Last week I went to MobileTechCon 2011 Spring Edition in Munich, Germany, where I gave to talks: The first one was about Sencha Touch and PhoneGap, the second one about CSS3 Media Queries.
Sencha Touch & PhoneGap
Sencha Touch is an HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript-based framework for creating mobile applications. It is particular suited for mobile devices with touch displays. You can learn more about it at sencha.com. Take a look at the various demos to get an idea what you can create with Sencha Touch.
PhoneGap provides a wrapper for web applications that makes it possible to access native APIs such as the camera, GPS, accelerometer, address book, media player and so on. This wrapper also makes it possible to supply a web application to the various app stores, e.g. the Apple App Store, Google Marker etc. Take a look at the PhoneGap website for a complete list of available features.
In my talk, I introduced both Sencha Touch and PhoneGap, showed some core concepts of Sencha Touch - MVC, Data Package, Components, Containers, Layouts etc. - as well as a couple of demos, and I did a little live coding demo to show how to access GPS and the address book via APIs provided by PhoneGap.
The talk was very well received - thanks everybody. A lot of people came to talk to me after my presentation to get more information about this dynamic duo.
CSS3 Media Queries
Different screen resolutions and higher pixel density make it hard for web designers/web developers to create websites/web applications that suit all (mobile) devices. CSS3 Media Queries offer the possibility to apply different styles dependent on media features such as width, height, aspect ratio, screen resolution and so on.
In my talk, I made the audience aware of the challenge web designers/web developers face in creating one website suited for many devices/screen resolutions/pixel densities and showed how they can use Media Queries to solve this problem. Additionally, I presented a couple of examples to show that Media Queries can be used right now - with a modern browser that is - and are not just a dream of the future.
Again, the talk was very well received - thanks everyone. I hope that people will start using Media Queries to make their website nice and shiny for different devices.
You can download the slides of both talks in the download section.
MobileTechCon 2011 Spring Edition
This was just the second MobileTechCon ever, the first one was held in September 2010 in Mainz, Germany (to which I went as well and talked about Mobile Widgets (yeah, two out of two)). Although the conference is very new, the organizers managed to get over 700 people together to chat about everything mobile related: From Android over iOS to Mobile Web, from business strategies for mobile applications to vendors, e.g. Nokia, talking about next steps in the mobile world/market. Additionally, a couple of talks were just about general technology related topics, e.g. how to use Git, how to refactor an app etc.
I really enjoyed my time at MobileTechCon. The atmosphere was great - to which the location hugely contributed -, organisation was good, food was nice and most importantly, lots of nice people to talk to about mobile stuff. And, of course, it was nice to meet a couple of people that I don’t see that often.
Next MobileTechCon will (presumably) take place this autumn. I will probably be there.