A Pragmatic Perspective by Nino D'Aversa

0.4 Release in Action

Here are some screenshots of Fennec running on the HTC Diamond!

The firstrun page of Fennec

Here is my sample page I created to test the tel: usage, this is right before clicking on the link…

Tel Link Test - Pre-click

Finally after clicking the tel: link the dialer loads to make the call, the default behaviour established is to not prompt for dialer confirmation…

Tel Link Test - Post-click : Dialer

I have begun work on my 0.5 release, which will bring GPS support for the Windows Mobile platform,  more to come this week ….

0.4 Release

So I have been struggling with Fennec this week, it is in a transition stage now and a few things were broken, so I had to manveour around them.

I did finally get some actual work done (about time!), I updated my bug adding a new patch based on blassey’s suggestions. I was able to test the patch in the emulator and half tested on the device.

With the emulator things went smoothly and it worked as expected, but for some reason on the device I cannot get the pages I hit to render on the canvas, however links are navigable on those pages, so I was able to click on my tel: despite this, and it worked, looking forward to some of these issues getting resolved in the near future so it will be easier developing on the device.

Fennec is definetly getting faster, its still very much an alpha, but I have seen a big difference already in the month I have been off from active work with it.

As for my GPS related work I am starting that now, however like I mentioned in my previous blog post, it would be a half-baked attempt to try and get it out the door for 0.4, so on ward to 0.5 it is.

0.4 Release Revision

After the last few days of building and rebuilding trying to sort out various issues I feel I have learned a lot and worked out the major channels for building/developing with the HTC device in lieu of the emulator. However I also have not accomplished anything worth showing, as I wait for my next build to complete (I hate my Pentium-4) I’m considering how I can revise my 0.4 release goals so they are realistic. I feel a lot of this 0.4 has been worth while, in the sense it has given me the experience of migrating my development and testing on the emulator to the actual device, which involved quite a change. So I plan to spend all of Friday fixing my tel: link bug to blassey’s recommendations. I will hopefully begin developing my GPS related module as well, however I don’t feel there would be enough time to get a preliminary patch out (nor do I want to rush out a half baked solution for the purpose of my now lofty 0.4 goals). Therefore I’m revising my 0.4 goals to: my knowledge/experience gathered using the device for debugging and updating my tel: link patch to blassey’s specs. Although I’m not happy with the amount of deliverable work coming out of this release, it involved a high overhead of time and a lot of hours, so I find solace in the fact that my effort and attention is where it should be. I’m staying positive and looking at this release like wheel spin off the line, finishing with my tyres finding grip (I know I’m a petrolhead). Next release will be all traction.

0.4 Release Update

New year, new bugs! (with some old ones).

I received a brand new HTC Diamond on loan from Seneca thanks to Dave Humphrey and the Ontario Government!

<rant>Overall I’m not too impressed with the device itself, but I blame that on the fact that iPhone has spoiled me. I find the interface cumbersome and clunky. The stylus is horrible to use. </rant>

As part of my 0.4 release goals I have been trying to get Fennec loaded up on the device itself (since all of last semester involved working in the emulator environment). I am happy to say that tonight I have succeeded.

I was able to build the browser on the weekend and get the files on there, and after some mucking about with creating a shortcut (more on that in a bit) I was able to attempt a launch. However I was getting errors that xulrunner.exe was not a valid Pocket PC application. I discovered through some discussion with blassey and dougt that the problem exists with the way the mozce_shunt.dll is being created (currently it is being corrupted by the build process). So after replacing the mozce_shunt.dll in the Fennec executable directory and the xulrunner directory with the one from ‘hgmozilla-centralbuildwinceshuntbuildvs9′ I was able to finally run Fennec on the Diamond!

Its still slow on the device, but MUCH better then the emulator experience and a welcomed change!

Just as an FYI for those loading Fennec on the device, I placed the entire bin directory for Fennec on my Diamond’s internal storage drive. Since Fennec is not loaded with the exe directly yet, a shortcut needs to be created to run xulrunner.exe with some parameters, for this i created a LNK file and placed it on my devices start menu (/Windows/Start Menu/). The lnk file contains one line as follows:

74#"Internal StorageFennecxulrunnerxulrunner.exe" -app ..application.ini

The 74 indicates the number of characters in the command to follow (after the #). With this I now have a shortcut to run Fennec on the start menu (as an installer is not available at the moment).

Also over the weekend Brad (blassey) finally got a chance to review my latest patch from last semester’s bug. I got some great feedback that I’m using to make changes to my patch and submit as part of my 0.4 release this Friday.

If all goes well I’ll blog when my 0.4 hits, if not you’ll see some blogging on my trials and tribulations.