How-To - Using Joomla to build mobile Web Apps.

This rough How-To will go through using Joomla to build a simple mobile Web App.

You will need a few things first:

• Joomla 2.5 or 3.0+ - http://www.joomla.org/
• Add2home plugin for Joomla - http://download.waltercedric.com/downloads/joomla/917-apple.html
• A good responsive template. I used the YooTheme Warp Framework with the Yoo_master template for this one - http://www.yootheme.com/themes/warp-framework
• The MobileJoomla framework or one like it, this one is free at least and only used in this case to load a different template on Mobile devices. - http://www.mobilejoomla.com/

Start off by reading the setup instructs for the YooTheme Warp framework, and set up your pages accordingly. I will sometimes make it so the content of the page doesn't go down too far on the first screen, this will give the users an overall good first impression on a mobile device. Once that is complete, we will set it as the default template. With this design, it automatically detects screen size, but if your client wants a different design for Desktop users, then you can use the MobileJoomla plugin and component to assign a different template to mobile devices. 

Next we will have to download the Add2Home plugin, but don't install it right away. Once you download it, navigate to your download directory and extract the file into a folder. then navigate into the plugin folder, and change the photos there (Unless you absolutely love the ones the developer uses)

Once we are done editing and replacing the graphics, we will then re-archive the files back into a .zip and then we will add the Add2Home plugin to your Joomla extensions. Once it is installed, Just make sure you enable it.

Then it's time to start testing it out and making sure all the content is in the right places. Have fun with it and make it yours :)

Till next time!!

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APPS: The Adventures of making a showcase app for Windows 8 UI

Yesterday, I woke up knowing I would do something I have never done before, but not quite knowing what it might be. I started off the day, took the kids to school, and came home and cleaned up a little with Willow (More like, I cleaned, and she played the defensive linebacker role), so after she fell asleep, I climbed onto the computer and made up a quick and dirty mobile app for my church: Frontline Community It's still not done, but I at least got the basics in there, and can do a little of styling in Visual Studio now. 

Then I decided to take it a step further, and see what I can do to make a Windows 8 app. I put the basics into Joshfire Factory, and deployed it as a Visual Studio project. Opened it and instantly found that it didn't work. That's fine, I thought, I love a good challenge, so I was off looking to see if I can figure out why it didn't work. I found that much of the issues with the project were because it was using the old version of WinJS. I corrected every line that pointed to the old WinJS, and updated them to point to the location of the new version. I rebuilt and then clicked Run. 

Almost... There were a couple of issues still, like when viewing a section or page, and going back, you get the same content loaded behind the items on each section. Well that sux! 

So I dug a little deeper, and found out that it was not checking to see if the content was already loaded when it went back to the home screen, since I'm still a novice at this, I felt a simple CLEAR statement on load will do (I'm not too sure how to do a conditional statement just yet). That did the trick :)

Now all I have to do for it is fix the picture container when it loads the pictures from their sources, and also fix the YouTube stream from trying to use an ActiveX component... (Not even available, cant see why it defaults to it) and I'll be all set. At least I got somewhere in my ventures though, even though it is not 100% working, it is better than anything I've done with the OS thus far. (Minus a couple found registry tweaks :0)

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Google+ widget WIP

So I have been working a bit more on my Google+ widget for iOS. Right now I am using it inside Dreamboard and it is very usable. Sometimes though, the frame likes to use the screen size instead of the window size, but I will figure it out. I think it is not too shabby for only spending 20 minutes on it a month :) Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get an offer for something that will help me afford more time on it. (hint,hint) Here are some pics of what I have so far.

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