The webOS 1.4 update brought many new and welcomed features. One such feature was the new app loading system. It brought immediate app launch feedback and gave a pleasant splash screen to make it seem as though apps were loading a lot faster.

The splash screen system has been generally quite well received, with only a small number of people not liking it.

Keen-eyed users may have noticed several webOS apps seemed to have customized splash screen.  Apps like the web browser, tasks, and the calculator (as shown in the screenshot to the right) have customized splash screens.

Metaview is one such keen observer. On his blog, he explains how easy it is to add custom splash screens to any app.  In fact, all developers need to do is create a 320×480px PNG background image and a 256×256px PNG icon image then add then to your app’s appinfo.json file like:

"splashicon": "icon-256×256.png",
"splashBackground":"images/splash-screenshot-default.png",

Some might wonder why this neat new option is mysteriously absent from Palm’s appinfo.json breakdown. Well, put simply, that page is a bit out of date. In fact, it still refers to "miniicon", when that was officially changed to "smallicon" a while ago.  It’s very doubtful that using a custom splash screen in your app you cause any app submission guideline issues.

This is a neat bit of customization allowed on Palm’s part. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how creative developers can get in the future with their own splash graphics.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Palm loyalists out there will undoubtedly remember the name MetaView. Back in the days of PalmOS, he rose to fame with apps like PalmPDF (now named PDFmob), 2PlayMe, and notably Duke3D, a PalmOS Duke Nukem 3D port that won the Zodiac France Contest 2006.

MetaView has been developing for webOS for a while now, with releases like Match This!, MapTool, and ÜberRadio. Now, he’s returning to an old favourite and is bringing Duke3D to webOS.

Posted on his blog, Henk "MetaView" Jonas shares the above video of Duke3D working smoothly on his Pre. According to his post, the controls can be used all in the keyboard or alternatively use the screen as a virtual d-pad and have the rest of the controls in the keyboard (similar to Quake).

Interestingly, MetaView has told PreCentral that:

"The porting was really easy. Just some small source and makefile adjustments and both jfbuild and jfduke did compile and link. Not at all comparable with the old Palm OS where I needed several days just to get it compiled and another couple of days to have it running without crashes."

Seems the boasts of quick app porting to the webOS holds some weight. That certainly raises my spirits for the webOS platform as a whole.

Duke3D is now available for the Palm Pre and Pre Plus in the WebOS-Internals testing feed for those brave enough to try it while it’s still in-testing.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>