futtta's blog

Just in from Google Mobile Blog: Chrome for Android is out in beta for ICS (Android 4) devices. I won’t bore you with the marketing video, but this “Under the hood” video is a lot more interesting:

Looks like the superb Firefox for Android is (finally) getting some competition. I guess it really is time to upgrade my Galaxy SII to the recently leaked ICS rom!

I’ve always enjoyed riding the Firefox-bandwagon and that hasn’t changed, even though Google Chrome seems to be the browser of choice amongst the cool kids nowadays. And if only because I’m a faithful guy, I’ve been running Firefox Mobile ever since I bought a Samsung Galaxy SII as well. Sure it doesn’t do Flash, but I’m not that Flash-inclined anyway.

Now, I haven’t met too many people that use Firefox Mobile and indeed when reading about mobile browsers, Firefox is rarely if ever mentioned. But what if I told you that Firefox Mobile is by far the best browser on mobile when taking performance, features and security into consideration?

I won’t beat around the bush, here’s the pretty objective data.

Some remarks:

• the hardware is pretty comparable; all dual-core CPU’s and plenty of RAM.
• higher is better, except for Sunspider which measures time (in microseconds).
• I’ve got no screenshot or URL of the google v8 test results on my phone, but I’ll be glad to reproduce.
• sunspider and v8 are javascript performance benchmarks.
• html5test is an indication for support of “modern” browser features (html5, css3 and much more).
• the features of the browser GUI arent’t measured byhtml5test, but I’m pretty pleased with Firefox Mobile in that respect as well; great tabbed browsing, plugins (including noscript!), sync-ing of all relevant data between desktops & mobile, …
• I added Opera Mobile and Dolphin HD to the list. Opera’s not too shabby but not a winner either?

And last but not least; as Firefox Mobile isn’t native and since it’s on the same (crazy) rapid release cycle as the desktop-version, I consider it to be a lot more secure when compared to the slow evolving, rarely updated native browsers in Android and iOS.

My advice; if you’re an Android-user and you’ve got a recent handset or tablet, you really should consider switching to Firefox Mobile. It’s the best mobile browser no-one is using! Except for you?

Although I was quite pleased with my Hero after installing HTC’s version of Android 2.1 (in the guise of VillainRom 12), I couldn’t refrain myself from wanting to install Froyo, the latest and greatest version of Android. The guys over at VillainRom provided a great Froyo rom (Froydvillain 1.2) based on the official Android sources and the work of the CyanogenMod team with CM6 and added LauncherPro, a beautiful alternative to HTC’s Sense, to the mix:

After seeing FroydVillain run on the Hero of a daredevil colleague of mine (thanks Thomas!), I swiftly booted my HTC into recovery mode, made a backup of my Eclair-installation and effortlessly slapped FroydVillain on my handset. But now, only 2 days later, I’m back on HTC’s Eclair.

Why? Because of what HTC adds to the mix. Although Froyo + Cyanogen mods + LauncherPro is a fast & slick combination, there were a number of (mostly minor) annoyances which bugged me enough to do a rollback to VillainRom 12 (i.e. HTC’s Eclair).

Some of the quirks that irked me:

• the keyboard seemed a tad more clunky, there’s no button to hide it (the keyboard tends to get in the way sometimes) but most importantly there’s no Dutch dictionary installed meaning no spelling correction and above all no text-prediction
• the new Android-native Exchange mail integration is great, but there’s no indication of new Exchange mails on the Launcherpro homescreen and most importantly it is too easy to accidentally delete a mail (the button is located at the bottom right of the screen!) and there’s no undo or move available
• battery life seemed shorter and there’s no way to disable ‘always-on mobile data‘ (a continuous data-connection doesn’t help battery life)
• the dialer application (you know, to actually call someone) does not search my contacts while typing a number (HTC’s dialer searches both numbers and names, which is a great time-saver)
• in the browser bookmarking is less straightforward (no ‘add bookmark’ in the menu iirc), there’s no ‘reload’ in the main UI (it’s at the right side of the address-bar in HTC’s Eclair)
• the free version of Launcherpro does not come with a calender widget (the “Plus” version does though) and I could not find one to my liking on the Android market
• as I had to re-install my apps, Shazaam didn’t recognize me as an existing user, meaning I lost unlimited tagging

So in spite of increased speed and an overall very nice package, I decided (after having had to run downstairs last night to move that accidentally deleted important mail back to my inbox on my PC) to abandon FroydVillain and switch back to VillainRom 12. I was a little upset with Nandroid spitting out that horrible “Run nandroid-mobile.sh via adb” error, but it turned out that it wisely doesn’t like to have to work on an almost empty battery. After recharging I successfully restored good ole HTC Eclair.

