Palm enhances open credentials with cloud-based developer system

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Palm enhances open credentials with cloud-based developer system

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 9 November, 2009

Palm may not be shining as a device vendor right now, but it is increasingly in the vanguard of open development advances. It has always sought to differentiate its Linux-based webOS platform with greater reliance on open standard web tools, and now it is readying Ares, a browser/cloud based approach for programmers.

Of course, a single-vendor software platform like webOS - used on the Pre smartphone and the new Pixi - has to go that extra mile to attract developer support from the potentially giant user bases of Symbian and Android. Palm has already lured software houses with the ability to distribute applications on the web, bypassing its Application Catalog review process. And webOS makes heavy use of universal tools like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so that no special device expertise is required, making webOS support simpler.

These promises are taken a step further in Ares, which Palm is now promising by the end of the year, having demonstrated it in public for the first time last week. It aims to give developers a simple way to integrate components in Javascript. Palm says its software developer kit (SDK), released in July, has now been downloaded tens of thousands of times.

Ares adds a new programming option, supporting fast development via a drag-and-drop browser interface, and is geared to novice developers or those with no mobile experience. Ares will require no downloads or configuration, and will include debugging and a mechanism to share libraries and APIs. Within the phone emulator in Ares, users can see what the application will look like in portrait and landscape view. Completed apps can be shared, downloaded to a phone, or submitted to the Application Catalog store. Ares will work with various browsers including Firefox and Safari (but not, as yet, Internet Explorer).

There are only about 300 apps in the Palm store to date, dwarfed by the iPhone's 100,000 and Android's 12,000. However, Palm stresses that Application Catalog is still currently in trial mode, and the firm wants to ensure the software platform is mature, and has all the tools in place, before it goes on full release next month.