The ads for Nokia’s N97 have started to appear and in Germany as it will hit the first shelves by June 18th at 5 pm in four selected cities. With the release of the N97 our travel planner widget “Panda Route” will be launched, too, and we are pretty excited about it!
Widgets are now becoming more and more popular on mobile phones and we think it’s gonna change web- and application development quite a bit too. Nokia’s new touchscreen phone comes with several widgets already pre-installed, but you can also download more from the Ovi store. With this step Nokia is especially addressing web developers. Recently they launched new mobile development tools that take advantage of three of the world’s most popular software development environments used by web designers and developers.
- Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver,
- Nokia WRT plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and
- the newly updated WRT plug-in 2.0 for Aptana Studio that we have been using too
These new Nokia WRT tools open up the mobile development market to more than 10 million web developers and creative professionals worldwide who work with these widely used development environments every day to create web applications and content, said Craig Cumberland, Director of WRT Tools and Technologies, Nokia. These WRT plug-ins enable the easy creation of feature-rich widget applications for the enjoyment of mobile consumers around the globe, providing new horizons to untold numbers of individuals and organizations seeking to extend their web content and Internet presence into the mobile space. Nokia says.
We absolutely agree and we were also mentioned in Nokia’s press release:
”[…] The Nokia WRT plug-in for the open-source Aptana Studio IDE launched in February at Mobile World Congress, has been applauded by many developers, including Frankfurt-based PavingWays, which specializes in bringing web-based applications and services to mobile devices. We immediately identified the businesses advantages of using the WRT plug-in to quickly and efficiently complete mobile widget creation projects within the Aptana Studio development environment, said Rocco Georgi, Co-Founder and Lead Developer at PavingWays. In a few short weeks, we experienced considerable savings in time and resources and were able to bring our Nokia WRT application to market in time for the launch of the new Nokia N97 touchscreen device.[…]”.
Widgets are drastically increasing the functionality of a phone and we are sure that we will see a great selection of widgets in the Ovi store soon.
Sources: Nokia press release about WRT plug-ins Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver Nokia WRT plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio Nokia WRT plug-in 2.0 for Aptana Studio Nokia N97 press release Nokia N97 Microsite