In the world of mobile you need to be moving fast, and the ADF Mobile team has been busy doing just this.

Less than 2 months after our last patch release - that added the new look and feels for your ADF Mobile apps - we are happy to announce another new release - patch 6.

The main difference you are going to see with this release is if you are doing development/testing/running on the Android OS.

We have dramatically improved the initial startup time for ADF Mobile apps on Android.

What do we mean by dramatic? Well, from our testing ADF Mobile apps are starting up as much as five time faster than before.

So make sure to download the latest ADF Mobile patch using the Help->Check for Update feature in your JDeveloper 

 Enjoy! 

Oracle's A-Team has developed a free JDeveloper extension called the "ADF Mobile Persistence Sample". This extension contains powerful design-time wizards and a comprehensive runtime library, allowing you to very quickly create a mobile application with data caching and data syncing capabilities. Check out this impressive video that shows the development process with this extension from start to finish.

More information can be found in two articles on the A-Team Chronicles website:

• Going Mobile with ADF – Implementing Data Caching and Syncing for Working Offline Part I: This articles focusses on the runtime persistence architecture used by the extension. 
• Going Mobile with ADF – Implementing Data Caching and Syncing for Working Offline Part II: This article focusses on the design-time wizards used to create a layer of business objects based on a SOAP or REST web service and the wizard used to generate a default mobile user interface. At the bottom of this article you can find the link to download the extension install file, and links to additional videos as well as sample applications.

 Oracle A-Team and Mobile Platform Product Management are currently investigating how the functionality of this extension can best be integrated in future releases of the product.

Recently, Oracle announced the new Mobile Suite product. Mobile Suite includes the ADF Mobile product for designing mobile applications that can run on both Android and iOS devices. Mobile Suite also includes the Oracle Service Bus (OSB), something that decidedly does not run on mobile devices. So naturally customers are asking me, “Why use Oracle Service Bus?”

The short answer is this: for mobile-enablement of the enterprise. There is more to mobile than just mobile devices. There must be support for emerging and future trends in mobile computing. The last thing anyone wants to do is to have to re-write their enterprise systems to support mobile technologies. Rewriting your existing systems to support mobile, cloud and future technologies is simply not practical.

Hi, everyone:

It has been a while since a blog article was published last.  While the bloggers took a little time off during the holidays, the product development team has been hard at work to release a new ADF Mobile "Patch" (Patch 5) that adds some significant new functionality, in addition to numerous bug fixes.  You can find the release note for the new patch here.

To download, you would simply need to start JDeveloper 11.1.2.4, and select menu item Help->Check For Updates->Official Oracle Extension and Updates, and select ADF Mobile.  It should have version number 11.1.2.4.39.64.62.

For any customers who have received one off patch through the BLR process, please note that one-off patches obtained through the BLR process are not automatically rolled into this overall patch.  Therefore, please work with your Oracle Support representative to request a new BLR patch for this latest patch.

We will focus on two specific enhancements in this article:

• New iOS7 and Android Native Look and Feel (mobileAlta Skin)
• Xcode 5 support

Here is the new Android native look-and-feel:

How to Apply the New Look and Feel

To apply the new look and feel, you simply need to edit the adfmf-config.xml file, and change the skin family as follows:

<skin-family>mobileFusionFX</skin-family>

to 

<skin-family>mobileAlta</skin-family>

 That's it.  If you have over-written out of box ADF Mobile CSS styles or added your own CSS classes, please test the application thoroughly and ensure the new style is compatible with the customized classes.  Color, coordinates, and icon references may have changed, and thorough UI testing is needed to ensure there is no unexpected side-effects.

Xcode 5 support

With the latest patch, you will need to use Xcode5 to deploy the iOS version of the ADF Mobile application.  Only Xcode 5 is supported.  This complies with the latest Apple guideline due to take effect on February 1, 2014, where all apps submitted to the AppStore must be compiled with Xcode5 and optimized for iOS 7.

Update to the latest Xcode requires downloading and installing Xcode 5, and then configure the location of the Xcode 5 in JDeveloper - Tools - Preferences - ADF Mobile.  

While JDeveloper's integration with Xcode 5 did not change, Xcode 5 itself introduced a number of changes.  The most prominent change is around how Provisioning Profiles and Developer Accounts are managed.  Previously Provisioning Profiles and Developer Accounts are accessed and managed through the Organizer utility that's accessed through menu item Windows - Organizer.  Now it is managed through the Xcode Preferences dialog box accessed with menu item Xcode - Preferences, and then select the "Accounts" tab.  You will then see your Apple Developer account information displayed.  When you click on the "View Details..." button, you will then see the list of certificates and provisioning profiles assigned to you.  Therefore, when you need to verify the Provisioning Profiles, you will need to access this dialog box.  You can still double click on the .mobileprovision file to install the Provisioning Profiles, but must use this functionality to see it.

Please consult Apple documentation for details of how to use this new functionality.

There had been some blog article published that references the old "Organizer" functionality.  These blog articles would be updated over time.  

Thanks,

ADF Mobile Product Management Team 

We are happy to announce the release of the ADF Mobile Application User Interface Design Guidelines wiki. We call it ADF Mobile Design for short. This wiki provides design best practices, design pattern examples, component information and developer resources. It is intended to assist teams designing native phone and tablet applications on iOS and Android. Feel free to use this as a reference when beginning application design or redesign project. The design content and examples will continue to change, grow and update on this wiki. Remember this is still work in progress in some areas.

Here is the full address: https://wikis.oracle.com/display/ADFMobileDesign/Home