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Because webOS has been made open-source now it seems to make sense that it is worthwhile developing for because more people will come to the platform. I've had a look at some of the JavaScript stuff and decided that I don't like the look of it so I was wondering what the best way of using C/C++ is on Windows with Visual Studio. Is there a specific version of Visual Studio (Express) I should want to use? Are there any good tutorials on setting up a development environment?

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Note that webOS has not been open sourced yet. The webOS SDK currently available includes three sub-frameworks that you can use to write apps for the platform:

  1. the Mojo Javascript framework. This is the old method of writing HTML/Javascript apps for webOS smartphones. Apps written with this framework run in a reduced screen mode on the TouchPad tablet, or you can make them run full screen if you want, but in most cases it is hard to make them look good, since the framework was designed for the phone form factor.

  2. the Enyo Javascript framework. This is the new framework that was designed to run on the TouchPad. Apps written in Enyo look nice on the TouchPad, but most webOS smartphones do not ship with Enyo libraries (the scarcely available Pre3 is the exception), so it is basically a TouchPad only framework. Enyo was designed for big screens, so even if you have Enyo in a phone, most apps will not look the best in that form factor.

  3. the PDK C/C++ framework. This is a barebones framework where you basically need to do everything yourself. You get to write C or C++ code and have access to a full port of SDL to access the display and other hardware. OpenGL ES 1 and 2 are availble through SDL. There are no GUI services, you have to draw the screen yourself, and one issue that affects me greatly is that there is no way to access the camera or the microphone (these can be accessed with ease from the Javascript frameworks). PDK apps can be written and debugged as normal desktop apps on Windows (Visual Studio) or Mac (XCode). I use Visual Studio 2010 Express and it works great. The examples that come with the SDK all have Visual Studio projects ready to go.

There is a fourth mode where you make a Hybrid app. The app is written in one of the Javascript frameworks, with some component written in the PDK using C/C++. The PDK component can be only background processing, with the screen controlled by Javascript, or you can also give the PDK app a portion of the screen to draw on with SDL.

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