Mobile Development News

Joshua Marinacci write about the notion of "MiniApps" -- essentially small apps that are always running that really don't know the difference between the web and the desktop. In other words, they have fast UIs that don't need to be loaded but the data may be found from anywhere. Most of his examples are some sort of lookup app.

First, I could have sworn that this was the one of the original goals of java and loading it off of websites and such. Not that it's ever happened that way in a real sense. Gmail, with it's client side scripting, is something like this. How hard would it be to turn it into a lightweight Java "MiniApp" (with appropriate pieces being drawn directly from the web, of course).

Which leads to the second thing: I like this idea. The Google deskbar is essentially one of these. It's input isn't on a web page, but the output is. And it can be used for news, calculations, ebay (with a little bit of configuration), and maybe even a search or two.

Now, what does this have to do with mobile developement? Well, if you've read this far I'll tell you:

This is exactly what many mobile applications are. They're mini (by necessity) and they grab stuff off the net. This is especially the case on BREW-based phones where there are many non-game applications. Perhaps mobile developers will have the mindset for creating this sort of MiniApp: think small. If it has two features, maybe it's actually two MiniApps. Even better if they're in J2ME and the desktop system supports this... then they'll run anywhere.

Read Joshua's article and the following discussion that takes place.

java.net: Unleash the MiniApp [August 25, 2004]