1. For a blogger, who uses WordPress system, having a dedicated mobile WordPress client is very important.

2. The developers are working hard preparing a Symbian and Maemo version of the popular app which was available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry previously.

3. The latest version for Symbian is numbered 0.71. Compared to the previous versions, this one improves a lot especially the UI.

4. Developed using Qt, and utilising the new QtMobility APIs, this WordPress app is a joy to use and to behold.

5. However, getting Qt onboard is not easy. In order to be able to use WordPress app, you must install the Qt runtime first.

6. Version 0.71 comes with Qt Smart Installer which will automate the download and installation of the necessary Qt components required by the app such as QtMobiliity and QtWebkit. Here is a video by Lucian Tomuta showing how Qt Smart Installer works on Symbian^1 smartphones :

7. If you are more adventerous and would like to explore Qt universe on your Symbian smartphones, you can also install the complete Qt runtime from :

ftp://ftp.qt.nokia.com/qt/symbian/4.6.3/qt_installer.sis

8. With this WordPress app, you can do some WordPressing such as creating new posts or editing existing ones, approving or rejecting comments, view statistics, and more, and all wrapped in a nice clean UI.

9. There are rooms for improvements and clearly, the developers are looking to support future Symbian devices such as the Symbian^3 powered Nokia N8 because it will be pre-installed with Qt and beginning from Symbian^4, Qt will be the application layer for Symbian, replacing Avkon.

10. I hope, the developers can continue improving it, adds functions like adjusting the font display and managing plugins. Which will make the experience more complete.

11. More information and download from :

http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org/2010/07/09/minor-0-7-1-maintenance-release/

- Asri al-Baker

1. I own and maintain 3 self-hosted WordPress blogs. This blog, SymbianKu.Com and MeeGoKu.Com. I choose WordPress for it’s simplicity, elegant and flexibility.

2. On my MacBook, I use an offline blogging client called Ecto. A superb and easy to use software that fulfills my blogging needs.

3. For Symbian S60 3rd Edition, there are some solutions available namely Telewaving’s Wavelog (not free), WordMobi (free, based on Python) and the official WordPress for Nokia client (free, based on Qt).

4. I’ve talked about how WordMobi helps me blogging on the move (HERE and HERE) and personally, it’s the most useful and feature complete WordPress client for S60 3rd Edition at the moment.

5. WordMobi is very stable, doesnt eat RAM like crazy and works brilliant. And I prefer using it for blogging anytime.

6. Another solution for WordPress blogging on Symbian is using an official application developed by the WordPress team. It’s using Qt technology and currently being developed heavily for Nokia Symbian smartphones and Maemo.

7. In order to use it on Symbian smartphones, you have to install Qt runtime or it will not work. You can get the necessary files from :

Qt runtime : Version 4.6.2
WP Client : Version 0.54a Self-signed

8. Although it is designed for touch-screen smartphones, it works on E90 but there’s some usability and stability issues. It crashes randomly, and sometimes it doesnt respond to keypresses. It also freezes when it cant cope with user’s action and to run it smoothly, you need to have plenty of RAM.

9. The design looks familiar. Any WordPress user will feel at home because it looks like the WordPress Admin Panel.

10. You can view and edit posts, comments and pages. But I think, it’s not ready yet to be used to write long and complete posts. It’s useful if you want to view and manage comments or write a short and simple posts.

11. On Nokia E90 Communicator, it works on both screen. But on the external screen, navigation is slower compared to the internal screen.

12. Other than the slowness and non touchsreen related issues, in my opinion, it also needs an offline mode.

13. Everytime I launch it, it will ask me to select Access Point to connect to the internet and I have to reject it by pressing cancel 15 times before can use it offline!

14. An offline function without the annoying prompts will enhance it’s usability even more. There should be an option for users to choose to connect to server for fetching and updating contents or stay offline.

15. The connectivity issue also happens when I toggle from one blog view to another. It will try to establish a connection.

16. Like I said, there are many user scenario where it fits perfectly okay for offline usage. One of them is to write short post or to draft an idea in an area without WiFi or internet coverage.

