringing it directly to the Internet browser. Ares surfaces now as a set of integrated mobile development tools that can be user entirely from the browser. What developers will receive through it includes a drag-and-drop interface builder, code editor, visual debugger, as well as built-in source control integration.
“Ares dramatically lowers the barriers for web developers to jump into mobile development and makes building webOS apps even easier and faster than before. Ares streamlines the entire app development process, from design, to coding, to debugging, to app submission. You can preview apps right in the browser, and-with the Palm Mojo SDK installed-it takes just one click in Ares to launch your app in the emulator or on a webOS device. When you’re ready to distribute your app, one more click lets you package and download your app for submission to the App Catalog,” the company notes on the Palm Developer Network Blog.
The integrated development environment (IDE) for building applications for the webOS platform comes with support for Safari version 4 and higher, Chrome version 3 and higher, and Firefox version 3.5 and higher. According to Palm, the features list of Ares includes: - Drag-and-drop interface builder - Code editor - Visual debugger - Log viewer - Source control integration - Fingertip access to the full library of Mojo UI widgets - Push-button project and scene creation - Drag-and-drop file upload - Instant project upload and download for seamless desktop/cloud workflow - One-click preview of apps in the browser - One-click launch of apps in the webOS emulator or on the device (requires SDK installation)
The drag-and-drop interface builder is considered to be the main feature of Ares, it seems. Developers will find it very simple to build complex layouts while using it, since it offers support for multiple webOS devices, as well as support for orientation changes. The new debugger is much better than the previously released ones, while the code editor is said to be able to offer a great experience. For the time being, Ares is only in beta, yet Palm is confident that it can easily prove to be a complete and efficient development environment to developers. At the same time, the company also announced that Project Ares and the Palm Mojo SDK can complement each other. Additional details can be found on the Palm Developer Network Blog.