[How to] Use error console in Native UI for Firefox on Android

Developers use different techniques for debugging their web applications. Though there are lots of new techniques coming up in this space, one technique which is still widely used is console logging. Every browser (including the mobile browsers) supports this feature in some capacity. I have been using Firefox on my Nexus One and it has an in-built error console which can be enabled from about:config.  However, with the new native UI for Firefox on Android, this option does not seem to be available. Read through this post to find out how you can use error console in the native UI.

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Arduino based game controller

Being the big fan of technology that I am, I always wanted to try out the latest things happening on the technology world. Some of the buzz words being talked about in the technology world are HTML5 and mobile development. After having fun writing games during my college days, I was interested in building a HTML5 based game. Then, I came across this HTML5 based implementation of classic Helicopter game. In the mean time, I was also playing around with Android ADK and Arduino boards. Finally, made up my mind to hack something cool connecting all these technologies – HTML5, mobile and USB accessories. And, here is the result of the experiment - “Arduino based game controller”. In a nutshell, it’s a game controller which can be connected to an Android phone using which we can play HTML5 games on the browser. The heart of the hack was built over a weekend and source code of the same can be found here. Check out the video demo of the hack at the end of this post.

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Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Screenshots

Google and Samsung announced their latest smart phone Galaxy Nexus earlier today. It has awesome hardware capabilities and the offerings from Android 4.0 are quite exciting. Check out the official blog post here. Android 4.0 SDK was also released today and you can download it from here. I downloaded the SDK and played around with the emulator. Emulator seems to be faster than that of HoneyComb but still you will find some slowness compared to previous versions.

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Less , the dynamic style sheet language

A style sheet language is one which describes how a document has to be structured and styled. The most widely used style sheet language is CSS and is mostly used for styling web pages written in HTML. If you have developed even a simple web page, you would have definitely come across CSS and would have used it in some form. CSS plays an important role in the success of modern web applications with rich UI. CSS has gone through various iterations with the latest one being CSS3. However, there are some limitations with CSS. We can’t do dynamic stuffs like interpolating a property based on a variable, re-using a property value across classes, etc. Less is an extension to CSS with dynamic behaviour such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. We can write complex CSS styles with Less. Do more with Less.

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[How to] Run Android apps on Windows

I have written earlier about installing Android market on the emulator and running Android apps on it. Here is a much simpler way of running Android apps from your PC. BlueStacks is a cool app which lets you run Android apps on your Windows PC. The application is available for free and it supports only Windows as of now. There is also an Android app which facilitates syncing of apps between your smartphone and the PC.

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Per-Element FullScreen API

I have been following the developments on Chromium channel and one thing which caught my attention last week is the fullscreen API. As the name suggests, the API supports “per-element” fullscreen on the browser. Traditionally browsers have been supporting fullscreen mode for the entire page but not for the elements on the page. This API will be handy if you want to focus on a particular piece of information on the page. Most of the analytics application can make use of this API to show more detailed information. I have worked on applications which spans across two monitors as it displays huge amount of information. With this API, I can utilize the real estate effectively. Multimedia contents can also be shown on fullscreen. The API, which is based on the Mozilla’s proposal, has two JavaScript methods: requestFullScreen() and cancelFullScreen(). Check out the demo here.

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LocalTunnel: Access your local web server on the internet

If you are a web developer, here is an interesting article for you. At some stage of the development, you might want to share / demo your web application to people outside your local network. This is a common problem in the life of a web developer. There are many ways to expose the contents on your local web server to the external world. Some of the commonly used techniques include: Port forwarding, SSH reverse tunnelling, etc. LocalTunnel is a free service that lets you share your local web server in an easy way.

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JavaScript Remote Debugging

Mobile browsers are becoming more powerful day-by-day and you can do almost everything you do on your desktop browser. Many mobile app developers have already started moving towards mobile web app instead of native app. Apps are being built using HTML5 and rich JS libraries. However, one of the major concerns for the developers is the lack of developer tools. The reasons are quite obvious – real estate needed to show the debugger, non-developer friendly environment. The solution to this problem is remote debugging. I have been using JSConsole for this purpose. It comes handy when we want to inspect DOM of the webpage. I stumbled upon “Aardwolf” yesterday and it seems to be a better alternative for JSConsole when it comes to JavaScript debugging. Aardwolf is powered by Node.js.

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New sharing option “Comment-Only” in Google Docs

Google has just updated Google Docs with a much needed feature – New sharing option “Comment-Only”. This feature will be rolled out in the coming weeks. In the current version of Google Docs, we need to give edit permission for the collaborator to add comments. With the new “Comment-Only” permission, we can build better workflow system around Google Docs. The reviewer of the doc can only do the job of reviewing. I was planning to write a Google app script to implement a similar functionality with Google Docs Spreadsheet. “Comment-Only” permission can be mixed with the access permission for the doc.

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Google DevFests India 2011

Google has been organizing many developer events across the globe to meet the developers and understand their expectations. DevFest is one such event which provides a great opportunity to learn more about Google technologies and developer products. Developer advocates and engineers from Google will be present at the event. This will be an useful forum for the developers to interact with Google engineers. The event is open to all. There are only limited seats. Register here.

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