I have been working with the new UIQ 3.0 beta SDK this week. It’s available for free download from the new UIQ Developer web site. UIQ are now providing direct support for developers. Previously Sony Ericsson were the first port of call for all UIQ enquiries irrespective of the actual phone manufacturer.

As well as the SDK, there’s product information, tutorials and guides, a knowledge base and (not so active) discussion forum. It’s not that questions aren’t being answered… more that there aren’t many questions yet. Maybe UIQ need to have something like Nokia’s Series 60 contest to stimulate 3rd party development.

Going back to the SDK, make sure you read the release notes (readme.txt). There are a plethora of things to be done manually, especially if you want to use the SDK with Visual Studio 2003. The installation hosed the Series 60 (8.0a) SDK I was currently working with so I have now resorted to doing UIQ development on a different machine to enable me to do both types of development at the same time.

The Symbian based SDKs continue to feel as though they are held together with bits of sticky tape (or rather perl!). Hopefully the forthcoming Carbide.C++ tools will make these things a lot more transparent and provide easy to use rapid UI design which Microsoft mobile tools have had since 1997.

Speaking of rapid UI design, Wirelexsoft have re-priced their Eclipse based tools.  I am not sure where their (Symbian) tools will fit in once Carbide.C++ Developer is released. Other 3rd party alternatives currently include the, now free, Borland C++ BuilderX 1.5 (see my previous review here) for Series 60 UI and Open QUB for UIQ (web site down last time I looked).

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 12:55 am and is filed under Symbian, Series 60, UIQ, Mobile, C++. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.