Are there specific functions that are simply unusable when taking an XPage to mobile devices?

Question

I have an application that will need to better support tablets in the future. I have seen some apps already created with UP1 and ExtLib Mobile Controls but I was wondering if anyone knows of specific functionality that simply is too challenging to even consider bringing to a mobile device?

For example, are there partial refresh issues on specific devices? Can managed beans still be used behind the scenes? Is dynamic content totally viable on mobile?

I'd be interested in hearing what big challenges/functions people had to give up when they mobilized their existing XPage apps.

Answer 1

There isn't really anything in XPages that would prevent building mobile web apps as with other web app dev models. In other words: Everything you can do with web apps on mobile you should be able to do with XPages.

XPages 8.5.3 UP1 comes with Dojo Mobile 1.6.1. However that does not prevent developers from using other frameworks like JQuery or anything else.

There are some advantages in general for native apps and hybrid apps. But personally I think most of the typically rather simple business apps can be built with mobile web apps. If you need local data/offline that might be different though.

Answer 2

You can use Xpages to do anything that is possible with mobile web developement. Dynamic content may not be the way to go for everything, but it will run just fine. In ITANA available for free on openntf.org, i created a simple replication engine to replicate notes tasks from the local device using sqlite to the domino server. This makes it run very fast and allows the app to run offline as well.

So i believe anything you want to try will work, you can make the Xpage output anything you want, from html, to xml, or json, to accomplish your tasks.

Answer 3

I know that XPages was totally incompatible with older Blackberry's. I assume that's not the case these days but back at OS 5.0 I think even buttons wouldn't work. So if you're doing anything with BB make sure it's modern and tested.

We're not really getting tablet support in ext. library until the next dojo rev I think. But there is a preview of tablet support somewhere that you can get. I've not looked yet but it was mentioned at Lotusphere. so if you want to hit tablets you might want to roll your own right now until that comes available.

Answer 4

Tablets are a little more challenging as the mobile controls are designed for the mobile phone size devices. That said with a little trial and error you can get a nice navigator split screen and still use the one page app mobile controls to streamline it, with records opening in their own page just like the phone version. Type ahead as I'm discovering should be handled differently if you are using the iPhone themes from oneui2.1

The oneui2.1 gives your navs and views nice styling. The forms may need a bit of custom styling.

Split your design into custom controls then you can use a server ate xpage for mobile devices and straight web. Or if you forgo the use of mobile single page controls you can always just have a seperate style sheet to accommodate the iPad. Really depends on the functionality needed. Good luck

Answer 5

My suggestion for anyone wanting to do tablet specific development using XPages is to move to Notes 9.0 and dojo 1.8 asap. Dojo 1.8 has an experimental control called ScreenSizeAware. This is miles ahead of anything else either the Extension Library Mobile controls or Dojo provides for Tablet development.