I recently wrote my first article for Mashable: 10 Things to Plan for When Developing a Mobile App.

In this initial post, I took a bit of business / marketing look at the process for starting a mobile app project.  If you are someone who was recently tasked with managing a mobile project, I encourage you to check out these steps.  Hopefully you can avoid some of the pitfalls that most organizations fall into.

This open source project is designed solely to make a developer more productive when building Sencha Touch 2 applications.  Initially it tackles two of the biggest productivity gaps when building Sencha Touch applications: project generation, and templates for commonly used classes within Sencha Touch.

If you want to see the tools in action,  visit Create a Complete Sencha Touch 2 Application in Just Minutes.  In this demo I walk the viewer through the process of creating a complete Sencha Touch 2 application with the ST2 Power Tools in just 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

Before we get too deep into the functionality, I should mention that my post on setting up your Mac for Sencha Touch 2 development is a prerequisite for all of the steps here.  The tools are flexible enough to work with different configurations (if you chose to setup your machine in a different manner than I did), but it will be easier if you follow the steps I provided.

Installation

For complete installation instructions, please visit the ST2 Power Tools Github page.  I’ve already begun working on a solution that will make installation even easier in future releases.

Functionality

The ST2 Power Tools project provides two key areas of functionality.  First, the project generator takes the pain out of generating a base project (including compass and sass setup).  Second, the live templates take the pain (and potential errors) out of generating the base code for normal Sencha Touch 2 views, models, controllers, and stores.

Project Generation

The project generation tool is a BASH script (currently Mac only - but it may work in Windows with Cygwin) that generates a sample Sencha Touch 2 project.  The script should work equally well if you run it in the Terminal or if you run it within your IDE of choice. 

The ST Power Tools 2 Project Generator is currently Mac Only.  While some aspects of the functionality may work in Windows under Cygwin, some aspects will certainly not work.  I may consider rewriting some aspects of the script to work specifically for Windows if there is interest.

If you follow the installation instructions, you should be able to type the following command to get the generator up and running:

The script will guide you through the rest.  You should be prepared to answer the following questions:

1. Name of Your Application
2. Namespace for Your Application
3. Relative Path to your SDK (which if you followed the setup tutorial should be ../../sdk

If you want to see a complete interaction with the generator, you can view the demo video or you can view a Gist which contains the command line interaction in that demo.

The templates can be modified to fit your needs.  You can read instructions on how to do this on the ST2 Power Tools page.  In a future release, I will add support for multiple templates that can be selected during the generation process.

Live Templates

The Live Templates functionality allows you to quickly create default elements within your Sencha Touch 2 project.

The current version of the Live Templates supports the JetBrains family of IDE’s (WebStorm, PHPStorm, and IntelliJ).  This may be extended to Eclipse based IDE’s (including Aptana) in a future release.

You can read how to install and trigger these live templates on the ST2 Power Tools page.  I also recently recorded a tutorial on Working with Live Templates in PHPStorm and WebStorm.

Conclusion

All of the code for the ST2 Power Tools can be found, forked, and downloaded from Github.

Screencast

To view the complete output of the command line (from the generator), visit this Gist.

Where to Go From Here

If you would like to begin utilizing this functionality within your development, check out these posts (in this order):

• Getting Setup for Sencha Touch 2 Development on Your Mac
• Introducing the ST2 Power Tools

UPDATE: I’ve recently released the ST2 Power Tools which is an open source project aimed at helping developers be more productive with Sencha Touch 2.  You can check out a demo here: Create a Complete Sencha Touch 2 Application in Just Minutes.

Summary

To properly setup your Mac for Sencha Touch 2 development, you need to accomplish three things: install the SDK, install compass / sass, and configure an alias for Apache on your machine.  Once these three steps are complete, you can actually begin developing a real Sencha Touch 2 application (which we’ll cover in the next tutorial).  I’ll walk you through each of these steps and then provide a full screencast walk-through at the end.

Getting the SDK

The Sencha Touch 2 SDK can be obtained by going to the Sencha Touch 2 site.  If you click on the download button, it will give you the option to download either the Open-Source Version or the Beta Release for Developers.  You’ll want the later (the former is actually Sencha Touch 1 - which we aren’t covering in this post).  Once you download the SDK, you’ll need to unzip it.

Next, you’ll need to place it into a directory that you can utilize for your projects.  For this example, I am creating a /Projects/SenchaTouch2 directory.  Inside of this directory I create two separate directories: projects and sdk.  You can put everything that was inside of the SDK zip file into the sdk directory you just created. Once complete, you should have a directory structure similar to Figure 1.

Installing Compass and SASS

Sencha Touch 2 relies on SASS for its stylesheets, and it is a powerful tool that you should leverage in your stylesheets as well.  If you haven’t worked with SASS or Compass before, you probably don’t have the proper libraries installed.  To check, open a new Terminal window, and simply type compass.  If you see Command Not Found, then you don’t have compass installed.

Compass (and SASS) can be installed by simply typing the command below in a Terminal window:

Once compass is installed correctly, you should see the compass help text when you type compass in the command line.

Configuring Apache

For your Sencha Touch 2 applications to work correctly, they need to be loaded from a webserver and not just the filesystem.  Luckily, Mac users have Apache already installed onto their machines, and it is easy to configure.  For our case, we simply want to expose our /Projects/SenchaTouch2 directory as an Alias in Apache.  In this way, we can type http://localhost/st2/ in our browser, and it will point to this directory.

