Rob Gravelle

Build a User Interface using the Vaadin Mobile App Framework Create a package named “com.robgravelle.exercises.entities” and a class called “Exercises” as in the Persistence in Java EE Applications tutorial. Coding the ExercisesUI Class Create a new class in the “com.robgravelle.exercises” package named “ExercisesUI” that extends com.vaadin.ui.UI. Here is the generated code with an extra annotation […]

Connect to a Database from your Java Enterprise Applications In the Persistence in Java EE Applications tutorial, we were introduced to the Java Persistence API (JPA), which is a persistence interface that leaves the implementation to the individual providers. One such provider is ObjectDB. It’s a great storage option for starting out with Java EE […]

Taking Photos from your HTML5 Web Apps It used to be that web applications were severely constrained by browser sandboxing. Aside from reading and writing cookies, front-end scripting languages like JavaScript and JScript were completely cut off from hardware. With more people going online using mobile devices than desktop computers, there is a real impetus […]

A Guide to JavaScript Fuzzy Search Libraries Regular Expressions (Regex) have taken string parsing to a whole new level. Previously, you had to iterate over each character and perform complex computations to locate matches. Regular Expressions have made their way into just about every programming languages from SQL to PHP, thus allowing for more fine-grained […]

In the Comparing Mobile Development Framework Types article, we explored the two main general Mobile Framework types and went through each one’s pros and cons. In part 2, we evaluated the Apache Cordova and Appcelerator Titanium frameworks. Now its time to move on to two more heavy hitters: Adobe AIR and Sencha Touch. Adobe AIR […]

In the Comparing Mobile Development Framework Types article, we explored the two main general Mobile Framework types and went through each one’s pros and cons. In today’s follow-up, we’ll evaluate the Apache Cordova and Appcelerator Titanium frameworks. Apache Cordova (a.k.a. PhoneGap) Apache Cordova, along with its commercial counterpart, Adobe PhoneGap, is a free and open […]

A Guide to YouTube Embedded Video Player Parameters If you’ve ever looked at the YouTube video embed markup, it’s really nothing more than an iFrame with the src set to the video server and unique video ID. What you may not realize is that the URL also accepts a number of query parameters that govern […]

The W3C HTML5 specification introduces numerous new tags to define semantic/structural elements, text-formatting instructions, form controls, input types, and more. This page describes all of the new HTML5 tags along with updates to an existing tag. New Semantic/Structural Elements HTML5 offers new semantic elements to define different parts of a web page:

Using Handlebar Templates in Apache Cordova The Apache Cordova framework uses JavaScript APIs that allow you to develop smartphone apps using familiar web languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In addition to being consistent across multiple device platforms, the Cordova JavaScript APIs also make it easy to employ popular UI frameworks such as jQuery […]

Using Views in Apache Cordova On mobile devices, the UI of a Cordova application is displayed as a “web view” that takes up the entire screen. As with many mobile apps, Cordova apps tend to be written as Single Page Applications (SPA), but, as we’ll see here today, there is nothing stopping you from adding […]

There’s More than One Way to Play Embedded YouTube Videos! Sharing YouTube videos has grown to become a National pass-time. Every time I visit my parents they have some videos that they came across on a website. My mom likes the cute animals while my dad can’t get enough of auto racing. Hey, I’m not […]

Developing for iPad, Android phones, the Amazon Kindle, larger Android tablets, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry presents numerous challenges for the modern day mobile application (app) developer. Cross-platform frameworks such as Appcelerator’s titanium, Rhodes, and PhoneGap have cropped up to make your code apply to as many devices as possible with a minimal amount of code […]