I want to start this blog with a big thank you to all of our Intel® XDK users for the enthusiastic, positive feedback to our July release of Cordova* Plugins support. It shows that we are on the right track in simplifying hybrid app development, particularly for plugins and services integration. I’d also like to give a shout out to our friends at the Scirra* Construct 2* HTML5 games development community for their help in testing our plugins support, and getting some great games with ads/monetization published in the past month with Construct 2, the XDK and Crosswalk! Thank you, everyone!
Now on to this September release. The new features are:
- Live Development improvement: We changed the functionality for"live development" in the Develop tab for better simultaneous editing and previewing within browsers or on-device. "Run My App" (formerly"Live On-device Preview") now lets you test your app on the emulator in a separate window, or on your Android* device over USB. This option lets you test the complete app, including native device functionality. "Live Layout" (formerly Live Preview) now lets you test the UI of your app over Wi-Fi on both Android and iOS devices, or on Chrome* or Firefox* browsers within the XDK. Both of these options will offer near real-time viewing/testing of your app as edits are made.
- App Security API: A first release of new APIs to aid in security for on-device app data and storage. It offers Security Services for HTML5 developers via a JavaScript API and middleware (in the form of a Cordova plugin). It delivers on-device Secure Data (for data-in-use) and Secure Storage (for data-at-rest). The middleware protects the confidentiality and integrity of storage elements and data access. Secure Data and Storage are the foundation for future enhancements and extension in domains like Transport, Identity, Input and Output.
- Updated App Preview, our on-device testing apps, to use the same Cordova 3.x runtimes as in the apps. We will be submitting new"App Preview Legacy" on-device testing apps to the app stores to allow those users still using the original non-Cordova-based containers/runtime to continue app testing while you migrate to Cordova. We have deprecated the"legacy" containers in favor of Cordova and this will let you take some time to complete the migration.
- Improvements to the UI for Cordova plugins, adding a"Featured Plugins" list for plugins that are better integrated into the XDK and tested with the XDK. There are only two in that list right now: the App Security APIs mentioned above, and a new plugin from our friends at Dolby Audio* that provides for some amazing audio quality for certain mobile devices. Here is a link to Dolby Audio API Information. As I mentioned with our last release, we have deprecated many of the original appMobi*/Intel XDK APIs as they duplicate functionality in the base Cordova APIs. You can see in the plugins setting UI that these are highlighted with a "caution triangle. "
- Updated UI for Services: rather than keeping the services integration in a separate tab, we pulled the services into the side panel in the Develop tab so it is available while editing or using App Designer.
- Deprecated App Games Interfaces (AGI): We are announcing that AGI is deprecated. In other words, we will not be doing any further development of it. With the improved support and performance of WebGL* on all platforms and browsers, we will stick to supporting and helping this standard instead. We expect to stop AGI support completely by the end of 2014 .
- Finally, we have added some new samples to demonstrate inclusion of Ads and Monetization to help you get started on integrating such into your own apps.
And of course, many bug-fixes. Here is the link to our updated Release Notes for more info on all changes.
As always, keep the feedback coming – we look forward to it!
For more such Android resources and tools from Intel, please visit the Intel® Developer Zone
Source: https: //software.intel.com/en-us/node/529129
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