Knowledge Base/Community Forum for Free Apps/General Questions & Bug Reports
Can you make (this extension or plugin) mobile?
Andrew J. Holden
posted this on June 23, 2011 16:45
Well, maybe.
We've built Weever around mobile 'best practices' - stuff that mobile visitors actually want to see quickly, and easily - blog posts, twitter, photos, events, maps, videos, and a simple click-to-call + email form. Our philosophy on mobile-usability is that you should be able to use a Weever App while riding a bike with one hand (please don't actually try this :)
So really complex forms and components are mostly out. However, there are some things we'd really like add - more map + GPS abilities for one thing, more options to integrate with Joomla! and other site event plugins, and maybe even eCommerce one day.
UPDATE - JULY 1ST
We're building an 'experimental mode' into the next Weever Apps BETA Plugin release that will let you try to serve *any* Joomla! extension in a Weever App. Not everything will work, but quite a bit should.
We're also building a short list of event extensions to be compatible with for the next release:
- JCAL
- EventList / RedEvent
- Google Calendar - now available
- JEvents
- Sobi
- Phoca Gallery
- SIG
- GPS Maps of site content - now available
- ..and a bunch of other ones...
Please use this forum to let us know what you'd like? We aren't promising we'll do it, but we'll certainly listen.
Comments
That's great news. What I'm looking for is for my client's desktop site, which is a property site, to be able to serve individual properties through a deep link. Also pictures (as a secondary link), maps would be great (based on postcode?) and a facility to bookmark perhaps. These are things I can see as desirable for any property vendor.
Happy to help!
We've actually already built a proof-of-concept for maps + properties with GPS, Post Code, Keyword Search, bookmarking, social media, etc, etc, and a lot of other cool features. Give us a call, and let's chat! - http://weeverapps.com/company
The main area of our site is a Kunena forum. So it would be nice to be able to read the messages from the app.
Indeed! A forum is of such complexity (logins, etc.) that I don't think we'll ever go for *direct* compatibility - and typing on mobile phones into a forum is pretty time-consuming too. That said, I'm looking into a way to draw 'feeds' of information from existing forums/boards... might not be available in the BETA, but it seems possible. - Hope that's helpful.
Exactly! I don't think anyone would post on a forum from an iphone. But reading the messages would be useful. Kunena already has RSS feeds, so it would be a way to get the raw content and display it in the app.
Easyblog ... i use this for my Blogs cant seem to get that working
Sorry Peter, we haven't created a compatibility for easyBlog yet. However, this sounds like something that could be resolved with our forthcoming 'experimental mode' and introductory blog post on making extensions compatible - I'll post more here when it's ready.
Thanks Marisa,
Some news: we've gone a little farther with 'experimental mode' now and will soon be releasing a 'hello world' example soon for developers to make almost any extension/component compatible in 'app form'. Our first example will be for EventList, the event component, since that's a popular request and especially useful for mobile apps.
We've utilized the classical overrides/standards in Joomla!, so with a little work and hacking, almost any component should work.
Virtuemart is a pretty big project to make mobile. That said, we're working on a simple approach to osCommerce at the moment, so it *might* be possible to do something like that - let users browse products, but shift payment into other areas...
There's a lot going on right now (and a lot I'd like to do soon, like including a feature allowing for easy-to-make custom GPS maps) - fortunately, we did just win a community award here, so we should be able to bring on more developers and speed up our release cycle a bit:
http://www.thespec.com/news/business/article/594756--mobile-app-fir...
Stay tuned - more details coming soon! And thanks to everyone in the community for their support in the last few weeks - it's been quite a thing to go from a couple of Joomla! enthusiasts and ocassional contributors to a 'developer' with something in the JED! We're doing our best to show our gratitude and release as many extension-compatibilities and free GPL plugins (like Mobile ESP for Joomla!) as possible without compromising mobile usability and/or user experience.
Thanks,
Andrew H.
(Lead Designer)
Im wondering if this can handle jomsocial , my app is built into jomsocial and having it all mobile would be sweet.. Any one running jomsocial?
Hi Rich,
I agree - adding in JomSocial to WeeverApps would be pretty sweet. Initially, it isn't something we're going to do ourselves any time soon (again, because of the public data vs. login thing) - but - it is possible.
My hope is that after we release our 'hello world' example (which uses the EventList component) we'll see more developers create simple customizations for apps, following Joomla!'s classic template override system. Compatibility is generally pretty straightforward, it's actually not a lot of code we're putting out.
For JomSocial some of the 'heavy' features might be tough. But for simple things, like showing feeds or updates ('walls') I imagine it could be accomplished pretty quickly.
- Hope that's helpful - realize it's not a perfect answer, but that's the best info I have :)
- Andrew H.
Lead Designer, Weever Apps
Thanks Marisa!
Not too far away now - I try not to give specific dates because every time a developer does that, they miss them. :)
We're working on a couple of big things right now, involving maps and other extensions - more soon!
- Andrew
Update! - Three new feature / releases are out:
(1) GPS Maps for Joomla! and K2 are out - map any category, tag or article in K2! Details here http://weeverapps.com/pricing
(2) Weever Apps for Wordpress BETA is now available (free trial) http://weeverapps.com
(3) Slideshows! We have 'landing page slideshows' available now. Specific an article landing page or pages, and set the type of transitions (fade, swipe, etc.) you'd like to use. Should be useful for lead-generating web sites and to feature daily specials, products, etc.
..the 'hello world' is still coming; we've been preparing full URL and SEO support,, as well as *significantly* optimizing the app-framework thus the delay.
Landing page ... would be good if .... like the landing page slideshows would also work on each page ie if put in 2 landing pages it would auto go to the second page ie on my site have a welcome and a watch catalogue after a set time it would go to the watch catalogue
It would be great to have the possibility to browse and order products in redSHOP :-)
Will EventList come?
Regards,
Hi Lars,
Sorry, but probably not. Eventlist (http://www.schlu.net/) was never really updated after it's early releases, and it's not supported in Joomla 2.5/3 at all. I was a big fan of the early versions and did a lot of modifications for it, but the project basically stopped. There is a fork (active?) I think, you can probably track it down on the JED - Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your fast respond!
I'm still using Eventlist and it is still getting updated, for that im glad :-)
Eventlist moved to from schlu.net to jlv-solutions.com - find it here.
Regards,
Lars
Hi Lars,
Thanks and no problem.
Sorry, no current plans to develop for Eventlist internally here, but we do have an Open API a developer could use:
http://developers.weeverapps.com
Alternatively, if this is something you need for a custom project, put in a support ticket and we can provide a quote.
- Hope that helps.
Andrew H.