To wrap up their Developer Day in New York City, Palm gave a brief preview of Enyo, which will become their framework for webOS apps next year, replacing the current "Mojo" framework that webOS developers currently use (though Mojo is sticking around for a long time).

Enyo’s key features? It’s faster, apps launch faster, it’s able to work easily on multiple screen sizes without rewriting the app, conforms better to HTML5 web standards, and is generally much easier to develop for because it is object-oriented, has better event handling (with fewer memory leaks & too many card errors), …and so on.

Palm developed Enyo to work with their Ares framework for designing apps – in fact Palm has spent the vast majority of their time developing Enyo apps in the browser instead of the emulator. In fact, Enyo was essentially built by the Ares team

The most impressive demo was of an email app proof-of-concept (not, they say, the next version of the email app – but we like the way they’re thinking with it). Running inside the Chrome desktop browser, they showed how the same app can be seen in a device-sized window or a full-sized (you might say PalmPad-sized) window and is able to display its data differently as appropriate to the size of the screen.

In addition to that, Palm showed off plenty of the reasons that it’s more elegant to code with – for example if a developer uses the Ares app builder to make their GUI it will come out as the same size as if it were hand-coded. Palm suggested that some apps that took as long as 7 seconds to launch with Mojo could launch in just a second with Enyo. There were other benefits (that were over our head), but the gist is that the thing is faster, more elegant, and more flexible. 

Palm will start releasing the tool to developers early next year. They also said that Mojo isn’t going away anytime soon so developers need not wait for Enyo or worry about rewriting their apps in the new framework anytime soon. However Palm has said this is their framework moving forward and it sounds like the benefits are going to be strong enough to convince many developers to take advantage of it.

Check out the slides after the break!

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We just wrapped up the keynote for Palm’s Developer Day in New York City. A tag-team of Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer, Phil McKinney, and Joe Hayashi took the stage to give an overview of where they see web and mobile development now and where they see it going in the future.

Ben and Dion noted that the web and HTML5 really are going to become a first-class app development and distribution platform – as evidenced by even Microsoft’s new and surprising support for HTML5 standards.

Phil McKinney gave his ’stump speech’  about the excitement within HP for webOS and reiterated that HP is looking to drive webOS to lots of form factors and devices to fill the gap between the smartphone and the PC. Phil also broke out his flexible display technology. We asked him how he’s going to keep excitement up over the next few months for webOS in the consumer market and his response: it will be easier to generate excitement when you have new devices. Expect HP to bring tablets, new phones, and "really interesting new form factors" in 2011. McKinney also noted that HP controls literally 10% of the shelf space in the consumer electronics space and they plan to make Palm "to play an important part for that shelf space."

Later on, Joe Hayashi teased that HP will be moving away from the current application framework (called Mojo) to something called "Enyo" that will be faster, support multiple form factors, and work with Palm’s online, drag-n-drop development Ares system. (in fact, "Enyo" is a Greek goddess of war and a companion to the war-god Ares – get it?). Hayashi notes that the Early Access Developer SDK will see support for both Enyo and tablets in early 2011. Also pegged for "Early 2011"  - those slates and phones that Palm is very much aware we are all waiting on.

We’ll have more on the Enyo app framework later this afternoon. Keep it locked to PreCentral!

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You may remember from the heady days of late July 2010 this awesome fan-made commercial for the Palm Pre (after the break for your reminiscence). Well, it caught Palm’s attention too, and they made sure to dive in. The video, by 22-year-old German students Arno Keifl and Sven Adolph, turns out to have been a sophisticated creation, with the talented duo digging into the webOS SDK emulator to capture images and building the “Mr. Chef for Palm” app demoed in the commercial with Palm’s super-easy Ares online app creator.

Rightfully, the good folks at Palm saw fit to award such creativity and hard work. As they, and many of us, noticed, the video showcases everything happening on an original O2 Palm Pre. Palm has sent the pair Palm Pre Pluses for O2 Germany to bring them up to the life moves fast speed. While we’re happy Arno and Sven got new phones, we hope that Palm has put their phone numbers into Contacts for the next time they plan to run commercials.

Source: Official Palm Blog

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Developers have plenty of options when it comes to mobile platforms to develop for. You have, just to name a few:  Android, MeeGo, Bada, iOS, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, BlackBerry and well, the list could continue on.  Despite this huge amount of choice, developers still choose webOS as their platform of choice, with one of the bigger reasons being cited being how quickly they can iterate their applications and add features when compared to some of the other platforms.

One such developer is YouVersion, who has applications deployed across a few of the platforms mentioned above.  In the latest post on their blog introducing a new "profiles" feature for their flagship application, they sing praises about developing for webOS and why their Pre and Pixi users will often see features before others do: that the speed of development that webOS  allows has (read that bit about rapid iteration above) has turned the platform into a proving ground for them: "Our Palm app is likely to be a preview of what you’ll see very soon in all of our other apps."

