Symbian released a new version of their Web Runtime Tools. Not many folks seem to be paying attention cause they’re too busy watching Adobe and Apple go at it. But still, it happened. I was surprised to see releases for Mac and Linux there too, which is awesome. Development tools being Windows only in the past was one of the major issues keeping me away from Symbian as a hobby platform.
I downloaded and installed the release, fooled around with the examples in the quickstart, and it’s working! I installed Chrome from the developer channel (wasn’t a big deal to do) and the emulator is even working… a completely unexpected and welcome change for Symbian development!
WRT widgets can also populate content on the home screen now too. Very interesting. Of course, this all happens at a point where the most recent Nokia device I have doesn’t support any of this. And purchase of a Nokia device isn’t anywhere on my roadmap. So I can’t try any of this stuff out in the really real world as I would like to. This is a really great move in the right direction. I just hope it’s not coming too late.
