HoJun Jaygarl - Professional Tizen Application Development

WHATS IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Discovering Tizen
• Installing the SDK
• Creating your first Tizen web application
• Creating your first Tizen native application

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/go/professionaltizen on the Download Code tab. After decompressing the downloaded Zip file you will have HelloWorldNative and HelloWorldWeb directories with the finished application.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to Tizen, including the projects history, the way its organized, and what makes it unique. Although it provides some good reasons to develop for Tizen, its likely you already know the potential of the platform, so the chapter quickly turns into a practical introduction.

You will learn how to set up the Tizen development environment, and get started with both web and native application development. Youll then create the Hello World Tizen application using both the web and native application frameworks, and see how easy it is to use the UI Builder and get started with writing code.

The Linux Foundation announced the Tizen project in September 2011 and the Tizen Association was formed in 2012 to drive industry engagement and support for the project. Tizen as a platform hasnt emerged from nowhere. Its an evolution of the previous Linux-based platforms: MeeGo and LiMo. The Tizen platform embraces the latest standards, such as HTML5 and web-centric technologies, to provide a robust unified experience across multiple devices.

At the time of writing, the latest version of Tizen is 2.2.1. Compared to the initial release, it has a lot of new features and APIs, and the IDE and related tools have also been enhanced. In this chapter, youll discover how the platform has evolved, look at some of Tizens most important features, and see why you need to learn about Tizen programming.

Well start with the two governance bodies behind the Tizen Platform: the Tizen Association and the Tizen Project.

Tizen is an open-source, standards-based, cross-architecture software platform designed for multiple device categories such as smartphones, tablets, in-vehicle infotainment systems, and smart TVs. Tizen platform development is led by two bodies: the Tizen Association and the Technical Steering Group (TSG). The Tizen Association and the TSG are complementary to each other in terms of the marketing and technical directions of Tizen.

The Tizen Association is a mobile operator-led, industry consortium chartered with actively developing the ecosystem around Tizen, which includes marketing presence, gathering of requirements, identification and facilitation of service models, and overall industry marketing and brand awareness. You can find out more at www.tizenassociation.org.

The Tizen Project resides within the Linux Foundation and is governed by the TSG, which is the primary decision-making body for the open-source project and whose focus is the development and delivery of the platform itself. Currently the TSG has two members: Intel and Samsung. The Tizen brand is actually owned by the Linux Foundation, not by any single company.

As an open-source software platform, Tizen provides many opportunities to application developers, platform developers, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Together, these groups comprise the key components of the Tizen ecosystem.

The application developers are important to any mobile ecosystem because they are the ones who create the best applications and user experience for the end user. If you think of ecosystems as the battlefields of the platform war, application developers are in the front line. System integrators are those who squeeze every last ounce of performance from mobile chipsets and GPUs, and write the device drivers to work with sensors and other hardware. An open-source platform like Tizen offers huge opportunities to these developers.

The operators and OEMs might be described as the commanders and generals of the platform war. Operators choose to add Tizen-enabled devices to their networks and deploy their own services on those devices, for functions such as billing and promotions. OEMs are those who make the products that use Tizen, and decide what features will appear on these devices.

Another key element of the Tizen ecosystem is the Tizen Store, which was announced and demonstrated in February 2013 at the Tizen 2.0 release event. Currently the Tizen Store is still under development and not open to the public, but Tizen application developers may submit their applications for the certification process via the seller website.

The mobile platform war is actually one of the ecosystems. The platform that can create a bigger and healthier ecosystem is the one more likely to win the leading position in the market, and to gather more application developers around it. That brings us to the main question: Why should you choose to develop for the Tizen platform?

Tizen is still a new platform with a lot of potential. Compared to other mobile platforms, it is the only platform that has all these characteristics:

• Tizen is based on standards.
• Tizen is open.
• Tizen is heterogeneous.
• Tizen has industry support.

Tizens primary focus for application development is HTML5, a set of standards that is well supported by the industry. It is rapidly merging as the preferred development environment for mobile developers. According to the results of HTML5 compatibility test published on the HTML5 Test website (http://www.html5test.com), the Tizen browser tops the HTML5 benchmarking test amongst all other mobile platforms.

Not only is the Tizen browser compatible with more HTML5 features, but it also performs better. Tizen web apps achieve a frame rate of more than 60 frames per second (fps) when displaying graphics using WebGL technologies. This makes Tizen a capable environment for developing 3D and animations applications even in HTML5.

Another characteristic of Tizen is its openness. This refers not only to the platforms source code, but also the governance model.

During the Tizen 3.0 announcement at the Tizen Developer Summit in South Korea in 2013, it was stated that beginning with version 3.0, Tizen will embrace a governance model that is even more open than the current model. The Tizen source code is currently uploaded to the tizen.org git repository only at particular milestones, which means that developers cant access the nightly build of Tizen source code for features as they are being developed. Beginning with Tizen 3.0, all source code will be available on the tizen.org git repository as it is being developed. Developers will be able to download the latest source code from tizen.org, build it, and try out the latest features. Any developer will be able to contribute to the project, and recommendations for and contributions of new Tizen features will be publicly available on the JIRA server, the issue-tracking system used by Tizen Project. Developers will also be able to vote and influence the Tizen roadmap.

All this makes Tizen a truly open platform, especially compared to the closed governance model of Android.

Tizen was designed with multiple device profiles in mind. Currently two profiles are under active development: for mobile devices and in vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems. In the future youre likely to find Tizen in PCs, printers, TV set top boxes, and even cameras. In fact, the first official Tizen-enabled device is a camera, the Samsung NX300M. At Mobile World Congress in 2014, Samsung also announced Gear 2, a Tizen-powered smart watch.