And if Palm’s most recent developer podcast talking all about Ares is any indication, developing for webOS is only going to get easier as time goes on as  tool-chains become ever more efficient.  

Source: YouVersion Blog; thanks to Jake for the tip!

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Google’s Android OS has always been a bit of a mystery to webOS fans: Here’s this giant web company committed to open standards, yet their mobile OS isn’t as web-centric as what Palm has put out. One example: the Ares development environment (just discussed in a podcast), which lets developers build apps entirely in their web browser. Google has apparently heard the news and gotten caught up with the Android App Inventor, which does drag-and-drop, in-a-browser development for Android.

There appears to be a few extra steps required for Android than what Ares + webOS needs, but otherwise we’re thinking that these are very similar concepts and implementations. Anybody out there happen to take both for a spin and can tell us the critical differences? Sound off in the comments!

via Android Central; thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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The seventh installment of Palm’s ongoing developer podcast series is now online, and the subject this time around is the browser-based Ares development tool.  Ben and Dion (who helped to create Bespin while at Mozilla, on which Ares is built) sit down with Matthew McNulty, Palm Director of Developer Tools, to discuss the history of the development tool from its inception to its public release and where Palm hopes to take it in the future.  The podcast continues (after a somewhat humorous editing gaffe midway through) with McNulty walking us through some of the features in Ares and giving suggestions on how you might include the Ares in your tool chain.  

Ares is a fascinating and exceedingly well executed concept, and many a developer (webOS or not) would be smart to catch a glimpse of where development environments will be headed in the future by catching the video after the break.

Source: Palm Developer Center

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Want to develop webOS apps but can’t be bothered building an interface from scratch? Enter Project Ares, Palm’s browser-based development system with drag in drop UI, a code editor, visual debugger, and plenty for the aspiring webOS Developer. 

It’s just exited Beta and officially has a one-point-oh moniker. Palm’s even tacked on more functionality:

‘Components, which are widgets that provide functionality, but without any user interface. The palette now contains the service calls, sensors, etc that are in the webOS SDK’

There’s undo, redo, cut, copy, pase, JSLint, FeedList widgets for RSS, Google Maps wrappers, and plenty more. What are you waiting for, developers? Check it out.

Thanks, Marcel!

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Good news, developers and prospective developers. Palm has taken another step forward in developer relations and has decided to start a YouTube video podcast series.

The first episode of Palm’s video podcast series was posted yesterday and it doesn’t disappoint. Hosted by the well-known Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, the presentation reaffirms Palm’s deep commitment to their developer base.

This episode covered the current status of developing on webOS. Ben and Dion delve into why they love the webOS and their decision to join Palm. Listening to them, it’s hard not to like webOS. It’s also clear that they’re beyond passionate on the matter and want prospective developers to be too.

Ben and Dion continued the discussion, talking about the Plugin Development Kit (PDK) and the inclusive environment they want the webOS to be. Looking at the possible official/unofficial coding options, it seems to show a lot of potential there; normal HTML/CSS/JS webOS apps, native C plugin apps, Qt plugin apps and future Adobe AIR/Flash apps.  Palm webOS really does seem to be a "can-do" mobile operating system. Personally, I’m excited to see the fantastic HTML5-PDK hybrid apps coming out once the App Catalog opens up for them.

For a half-hour video, Ben and Dion managed to cover a lot. Everything from Project Appetite and Project Ares (with Project Appetite, we learned the site has a few neat Easter eggs) to app distribution methods and the Hot Apps contest.

It will be very exciting to see where this series goes. From the sounds of it, this could be a very popular, providing both valuable information for developers as well as a great communication tool between Palm and developers, directly from 2 big names in the company. Definitely a sign Palm wants to be involved on a more personal level with developers, welcomed with open arms.

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A few months ago we were laughing at/with Palm investor Roger McNamee after his All Things D interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. And this year at CES, Palm saw fit to send just CEO Jon Rubinstein into the gauntlet, and even in the face of what some may call some rather nonsensical and unnecessarily combative and prying questioning from Swisher alone, he held up well. Sure, Swisher wanted to know what’s coming next, but Rubinstein would have nothing of it and refused to divulge any new details. That said, there were still some interesting things to take away from the interview, like Rubinstein’s admission of having never used an iPhone.

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Care to see a webOS app developed in under 10 minutes? Sure you do, even if it means having to take a performance enhancing drug just to keep up. Once you get past the rapid pace and robotic pace, what you’re looking at is Project Ares in all its glory, drag-and-drop, in-browser development at its best.

In 9:37, FirstStryke08 puts together a Flickr photo search app. Obviously, this developer has worked in Ares before, so this is more of a demonstration of the power of Ares in experienced hands.

Interested in getting your hands dirty with Ares? All you need is a developer account with Palm, and that’s easy enough to get. So get crackin’ with the apps (especially now that we’ve got more space for them)!

Thanks to FirstStryke08 for the awesome video!

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