Froyo + LauncherPro is a great combination, but it’s not in the same league as HTC’s polished Eclair builds yet. Thanks for the great job HTC, I’m looking forward to your Desire HD with HTC Froyo (or Gingerbread?) which I’ll probably buy from you next year.

Google announced “App Inventor for Android“, a Java Web Start based IDE that allows everyone and your mother to create innovative Android-apps by simply dragging & dropping blocks around;

Granted, this isn’t the web-tech approach I was hoping for (just frigging copy/paste Palm HP’s WebOS’s MOJO, will you Google?), but this sure seems like a great leap forward! Now let’s hope people will do more then let their cat purr on our phones.

If you want to play around with App Inventor, you’ll have to apply for access first. While eagerly awaiting an answer from Google, you can already take some pictures of you cat or you could browse the documentation and the tutorials.

I flashed my HTC Hero again, this time with an Android 2.1 image from Villainrom. Why not wait for the official update? Well, we’ve been waiting for quite some time now, the HTC-update might not even work on a rooted device and a colleague of mine was running Villainrom 10.1 for over a month now and was quite pleased with it.

So if you want to go rogue as well, go Villainrom using this installation guide. And in case things happen that aren’t described in that detailed howto, here are 5 things I had to learn the hard way;

1. Formatting your SDCARD when on a Modaco rom might not work, having a colleague nearby who can format for you on his handset or PC might help.
2. If flashrec complains “Could not run command” but your device is already rooted then forget about flashrec, you’re a superuser now
3. nandroid+ext might not work, just perform a normal nandroid backup
4. market downloads sometimes don’t work, in my case this was solved by resetting privacy and location-sharing settings to their (permissive) default settings
5. Villainrom provides OTA-updates, but these aren’t always applied, re-downloading and re-applying the update did the trick for me.

My first Android 2.1 impressions; clearly snappier (and tests show 2.2 to be a lot faster still), some great apps on the market that weren’t there for 1.5 (Google Goggles looks great!) and most importantly; one of the best mobile browsers around (as confirmed by Quirksmode Webkit tests). So yes, I love my Eclair!

It seems like ages, but just one year ago I had very high hopes for the relaunch of Palm; the OS was based on Linux, the UI seemed great (multitasking done right from day 1) and their Mojo-framework would allow applications to be developed with nothing but html, css and javascript. But the Palm Pré and Pixi weren’t the big hit, Palm has been hemorrhaging cash for years and they are now actively looking to be bought.

Apperantly Lenevo, Huawai and ZTE have expressed interest, but I for one am especially rooting for HTC. They do great hardware (e.g. my old Qtek 9100, my current HTC Hero and Google’ Nexus One) and they have exprience with a multi-OS product line (Windows Mobile and Android). But most importantly; they have Sense UI!

Sense is the user interface that HTC puts on top of WinMo and Android, to provide users with good looking, easy to use home screens that feature widgets to display e.g. calender, mail, clock, weather, but also information from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. WebOS could really help HTC broaden and deepen Sense; e.g. by porting the WebOS multitasking cards metaphor, Synergy (unified contact list, deeply integrating internal sources and social web) and the nifty notification system. And Mojo could (easily?) be ported to WinMo and Android as well, HTC could then open up Palm’s App Catalog for all HTC WebOS/Sense devices, allowing developers to create, publish and sell mobile applications for multiple operating systems!

Picture all of that and all of a sudden you’ll see a major player that has the hard- and software and the experience to challenge Apple at home and abroad and in court with great hardware and, thanks to WebOS, even greater software. Go HTC!

PPK of Quirksmode-fame it at it again, this time badmouthing iPhone-centric web development. A lot of people seem to take issue with his point of view, but aside from the (typically Dutch?) in-your-face bluntness, I do think he makes some very valid points. The web is about broad accessibility, about allowing as many people as possible to access your information/ application and the same should indeed be the case for mobile web development.

Sexy as a iPhone-UI mimicking webapp (based on e.g. iUI or JQTouch) might seem, it does have a number of important shortcomings:

• it is sub-optimal for the web, even on iPhones, as the context is very different (e.g. in terms of responsiveness)
• the iPhone-UI-approach does not make a lot of sense on non-iPhone high-end touch devices
• it will probably not work on mid- and lower-end phones at all

So yes, web-developers should try to build mobile sites that render on as many devices/ browsers possible, as we do on the non-mobile web. Unless you’re willing to invest in several sites for different handsets, building for one specific device is a bad choice, however good the browser might be (and Safari Mobile indeed is great).

That’s why I decided to switch from the iPhone-centric WPTouch (which I installed only 3 months ago) to “WordPress Mobile Pack” for this blog. WMP offers great mobile functionality out of the box;

It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

When running the MobiReady test to assess how “mobile-ready” my blog is, I get a great score of 4.35/5 (page size being the main remaining issue). So thanks for ranting PPK!