17. I believe the development team is working very hard to make sure this WordPress for Nokia application easy to use, stable, relevant and functional. And they are almost there.

18. Until it becomes really useful on E90, and optimised for non-touch operations, I am sticking to WordMobi at the moment.

19. But for you who own one of Nokia’s Symbian^1 touchscreen smartphones or N900 (Maemo 5), this is the most elegant solution for your WordPress blogging needs.

20. Visit http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org to follow it’s development. It’s a free open source project and you can also contribute to it’s progress.

- Asri al-Baker

1. Scott Weiss, User Interface Manager of Symbian Foundation has posted an update of the progress for Symbian^4 UI development.

2. From the blog, there’s nothing much to report actually. If you are expecting new screenshots or video of the upcoming Symbian^4 UI cncept, you’ll be disappointed.

3. However, Scott did summarize briefly of the contributions and ideas that have been generated as well as the sheer amount of interest from the community who want to see a better Symbian in the future.

4. It has to be noted that Symbian^4 is still under heavy development and it will be a good year or more from now before we can see the actual product on real hardware.

5. There’s also 2 videos showcasing the same Symbian^4 UI concept that have been circulating on the interwebs for some time. They showed the photo gallery and the homescreen.

6. What do you think?

1. There’s no “WOW” Symbian device announced during MWC 2010 2 weeks ago. Well, in my opinion, this year’s MWC is flat, nothing exciting for a Symbian enthusiast. Well. the Vivaz Pro was just a Vivaz with QWERTY… nothing new…

2. While other companies such as Microsoft, unveiled new and cool user interface technology, Symbian users are presented with this video, showing the new Symbian^3 which enhances user experience by eliminating legacy double-tapping, easier connection manager and hardware acceleration. In other words, faaasssttt…

3. In this video, if you look carefully, you will find some new elements of Symbian^3 which are not available in previous Symbian versions such as :
- multiple homescreens with indicators
- when viewing homescreen in landscape, the soft-keys are located at the bottom, not at the side
- Kinetic scrolling at 60 frame per second everywhere
- new music player interface (which reminds me of iPhone’s music player a lot!)
- multi-touch interface (again, reminiscing iPhone)
- visual taskmanager which looks kinda like Palm’s webOS’ taskmanager

4. However, it is still looks like the S60 5th Edition UI aka Symbian^1 which has been around for more than a year now.

5. Yeah, I Know, the Foundation is working hard on the next Symbian releae aka Symbian^4 which will use a new UI but until this time next year 2011, we will have to wait and use this “tired and old-looking UI“.

6. I have shown the video above to many friends, Blackberry and iPhone users and their reactions are as expected. Comments like “Symbian is trying to copy other UIs and it has nothing new”

7. Personally, I’m pumped to see the Symbian^3 UI on a real hardware and the manufacturers like Nokia have committed to bring new Symbian^3 devices by the middle of this year 2010.

8. But at the same time, I am also concerned about a few things that are not revealed in the video (or anywhere else?). Mainly the following :
- text entry : will it still use the stupid full screen text entry editor that I really hate? the one that needs me to click a green tick icon on the top left everytime I finished entering texts? why dont they just implement a useful soft QWERTY like on the iPhone or Android?
- battery/power consumption : with hardware acceleration, capacitive screen and more, I’m worried about the power consumption. Will the new Symbian^3 devices utilise power intelligently and can stand my heavy usage pattern? I mean, it’s pointless if it has the latest and greatest but can stand only a few hours in real life usage…
- RAM management : On paper, Symbian is RAM efficient but manufacturers decided to be stingy and put minimal amount of physical RAM inside Symbian smartphones which limit the devices’ potential. The epic failure of N97 classic for example, is a testimony of how a great device is weakend by the limited amount of RAM.
- Internet browser / Web : The Webkit-based internet browser, is nice but it’s far behind Apple’s and Google’s implementation of Webkit on their mobile devices. It’s slow, doesnt render pages correctly and hard to use. Will Symbian^3 come with a new web-browser that doesnt suck? Or do we still have to rely on 3rd party applications such as Opera Mobile 10?

