Futurice's Riku Valtasola took some time last week to discuss how they created the Qt Developer Days app in QML, mirrored the functionality in an HTML5 web app, and the challenges they faced implementing OAuth in a mobile environment. The resulting service encapsulates an entire conference agenda in a custom XML structure, allows attendees to build their personal conference schedule, and collects session feedback from attendees.
Nokia and Futurice have worked together on several successful mobile apps, including WRC Live, the official FIA World Rally Championship application for Nokia Symbian^3, Series 40 and MeeGo Harmattan phones. Check out over 100 reviews of the app posted on Nokia Store and you'll see why the Qt team selected Futurice for this project.
After initial consultation between Futurice designers and Qt Developer Days organizers, here are the primary features agreed for the initial (2011) release of the Qt Developer Days app:
A major non-functional requirement for the application was that it must be possible to customize it relatively easily for future conferences. This requirement was satisfied through the architecture of the application, for example by designing a flexible and comprehensive XML format for modifying and storing the conference data.
The image above includes screen shots of the QML-based app. If you have worked with Qt Components you'll recognize standard features such as page-based navigation and QML ToolBar.
Here is the architecture of the QML-based app:
Riku shared with us some of the architectural choices that needed to be made. At the highest level the decisions were easy:
Integration with social media posed a particular challenge. Each user must authorize the Qt Developer Days app to access their Twitter or Facebook account the first time they want to share something. The required OAuth processing is quite tricky, and there are not yet standard components to deal with the complex handshake. "We use embedded QWebView for rendering the authentication pages of Twitter and Facebook and it works," notes Riku, "but on Symbian this class eats a lot of memory and the user experience is not great."
The resulting app is intuitive to use and offers just the right amount of graphic interest without getting between me and what I wanted to accomplish. I even encountered several surprises that "just worked" while attending Qt Developer Days in San Francisco without me thinking about them. During the conference, a bright red cross-hair shows current time when viewing the agenda. When I added my first session to my favorites list, the app asked if I wanted to add it to my Nokia N8's calendar. When a session was over, the app popped up a polite "Feedback please" invitation to review the session.
Once the QML app was built and server-side infrastructure was in place, Futurice built an HTML5 web app that provides as much of the QML functionality as possible to users without a Qt-compatible phone. Because the web app uses the new local storage capability of HTML5, users do not need a current Internet connection when checking their agenda. However, because the UI is not built with QML, much of the "eye candy" is missing. Also missing is integration with the user's device calendar.
With experienced agile developers on both sides of the relationship, Futurice and the Qt team approached this project as a timebox and deliberately specified more features than they expected to be able to implement given the time and resources available. While there is no fixed further development plan at this point, there are a lot of cool ideas and features in the backlog which may appear in the future versions of the app for upcoming conferences. Riku is already thinking of what's next.
For more information about the Qt Developer Days app:
For more about Futurice's experience with QML, check out this video with Michael Samarin, Head of Mobile Development at Futurice, talking about the Nokia Trailers, WRC Live, and Transformers 3 apps:
Source QtExperts