Ready to jump into the wide world of homebrew on your TouchPad, Pre, or Veer? Alright! Here’s what you need:

• Your webOS tablet or smartphone
• A computer, Mac or PC, connected to the internet
• A Micro-USB cable to connect the webOS device to your computer (you can use the cable that came with the device, but any Micro-USB cable will do)
• A stiff drink (this isn’t required, but you’ll deserve one for being awesome enough to be doing homebrew)

Got that? Okay, time for some clarifications. webOS devices do not need to be “rooted” – they come from the factory open enough that special tools aren’t needed to install apps outside of the App Catalog or gain access to the operating system. The process of getting a homebrew installer set-up is relatively straight-forward and doesn’t involve anything scary or potentially warranty voiding (there are potentially warranty-voiding things you can do after that, but everything described in this how-to is perfectly acceptable).

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PreCentral community member Sconix, who has already wowed webOS 1.4.5 homebrew users with the Advanced Configuration for System Preferences and Advanced Configuration for App Launcher mega-patches, is readying the next set of Advanced Configuration patches for installation under webOS 2.0. These patches, which can already be seen as placeholders in webOS Internals’ webOS Patches feed, will provide a variety of new customization options for webOS 2.0. Hit the source link for details on Sconix’s work on Advanced System Menus: Framework, App Menu, Mode Menu, Today Menu, Device Menu, and Power Menu!

Source: PreCentral Forums

UPDATE: As WebOS Internals chief Rod Whitby noted on Twitter, the Advanced System Menus – Device Menu, contains what turns out to be the first new homebrew JavaScript service for webOS. As you may have head, webOS 2.0 is doing away with Java, and thus the homebrew Java services developed over the past year won’t be functional in the new OS. But, there’s now support for both C services and JavaScript services. Sconix’s new patches now include JavaScript services written with node.js to do fun stuff like trigger the LED flash as a flashlight.

Source: WebOS Internals (Twitter)

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Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals gave a brief overview of webOS Homebrew development today at webOS Developer Day. It was a nice walk down memory lane – from the heady days in 2009 when we went from the release of the Palm Pre to root to our very first patch (adding pages to the launcher) in 16 days.

Looking ahead, Whitby details three features they intend to add to their Preware universal installer. The first and most exiting is they intend to make it "Instant On." Currently when you load Preware it needs to scan and parse all of the downloaded feed files. In the future they hope to utilize the db8 features in webOS 2.0 to more dynamically and quickly load content as you search for it. Second up, that db8 feature will also allow the app to more easily sync to a database in the cloud, meaning it will be able to update in the background. Lastly, they’ll add more features to support reading app reviews and also provide more fine-grained geographic controls so users in various countries can decide which apps appear in Preware.

WebOS Internals is also working on getting their other apps compatible with webOS 2.0, creating custom kernels, helping other developers update their patches for webOS 2.0, they hope to get wIRC into the App Catalog, and plenty more.

Looks like good stuff. We also can’t help but note that it’s still pretty incredible to us that Palm brought out folks like Rod Whitby from the Homebrew community to speak at their Developer Day. 

Update: @webosinternals has posted the slides from his presentation PDF form.

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So you have finished all the levels on Angry Birds, have all your feeds set up in DrPodder and spent the better part of a week setting up Mode Switcher just right, but now it’s time for you to swap out your phone for an upgrade or to run the webOS Doctor. You are worried that you will lose all the progress you made in your games or reset all of your system and application preferences, and for good reason. The Palm Backup app only backs up certain aspects of your Palm Profile (as documented on this Palm Support article), and none of your application data is included in that backup. Luckily, the geniuses at WebOS Internals created the Save/Restore app to backup that data.

You can refer to this PreCentral article on Save/Restore for more complete details on how to use the app, or continue reading after the break for some key notes about Save/Restore and the exact steps you should follow when backing up and then restoring your device.

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Welcome to "Homebrew Week" for PreCentral’s Tip of the day. We will be focusing on some simple Homebrew apps, patches or hacks that will help you add some key functionality to your phone. No advanced knowledge is necessary, as long as you know how to use webOS Quick Install and Preware. 

One of the great aspects of webOS is the level of customization that you can make to the base Operating System, without any real coding knowledge on your part. While you can install the SDK to get access and manually tweek various file, tools such as webOS Quick Install and Preware make the job really easy. For this tip, we are going to review a number of (non patch) styling modifications that you can make to your device to really personalize it as your own.  Keep reading after the break to learn how

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Welcome to "Homebrew Week" for PreCentral’s Tip of the day. We will be focusing on some simple Homebrew apps, patches or hacks that will help you add some key functionality to your phone. No advanced knowledge is necessary, as long as you know how to use webOS Quick Install and Preware.