9. Those are my main concerns regarding Symbian^3 and I have no idea what to expect.

10. If the enhancements in Symbian^3 are about what are shown in the video above, then I’m disappointed because I feel, by looking at it, this should be Symbian^1 since the very beginning when Symbian Foundation took over. This shouldn’t be Symbian^3…

- Asri al-Baker

2. Ewan mentioned about an application called Gig Finder which is using a different UI from the standard Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) UI.

3. For the sake of excitment and testing something new, I installed Gig Finder to take a peek into the so called new Symbian UI elements.

4. Although the application is packaged in SIS, I believe it is a Widget, not a native application.

On the left is Gig Finder, and on the right is the proposed Homescreen UI for Symbian^4

5. Hell yeah! It is indeed different from the stock Symbian^1 user interface which I hate to love it!

6. The UI is modern and has elements of other modern UI in the market. For example, there are 3 icons at the bottom of the screen which is called Toolbar, it is used to access the most accessed (logically) functions.

7. There’s also other elements that will pop out for users to confirm actions. And the pop-up is hanging, i.e. not locked to the bottom of the screen like the existing Symbian^1 UI.

8. For the Options and other menus like Setting of the app, and those that is not accessed frequently, including the Information about the App, the menu is accessible by pressing an icon at the top left corner of the screen.

9. The UI looks good on landscape mode too!

10. The new Symbian^4 UI is not finalised yet. And Symbian just annonounced Symbian^3 as a full open source system. It will be interesting to see what the community will bring to the plate.

11. Bring it on Symbian^4!!!

- Asri al-Baker

2. Frankly, it’s a very cool application and I never ued the built-in Menu / Launcher anymore.

3. A new version, 1.51 has been released and adds the following enhancements :-
- You can add / remove applications
- There’s a new status-bar on top of the screen displaying network signal, date, clock, battery etc
- The taskmanager is improved.
- it is sleeker and faster

4. In the help screen, they mentioned http://www.getvapp.com as the official website but when I visited it, nothing.

5. Overall, I’m very impressed with it.

6. Enjoy these screenshots! (click on them for bigger screenshots)

vMenu Launcher

vMenu Taskmanager

Add and delete applications

Landscape mode

Get it from our DOWNLOAD session.

2. it looks ok on a non touchscreen phones on the old s60 up to s60 3rd edition.

3. on touch screen phones, the softkeys took too many spaces and it becomes uglier on landscape mode because only 2/3rd of the screen’s real estate is used for icons.

4. for s60 5th edition (symbian^1) there are some alternative launchers like handy shell. but i dont like it as well.

5. luckily, some chaps developed a neat applicatoin called vMenu. the developers are the same people who brought vHome Desktop for s60 3rd edition.

6. to make it short, vMenu allows you to experience “iphone-like” menu where you can flick your finger to move from one launcher page to the other. complete with kinetic scrolling effect.

7. depending on the amount of applications you installed on your symbian^1 smartphones, by default, you will be presented with 4 pages of application icons.

8. the icons are organised. 3 x 5 icons per page. that’s 15 icons per page. organising icons is also supported. you need to tap and hoid, and drag the icon accross the screen or to move to different pages.

9. it also has a neat taskmanager which allows you to see what applications running in the background and switch to them if necessary. you can also close any background applications by tapping and dragging the application icon into the huge red icon presented in the center of the screen.

10. unluckily, i cant find the official website of the developers yet. you can download the SIS file from our download section.

11. Have you tried it? what’s your opinion?

Note : this application was tested on a Sony Ericsson Satio and Nokia 5800.

- Asri al-Baker

1. With Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 for Symbian, a new function is added. It is called Opera Link.

2. This brought a new level of internet experience for Symbian users.

3. Opera Link is a service to synchronise bookmarks, speed dials, web history, notes and more. It is available for free.

4. Before Opera Mobile 10, Symbian users can use Opera Link by using Opera Mini 4.2 or via the web interface at http://link.opera.com.