To begin, you’ll need to edit the Apache configuration file.  This file can be found at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.  For this example, I’ll use TextMate to edit the file (but any text editor will do).  With TextMate installed, I can open the file by typing:

Next, you will need to scroll to the end of the file.  Right before the last line, you will need to add in the following code which sets up the Alias (if you used a different directory - be sure to update the directory in both places in the config statement below):

Once this code is in place, you will need to restart Apache.  Open System Preferences and click on the Sharing option.  If Apache is currently running, you will see a check next to the Web Sharing option.  De-select and reselect this option to restart Apache.  If Apache isn’t running, simply select the option next to Web Sharing.

NOTE: Apache will have to have read permissions for every directory in the hierarchy of your Alias directory.  This is why it isn’t ideal to place your Sencha Touch 2 SDK and projects under your user directory (since your user directory is readable only to the owner and not Apache).  If you receive a Forbidden error, it may likely be due to a permissions issue.

If all works as expected, you should be able to go to the following URL to see the Sencha Touch 2 documentation:  http://localhost/st2/sdk/.

Screencast

Conclusion

Congratulations!  By following these steps, you are now ready to create your first Sencha Touch 2 project.  In the next tutorial, I will walk you through this process as well as how to use some tools that keep you productive.  Be sure to check out the following resources:

• Create a Complete Sencha Touch 2 Application in Just Minutes
• Introducing the ST2 Power Tools

Live Templates Screencast from David Tucker on Vimeo.

The whole EULA argument around iBooks Author is extremely over-hyped.  Let’s start with the name of the new authoring tool: iBooks Author.  In short, this is a tool to create iBooks.  The main problem lies with our perception of desktop applications.  We expect to have ultimate control of anything with a shiny icon on our computers.  However, the comparisons to Word, Photoshop, and Keynote break down here.  In this case, Apple is offering an authoring tool for free to increase the content in their exclusive store.  None of the other pieces of desktop software that I have heard people compare iBooks Author too are free.  In addition, none of them are tied to a single presentation platform.  iBooks Author is for a single purpose: creating iBooks for display on the iPad.

NOTE: For any of you who are new to the discussion around iBooks and iBooks Author, feel free to check out my introductory post over on the Universal Mind blog: iBooks 2 and iBooks Author.

In traditional Apple methodology, they want to control both the hardware and the software to ensure the best experience from the end user.  Apple can’t control the presentation of ePub files on other devices, and they can’t ensure that iBooks Author will be an adequate authoring tool for any other platform.  Apple has done an amazing job of creating customer confidence in both iTunes and the App Store by ensuring a level of quality for the end user.  Unlike other platforms, the user knows that an app will work properly on their device and there is little risk of nefarious code being executed on said device.  Apple’s goal is to ensure that every student who purchases a textbook, see the expected experience.

Finally, while the ‘ibooks’ format is ePub, it also has some unique characteristics that make it non-compatible with other readers.  For example, it uses Apple’s FairPlay DRM technology (the only exception here is the user-created HTML widgets in iBooks Author which do not use this technology).  Many people (including myself) are not fans of DRM of any kind, but I can understand the importance of this functionality for companies like Pearson, McGraw Hill, and others.  Even if Apple allowed files from iBooks Author to be deployed to different devices, they would not work without removing the DRM.  If Apple did allow someone to remove the DRM, the big publishers would more than likely pull their support for the platform.

In the end, this is Apple being Apple.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Some people will undoubtedly not like it, but in the end their arguments don’t add up to much.  People don’t want to be locked into a single device and distributor for a proprietary format that can only be displayed on that device?  That seems more than a bit silly to me.  This is the exact same model that Apple has used across the App Store to help boost customer confidence.  Users can be sure that the textbooks they purchased were designed for their device and will function as advertised.  While authors may ask for additional freedom, consumers can’t ask for much more.

I will be doing a series of blog posts on this application and how it was created over the next week.  Let me know what questions you have!

The application was released today on the App Store.  You can check out a preview of the app below:

As a note, I do want to mention that I think that Flex frameworks have moved far beyond Cairngorm and solutions like Swiz and RobotLegs are where your effort should be placed.  However, if you are placed on a legacy project where you need to know Cairngorm I truly hope that these tutorials benefit you.

• Cairngorm Tutorial - Part 1
• Cairngorm Tutorial - Part 2
• Cairngorm Tutorial - Part 3
• Cairngorm Tutorial - Part 4
• Cairngorm Tutorial - Part 5

Education has been a topic on this blog many times before.  Between my own time in college and my time working at Georgia Tech, I have had quite a bit of time to look at different programs.  I have often asked myself, “If I were a high school senior and I wanted to be an enterprise RIA developer, what program would I go into today?”.

Any program has to have a great mix of theory, process, and real world development.  Full Sail does a great job of mixing these three so that students have a great deal of knowledge but also are employable the first day after graduation.  In addition, students get a good experience with the overall development process by working on real world projects while at Full Sail. 

This is a part of the reason I have agreed to join the Program Advisory Committee for Full Sail University’s Web Design and Development degree program.  I feel that over my decade in web development I have learned things that can help the next generation of developers, and I am excited to share that knowledge with such a great institution.