Smartwatch Platforms to Consider Developing for in 2015

The ecosystem for smartwatches continues to grow at an incredible pace. We have plenty of new platforms emerging this year in the smartwatch space. Somehow, there hasn't been anywhere near enough discussion about the confusion for developers trying to choose which platforms to develop for. In this article, I'll provide an overview of some of the smartwatch platforms I'm finding intriguing this year - both ones that are currently available and ones that are coming soon.

Pebble

[caption id="attachment_116376" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Source: Pebble[/caption]

Regular readers here at SitePoint will be well aware of my fondness for the Pebble smartwatch. I've found it to be a very fun platform to develop for and it has a really lovely community behind it. Last month, Pebble announced their latest variation of the Pebble - the Pebble Time Round. It is both round and extremely thin, providing a new form factor for those who were a bit hesitant to wear the earlier rectangular Pebble watches. I covered what developers need to know about the Pebble Time Round last week for those who'd like more info.

Coding for the Pebble smartwatch uses the C programming language, JavaScript for connecting apps up to web APIs and a pretty well documented SDK. There are three platforms for the Pebble - "Aplite" (the original black and white Pebble), "Basalt" (rectangular Pebble Time) and "Chalk" (the round Pebble Time). It is possible to build cross platform apps to support all three.

Pebble Time smartwatches also have the ability to use "smartstraps" which can add new functionality and features to the watch such as extra battery life, GPS and more. Pebble developers are not limited to just software and the potential of smartstraps is huge.

Don't have one but want to try out the platform? Pebble also have a browser based emulator you can develop with over at CloudPebble.

Official Site: Pebble
Developer Docs: Pebble Developer
Devices: Pebble Classic, Pebble Steel, Pebble Time, Pebble Time Round
Compatible with: Android and iOS

Android Wear

[caption id="attachment_116377" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]LG G Watch R, Source: LG [/caption]

Google have a range of smartwatches that now run their Android Wear OS in various shapes and sizes. There are rectangular options like the ASUS ZenWatch 2 and round options like the LG G Watch R (pictured above). These watches come with touchscreens, OLED displays with plenty of color and a slightly lower battery life. Some also come with Wi-Fi so that your phone and watch can be further apart from each other and still be connected.

Coding for the Android Wear ecosystem is done in Java just like Android development. You'll need a companion Android app with the same name to run on the phone itself, so Android Wear watchapps are more like extensions to Android apps. Android Wear recently announced support for iOS, however third-party iOS apps are not supported.

If you don't have an Android Wear watch, you can still develop using an emulator in AVD Manager (the same area you can find an emulator for Android handheld devices).

Official Site: Android Wear
Developer Docs: Android Developer Resources
Devices: ASUS ZenWatch, ASUS ZenWatch 2, LG G Watch, LG G Watch R, LG Watch Urbane, Huawei Watch, Moto 360
Compatible with: Android and iOS (slightly limited on iOS)

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by Patrick Catanzariti via SitePoint

A Look at Ecmarkup: The ECMAScript Spec’s Custom HTML

As many of you might already know, a couple of weeks ago it was announced that the ECMAScript specification has now moved to GitHub. Previously it was available in PDF and HTML format but the actual editing process was done in a Word document – which clearly isn’t the best choice – so the switch to GitHub is great news.

Probably one of the most interesting things about the move is the fact that the document itself is now based on something called Ecmarkup, which is described as:

a number of custom elements and a toolchain suitable for formally specifying semantics for ECMAScript proposals.

In a nutshell, Ecmarkup is an extension of HTML designed specifically for use in the ECMAScript specification document. The aforementioned announcement describes it as "a custom dialect of HTML built for writing ECMAScript specifications". You can get a glimpse of the markup by inspecting the source of the spec page. Below is a screenshot:

You can see the custom <emu-clause> and <emu-xref> elements in use, and the <emu-clause> element is set to display: block in the CSS. This is the same sort of thing developers have done with old IE to get it to recognize the new HTML5 elements. Unknown elements start out with no styling, and compute to inline, as explained well by Mark Pilgrim, so these require display: block to be added in the CSS (assuming they're used as block elements, of course).

Naturally, if you try to validate a page like this, you’ll get tons of errors similar to the ones shown in the screenshot below:

But before getting to any possible drawbacks to using custom HTML like this, let’s look a little deeper into what’s offered in Ecmarkup.

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by Louis Lazaris via SitePoint

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