Mobile Solutions are now becoming an important part of the Web; but which development direction are you taking your users down?
ADF Mobile is to be released hopefully this year; allowing developers familiar with the ADF process to develop mobile applications built on the supported Oracle ADF development framework; however support for Blackberry, Windows and other mobile Operating systems is doubtful. It is a shame when you consider how popular Blackberry Rim devices are in EMEA.
Fishbowl WebCenter Spaces Mobile Collaboration Suite (ios, Android, RIM, Windows – Tablet, Mobile)
Mobile Native applications are very expensive with only a handful of organisations having the skills to write and support the different devices. Not only does each operating system require it’s own language branch, but maintenance is required for the latest OS release with an update coming out every 6months to a year, to support depreciated functionality and incorporate new APIs. As devices improve with screen resolutions and added hardware more support will be required to incorporate improved device feature sets. If you are looking to develop native applications I would recommend looking for an Oracle partners with a supported API for integrating services to WebCenter rather than develop and support your own. We provide a number of solutions with our native mobility suite – https://fishbowlsolutions.com/StellentSolutions/StellentComponents/iOSAPI/index.htm?WT.mc_id=L_Oracle_Mktg_KLN
Mobile HTML5 application development has been on the rise with more developers jumping on solutions like appcelerator, Phonegap – cordova, jqTouch, JQuery Mobile, Sencha touch, Zepto. These have been the easiest and quickest solution to build supporting tablets and mobiles as well as large number of device operating systems; with jqTouch, jQueryMobile and Sencha providing you a fully supported templated solution very much like ADF and its renderkit.
Fishbowl WebCenter Content Mobile Integration Suite (ios, Android, RIM, Windows – Desktop, Tablet, Mobile)
Responsive design allows developing one template that can support all resolutions and devices through a web browser; although time consuming – if you get the design and CSS3 breakpoints developed correctly can be a great solution to your WebCenter application – I have tested and written a base template, wireframe for designers to use for WebCenter Portal & Spaces as an internal POC and it’s proving to be quite successful supporting Desktop, tablet and numerous mobile devices and incorporating touch events with the Zepto JS framework. You can read more on developing for mobile here – http://cfour.fishbowlsolutions.com/2012/02/24/developing-for-mobile-web-tips-and-tricks/
PatchSet 6.. Well with the release of Patchset 5 more support has gone into supporting tablets, flash has been replaced with canvas a new skin to support tablets is now available. Touch events have also been incorporated to support the out of the box portlets. It’s a great step forward, but still no true support for mobile devices.. This leaves us with Patchset 6 or the 12c release where I’m hoping we will see more capabilities around supplying multiple templates based on device access. You can already see this feature incorporated with the enhanced ADF generated CSS media queries –
@agent ie and (version: 9), webkit and (touchScreen:multiple)
Info on PS5 tablet support can be found here – http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/index-088099.html
