As part of its strategy to encourage developers to create apps for the next billion, Nokia has released new tools to the developers. Developers now have easy new ways to create web apps for Series 40 phones.
With these tools, designers and developers can easily and economically provide users of even low cost devices with a rich web experience. This new demographic, one only Nokia can connect you with, brings new opportunities for every web asset, from global brands to local content, efficiently and easily.
Also, as a business owner or developer, you can now achieve the following:
- Target your web content and websites at the next billion.
- Transform web assets into powerful mobile applications.
- Develop using standard web technologies.
Aside all these, series 40 web apps offer an easy entry point to mobile app development. If you are a web developer / programmer, you don’t have to learn new skills. You only need to utilise your web developer skills to create content with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. Interesting news is that your web apps created with these tools now and then published on Nokia’s Ovi Store can be entered in Nokia’s Create for Millions contest, which will award the winners a share of cash and prizes worth 1 million euros.
The New Tools:
Web Clip Creator:
This new, experimental menu-driven tool, though still available in Nokia Beta Labs, gives people with little or no mobile development experience a mechanism to create Series 40 web apps based on their current, publicly available websites. Yes, the tool will allow you to develop your apps without the need for any manual development.
The beauty of the tool is that you have access to a graphical web based interface that allows you to select portions of your web site content and package it as a Series 40 web app that can be published through Ovi Store. The content that is packaged in the web app is dynamic, so users automatically see the latest content whenever the web site is updated.
To try Web Clip Creator, click here.
Ovi App Wizard:
This is a mainly to create RSS-based series 40 web apps that are ready for publication on Nokia’s Ovi Store. A publisher’s news and information will be presented in a format that offers consumers interactive user interfaces with graphical transitions. To learn more about the Ovi App Wizard, read “How to convert your website to a mobile app“.
Nokia Web Tools for Series 40:
Nokia Web Tools delivers a complete suite of applications that assist in the entire lifecycle of web app development, from prototyping designs through to packaging applications for distribution in Ovi Store. The two key components of Nokia Web Tools are Web Developer Environment and Web App Simulator.
- Web Developer Environment: Web Developer Environment delivers the code creation tools needed to efficiently create and package web apps. The environment allows you to achieve the following:
- Use templates to quick-start the development of your web apps. Import existing projects to take advantage of enhanced editing.
- With code completion and full validation, coding is quicker and more accurate, enabling web apps to be built faster.
- Web apps are automatically packed by the tool and delivered in the format required for distribution through Ovi Store.
- Completed Series 40 web app projects can be deployed directly from the environment for testing on a device.
- Web App Simulator: You now have the opportunity to run your web apps under development on a computer in Web App Simulator to simplify functional testing and final design validation. Also, you can preview your web apps to see how they will look and behave on devices, and interact with the web.
With these tools, whether you own a global brand or service consumers in your local community, you can now create series 40 web apps that will enable you to engage with your consumers more readily. Offering rich UX allows you to create stickiness in ways that have not been possible before. Because you have full control of the content of your web app, you can incorporate features to monetize your web app by integrating third-party advertising APIs. Such APIs include NAVTEQ location point advertising that can be used to deliver country specific advertisements.
What are you waiting for? It is time to connect with the next billion. Remember, if you are a web developer / programmer, you don’t have to learn any new thing. To learn more about all these tools, visit the Nokia Developer’s page.