5. In most cases, Opera Link saves a lot of time from typing URLs. And in my case, other than the bookmarks, the Notes functions is really handy.

6. If you havent use Opera Link yet, why not register an Opera Account for free at http://link.opera.com or http://www.operalink.com

Opera Link Web

1. The web interface for Opera Link is hosted at http://link.opera.com and it is accessible from ANY internet browser, desktop or mobile.

2. The advantage of the web interface is you can access your Opera Link data from any computer using any browser. Very handy if you travel and visited internet cafe or using your friend’s laptp to access the internet.

3. You can view your bookmarks, notes, speed dials and edit them from the web interface.

4. It is integrated tightly to your Opera Account.

5. Here are some examples of Opera Link in action using Google Chrome on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.



Opera Link Desktop

1. In order to use Opera Link on your desktop computer, be it Linux, Mac or Windows, you need to install Opera Desktop Browser.

2. Once Opera Link is activated, it will automatically synchs in the background and keeps your data updated.

3. Whatever changes you do to your bookmarks or notes or speed dials will be synchronised to Opera Link’s server.






Opera Link Mobile

1. For Opera Link to be accessible from mobile devices (other than using the internet browsers), the easiest way is by using Opera Mobile or Opera Mini.

2. At the moment, only Opera Mini 4.2 can synchronise bookmarks, notes, speed-dials and browsing history.

3. Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 for Symbian and Opera Mini 5 Beta 2 only supports partial Opera Link, i.e. Some of the bookmarks (in the Opera Mini folder) and the whole speed dials. There’s no synchronisation of notes nor browsing history nor bookmark folders.

4. I hope future version of Opera Mobile 10 will integrate full Opera Link with bookmarks and bookmarks folder, speed dials, notes and browsing history.

5. Are you an Opera Link user? What is your experience in using Opera Link?

- Asri al-Baker

2. Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 has been updated to Build 353. If you are using an older version, you can check the Build number by entering opera:about in the address bar.

3. According to a forum post at Opera Community, the new Build adds S60 native input, much like typing on other S60 applications and it does support T9.

4. The full forum post is reproduced here :

Update to Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 available with S60 native input support

We have now released an updated beta 2 release for S60 with full native input support (also known as FEP support). This means that when typing in Opera Mobile 10, you can use any input mode that is supported on your phone, in the same way as when e.g. typing text messages.

Get the Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 update from www.opera.com/mobile/download , or go to m.opera.com/next/ with your mobile phone. As before, remember to choose the International version if you want support for Asian characters.

Supporting different input types and methods is a complex matter, so we’d appreciate your feedback to improve this further for the next release. Please post all input-related feedback in this thread!
And thanks again for all your valuable input so far

Known issues:
-Not all input modes have a visual indicator.
-For some devices with non-latin input mode, you need to manually set the input language to English to input a web address in the address bar.
-On touch devices, the enter key does not work as an action key. For cases where an action is required (e.g. when adding a bookmark folder), we recommend using the Opera keyboard (available from advanced settings).
-Cut in context menu does not work on keypad devices.
-Some issues when using predictive input in the url field.

5. I have tested it on my E63, and it is very easy to use. To paste text (URL) from the clipboard into the address bar, just highlight the address bar, press and hold the OK (D-Pad center) and a context menu with “Paste” will appear. Really useful!

6. Have you used this latest version yet? If yes, what is your opinion?

7. Point your browser to http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/ or http://m.opera.com/next to download it.

2. I prefer Resco Photo Viewer over the built-in Gallery applications in S60 because Resco Photo viewer is so fast in loading photos and it has many functions like cropping, zooming, slideshow and many more.

3. The developers made a wise decision to include support for S60 5th Edition.

4. This beta also supports S60 3rd Edition with some tweaks such as some changes in the user interface, as well as some minor bugs fixing.

5. However, the slideshow function is not fully implemented yet for touch devices.

6. If you are interested to help the developer in improving Resco Photo Viewer or you just feel want to play with the new beta, you can download the SIS file from the Official Resco Photo Forum.

7. What do you think of the new beta? Is it cool?