Last week we attended with Bertrand Dufresne the 2012 edition of Mobilism in Amsterdam, an awesome event set up by many great people, among them Peter-Paul Koch, Stephen Hay and Krijn Hoetmer.

One of the most inspiring and useful ideas we brought from Mobilism was the creation of a mobile testing lab, covering a wide array of devices, allowing companies of all sizes to offer access to devices from different brands and models. This idea was presented by both Remy Sharp and Jeremy Keith, and it has taken the form of a physical testing lab set up in Brighton, UK, as described by Jeremy himself.

Of course, Switzerland is a country, and slightly bigger than Brighton, but as a country, it is not that big after all. Imagine an online database of devices, including their geographical location, helping developers to share devices with each other, to reserve time slots, and this not only in Geneva or Zürich, but all over the country.

Very often we developers would love to be able to test our latest app in some weird combination of mobile OS or browser or technology, and we wonder whether someone has such a device to lend for a little while, the time of debugging our code or testing our site. That’s the whole spirit of this project.

So far the idea, thus, is to start the discussion and start collecting information. Towards this goal, I’ve opened a project site to share conversations, files and other items of interest around this idea.

If you want to join this effort, please contact me and I’ll open a account for you to the project. We would love to have a large array of devices for testing, and if we all collaborate, we could have a country-wide database of devices! I think this is a goal that will provide lots of utility for all of us.

We are extremely happy to announce the immediate availability of the Henri Dès iPhone application on the App Store. This is the result of a collaboration with our dear friends Fabien and Sena from We Studio Lausanne, and is a mobile frontend for the Radio Henri Dès website, also created by We Studio.

This application streams more than 250 songs in high definition, without ads or interruptions, non-stop 24/7! It also provides quick access to the songs by Henri Dès in your iOS device, and shortcuts to buy more from the iTunes store.

Henri Dès is a Swiss singer and songwriter immensely popular with children in francophone countries. He represented Switzerland in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Retour”, earning the fourth position. Publishing since 1977 under his own label, Marie-Josée Productions, he has written, recorded and released 25 records, and has toured extensively in Switzerland, France, Belgium and Canada.

We are very happy, please go and check it out on the App Store!

This week we are very happy to announce that will be attending the 2012 edition of Mobilism Amsterdam organized by Peter-Paul Koch (of QuirksMode fame), Krijn Hoetmer and Stephen Hay!

From the Mobilism site:

Mobile is becoming increasingly important to web designers and developers because users expect a site to work on their phones. Simultaneously, the web is becoming increasingly important to the mobile world because it is the only way to deploy an application to any phone.

Nowadays most web conferences feature a mobile session, and most mobile conferences a web session. The obvious next step is Mobilism: a conference wholly dedicated to mobile web design and development.

Just like in 2011 we’ll invite some of the best speakers from the web development and the mobile world to guide you through the confusing jumble of platforms, screen sizes, and browsers that is the mobile ecosystem.

Check out the list of speakers: Horace Dediu, James Pearce, Remy Sharp, Jeremy Keith, Brian LeRoux and more!

If you are around let’s meet and talk about the mobile web.

A quick reminder of our most popular open source projects on Github:

• bluewoki
• Cortito
• CoreTextWrapper
• dotfiles
• eBook-Template
• iPhoneWebServicesClient
• nib2objc
• Senbei
• Teaching Editor

Feel free to fork and enjoy!

We are very happy to introduce our latest open source project: the Teaching Editor. This project provides an online editor that automatically reloads the contents of an iPhone-sized frame. It also provides students with a read-only mode, allowing them to follow in real time whatever code is written in the screen of the teacher, and they can also download the current state of the code at any moment.

It is built exclusively in JavaScript, using the following libraries:

• Ace
• Ext.js
• Node.js
• Express

Requirements

Server

Use Homebrew to install Node.js in your system. Also, install npm and install Express and Socket.IO with npm.

The install.sh script performs all the required operations to install external dependencies in your system.

Client

The client has been tested successfully on several combinations of operating systems and browsers:

• Cross-platform browsers:
  • Firefox 10
  • Chrome 17
  • Opera 11
• OS X “Lion”
  • Safari 5.1
• Windows 7
  • Internet Explorer 9
• iOS
  • Mobile Safari for iOS 5.1 on the iPad (in this case, however, scrolling is not possible)

Pay attention to the fact that the mobile libraries themselves might not be compatible with some of these browsers (in particular, Sencha Touch only works on Webkit-based browsers).

How to Use

• ./install.sh (this will download the required libraries, only required once)
• ./launch.js (this launches the Node.js app and opens a browser window)
• Students can browse to the IP shown in the dialog of the “Project / Show Share URL” menu entry.

License

This project is released under the GPLv3 license. Please check the LICENSE file for details.

Very often, when you work with UITableViewControllers driven by NSFetchedResultsControllers, that you want to get the “previous” or the “next” elements in the results controller. Visually, this operation corresponds, from the point of view of the user, to select the cell that sits immediately above or below from the currently selected one.