If you have a voicemail system that emails you a audio copy of your voicemail message, you probably get the message as a WAV or MP3 file. While any MP3 file will play just fine, webOS seems to have limited support for WAV files. Luckily, developer Zsoc from WebOS Internals created an audio plugin to add additional support for WAV files. Simply install the "GSM WAV Codec" plugin from Preware (under: Available Other – Plugins – Audio Plugins) and you will be able to listen to your WAV files all you want!

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Welcome to "Homebrew Week" for PreCentral’s Tip of the day. We will be focusing on some simple Homebrew apps, patches or hacks that will help you add some key functionality to your phone. No advanced knowledge is necessary, as long as you know how to use webOS Quick Install and Preware. 

While the touchstone is an amazing and convenient accessory for your webOS device, you may have noticed that there is no way to actually turn off the lock screen with the clock when your phone is on the touchstone.  This may be a nice feature during the day, it also acts as an often unwanted night-light. Or on the flip side, what if you want to keep your screen always on and not go to the lock screen, such as in situations where you are following directions on Google Maps.  Luckily, Homebrew has some simple solutions for you.  Keep reading after the break to learn how

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Would you like to keep track of the new apps in the App Catalog without having to open up the App Catalog every day? You can look through PreCentral’s own App Gallery, Preware, or the variety of other listings available on the web, but you still have to remember to look for updates each day. Luckily, Palm has also made these feeds available for anyone to add to their RSS reader of choice. There are 2 types of feeds you can add ("All Applications" vs "Recently added only") for each of the 3 catalogs they support (Official App Catalog, Web Distribution or Beta Applications). For each catalog, you should only subscribe to one of the feed types. We recommend the "recently added" feed. For more details and a listing of the specific feeds, go to this article in Palm’s Developer Center and scroll down to the section titled "The Feeds".

Please note: once an application appears in a feed, it may still take a couple hours before the application is available to download

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Would you like to keep track of the new apps in the App Catalog without having to open up the App Catalog every day? You can look through PreCentral’s own App Gallery, Preware, or the variety of other listings available on the web, but you still have to remember to look for updates each day. Luckily, Palm has also made these feeds available for anyone to add to their RSS reader of choice. There are 2 types of feeds you can add ("All Applications" vs "Recently added only") for each of the 3 catalogs they support (Official App Catalog, Web Distribution or Beta Applications). For each catalog, you should only subscribe to one of the feed types. We recommend the "recently added" feed. For more details and a listing of the specific feeds, go to this article in Palm’s Developer Center and scroll down to the section titled "The Feeds".

Please note: once an application appears in a feed, it may still take a couple hours before the application is available to download

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The latest update of Preware (now at version 1.3.6)  allows users to install an application directly from a web URL, email attachment, or even from a file stored locally on the device itself.  This was a feature that was native to webOS back as far as version 1.0 — it was used in the very early days of the webOS homebrew scene to deploy applications in lieu of an official Software Developer Kit — but Palm plugged what could have been a potential exploit in subsequent releases.  Besides installing applications directly from email and website URLs, users can also use the excellent Neato! app to send links directly into Preware from the desktop, similar to Palm’s own send-to-phone feature.

Also included in the update is the ability to configure webOS to recognize Preware as the default application in handling the installation of apps from outside sources, a host of security conscious dialogs and prompts that are displayed to users when installing applications and changing file associations (It’s always recommended, of course, that you only install software from trusted feeds and trusted developers) and a good handful of bug fixes and performance optimizations.

When asked why webOS Internals went ahead with implementing this feature in the Preware thread in the webOS Internals forum, founder Rod Whitby noted that since Palm effectively changed its security model with the rollout of webOS 1.4.0, the group was unable to maintain package security how they had in the past. Rather than allow folks to "have a false sense of security", the change was made in order to best "educate the homebrew community against rogue attacks".

This is all very slick stuff, as this added functionality makes the "sideloading" of apps in webOS one of the easiest endeavors of all of the mobile platforms. If you dig the work of the webOS Internals group don’t be shy about sending them a donation.

And for those who are new to the world of homebrew, be sure to check out our getting started with homebrew guide and take look at the possibilities of device customization and performance enhancements made available by programs like Preware.

Discussion: PreCentral Forums

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