Nokia Xpress Web App Builder Release Notes - V1

Overview

Nokia Xpress Web App Builder (XWAB) makes it easy to get your web content into a rich, engaging web app in just four easy steps:

  • Select and customise a template â a wide range of generic and content specific templates are available, with a number of options for customisation features such as colours and background images for a unique look and feel.
  • Add your content â use existing RSS feeds, social media site content, or clip content directly from your web pages.
  • Customize the app features â add features such as calls, SMS, ads, and maps.
  • Finish your web app â with a name, icon, test on device and publish to Nokia store

You can then get a short URL to preview and test the web app on your Series 40 phone, download the code to customise your web app further in Nokia Web Tools  or submit it for publication in Nokia Store.

Please use the feedback form in the tool to provide your comments.

What's new in V1

Xpress Web App Builder has graduated from beta with a range of improvements and enhancements. These changes include:

  • Nokia Publish submission. Once you have completed your web app, you can transfer it from Xpress Web App Builder to Nokia Publish to start the process of publication in Nokia Store. Please note that you need a Nokia Publish account to use this feature. Create your Nokia Publish account here.
  • Apply button removed. The toolâs interface has been improved so that as you edit the settings for your templates, content, and enhancements your changes are saved immediately.
  • Improved start-up on phones. The code generated for your web apps has been updated to deliver faster start-up times, so users will see your content sooner.
  • Blogger content widget. You can now include content from Blogger in your web apps.
  • Ads by NAX. When you enhance your web app with ads you will now do so using Nokia Ad Exchange (NAX). You will need a NAX account to use this feature. If you previously added ads powered by inneractive these are retained if you update your web app. Its recommended that you sign up for NAX and then transfer your inneractive account, details are provided when you register for NAX.
  • Expanded app showcase. The apps showcase now includes examples that show how others have used Xpress Web App Builder to create great, differentiated apps. In addition, examples of some of the template, content, and enhancement features of Xpress Web App Builder are provided, so you can see what you can achieve. Check out the showcase
  • Many other minor improvements. Many small changes have been made to ensure Xpress Web App Builder is easy to use, yet able to deliver rich engaging web apps.

 

Key Features

Below is the list of some of the important features in Nokia Xpress web app builder:
  • XWAB supports a variety of application layouts via templates to create applications with different look and feel.  The templates supported in this release are Basic, Tab control, Accordion.  Also there are templates provided specific to the application types like News, Photos and Videos.
  • Two types of widgets are provided to build your application.  One is content based widgets and the other one is widgets to take advantage of the Series 40 web apps runtime capabilities.
  • Currently supported content based widgets are generic RSS feeds, Facebook fan page, Twitter, You tube, web clip, picasa photo album, flickr, wordpress, tumblr, generic photos feed
  • Widgets enabling web apps runtime capabilities are SMS, Ads, Click to call and Maps.
  • Preview of the application via the Nokia Xpress browser proxy.
  • Testing of the application on the device via short URL
  • Ability to download the wgt package of your web app

Browser Support

Supported browsers are:
  • Google Chrome 20 and above
  • Mozilla Firefox 13 and above
  • Internet Explorer 9 and above
  • Apple Safari 5 and above
Please make sure that your browser settings are configured as recommended below:
  • Enable Javascript and cookies
  • Allow the pop-ups for the XWAB URL, otherwise you won't be able to use some features in the tool
  • Enable the access to current location to use the maps widget

Known Limitations

  • Adding more than 3 content-rich widgets (i.e. photo, video, feed) into the same web app may result in some images not displaying on device
  • Adding more than one map widget per application may result in issues displaying your current location
  • Login pages may not be able to maintain your "Remember Me" login details
  • When adding multiple widgets, screen may scroll up to the top where the first widget is located
  • When adding multiple widgets, share options may get cut off at the bottom of the screen in Preview.  But they should appear correctly when viewing on device
  • When adding multiple widgets with one being the Clip widget, this may cause the other widgets to not display correctly in Preview and on device
  • When using the Clip widget, not all content is clippable
    • Only HTML and CSS content can be clipped.  Also HTML elements must have been coded with an id and be greater than 200 pixels in area [or width or height?] or it won't be available to clip
    • Clipping websites with Unicode characters may result in display issues in Preview and on device
    • Animated or interactive content, such as Adobe Flash content, Silverlight, advanced CSS3 animations cannot be clipped
    • Clipping a whole page with lots of images may result in the app not loading on some phones
  • Some photos in your Picasa album may not display when viewing on device
  • Widgets will not be able to handle all characters in titles and names
  • When signing out of tool, clicking out to the Dashboard or closing your browser without saving your project, you may end up losing your content
  • Occasionally the publish process can be interrupted. This is indicated by the publish progress bar failing to complete. If this happens you will need to go to the publish portal, delete the web app from your content, and then rerun the publish process from Xpress Web App Builder.