Of course, you can’t just ++ on the current NSIndexPath, because these objects have both a section and a row component, and the math required to jump from one to the other can be quite cumbersome; instead, it would be useful to have a reusable set of methods, and avoid the clutter in our controllers.

I have created a very simple category on the NSFetchedResultsController class that retrieves the “next” and the “last” NSIndexPath given any other NSIndexPath; this can be dropped and reused in your projects and is very simple to use.

Après le succès des éditions de Zürich et Afrique du Sud, nous sommes ravis de présenter la première édition du cours de développement d’applications web mobiles à Genève, en français! Le cours est organisé avec la précieuse collaboration de Bertrand Dufresne, organisateur du groupe JS Genève.

Inscrivez-vous dès maintenant et profitez d’une réduction “Early Bird” de 15% jusqu’au 25 avril prochain.

Notre cours intensif de 3 jours s’adresse aux développeurs web qui souhaitent utiliser des technologies qu’ils connaissent déjà pour développer des applications mobiles de qualité, compatible avec la majorité des périphériques mobiles disponibles sur du marché. Nous proposons d’accéder au statut de développeur d’application web mobiles.

La formation s’articule autour de jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch et PhoneGap (Cordova), qui sont, à notre avis, les plus importantes technologies disponibles à l’heure actuelle pour développer des applications web mobiles basées sur HTML5.

Vous apprendrez les bases nécessaires à l’écriture d’applications web professionnelles pour périphériques mobiles (smartphones ou tablettes) en HTML5 et en JavaScript. Nous vous accompagnerons dans la découvertes les APIs specifiques aux terminaux mobiles tactiles telles que le stockage local, la géo-localisation, l’accéléromètre, le gyroscope et la boussole. Nous vous expliquerons comment déployer vos applications web mobiles professionnelles sur iOS et Android.

Nombre de participants

Ce cours est organisé à partir de 6 participants et est limité à 12 personnes maximum, afin de permettre à nos deux formateurs de vous aider individuellement.

Matériel nécessaire

Vous devez apporter votre propre ordinateur portable. Bien entendu, tous les systèmes d’exploitation sont les bienvenus (OS X, Linux ou Windows).

Avant le cours et suivant votre système d’exploitation, vous devez avoir téléchargé et installé au préalable les éléments suivants:

• Pour OS X: Xcode 4.3.2 et/ou le Android SDK.
• Windows: Android SDK et/ou Visual Studio avec les outils de développement de Windows Phone.
• Linux: Android SDK.
• Nous vous demandons aussi d’installer aussi la dernière version de Google Chrome, ou de Safari pour les utilisateurs Mac.

Lieu

Le cours sera donné dans la salle de réunion de l’hôtel Eden Genève.

Eden Hôtel Genève
Rue de Lausanne 135
1202 Genève

Coût

Le prix du cours est de CHF 2’100.00 (hors taxes).

Profitez des offres suivantes (non cumulables):

• Nous vous offrons une réduction de 15% (soit CHF 1’785.00 HT) pour toute inscription effectuée avant le 25 avril 2012.
• Si vous travaillez dans une même entreprise, une réduction de 10% est appliquée dès inscriptions d’un deuxième collaborateur.
• Les membres du usergroup JavaScript Genève qui ont au moins participé à un Meetup disposent d’une réduction de 15% non limitée dans le temps.

Des questions?

Nous restons à votre disposition pour toute question que vous pourriez avoir en relation avec nos formations: cours@akosma.com ou sur notre site http://apprendrewebmobile.com/.

Simplificator and akosma software are thrilled to announce the third edition of our successful three day training about mobile web app development using jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch and PhoneGap in Zürich on May 16th, 17th and 18th!

Today, having a mobile application online is a must. But there are multiple platforms to write for, each with their own language, idioms and pitfalls. Luckily there is a simple solution that allows to write once and deploy on all modern mobile devices: HTML5 and JavaScript.

What others have been saying

• “Die Inhalte wurden lebendig und Step-by-Step präsentiert”
• “Merci, das war ein sehr lehrreicher Kurs”

Voici la vidéo de la présentation de Adrian à propos de Sencha Touch 2, lors de la réunion du groupe JavaScript Genève le 28 mars dernier.

Un grand merci à notre grand ami Bertrand Dufresne pour la production et la “mise en boîte” de cette vidéo! Ne loupez pas les prochains meetings JavaScript Genève!

Tonight Adrian will be presenting Sencha Touch 2 to a select group of JavaScript fanatics!

This presentation will happen in the University of Geneva, in the “Sciences III” building (thanks @yannis_ for the room and @bdufresne for the organization!), Boulevard d’Yvoy near the Jonction neighborhood, at 7pm tonight. Please RSVP in the official Meetup site of the JavaScript Genève group (@jsgeneve in Twitter).

See you there!