Rhodes 0.2 Released!

Hard on the heels of last month’s 0.1 release, today we are announcing the 0.2 release of Rhodes, our framework for building mobile applications. The big new features in release 0.2 is Symbian support. With all the press about iPhone and Android, Symbian is still the world leader in installed based of devices. I love using Rhodes-based apps on my beloved Nokia N95. We’ve also expanded our device capabilities exposed including the ability to access PIM contact information from the phone.

We also have build scripts for all of our supported platforms, and a much better build process overall. See our tutorial for more details on how to build for iPhone, Windows Mobile, RIM and Symbian. We also now precompile our Ruby source for applications so they load and run much faster.

We have also updated RhoSync, our mobile sync server, product to release 0.2. Our synchronization is now much faster with incremental updates sent to the device. We also now require authenticated user access to get to the data. We have an easier way of managing large groups of sync source objects. Now “sources” are grouped into “apps” that contain groups of sources. As an administrator, you will see only the apps that you have created and their sources. This is a key feature for our “hosted services” release coming next month in release 0.3.

Release 0.2 provides a much better experience for developers:
- more platforms and devices supported (with Symbian)
- much faster user experience (with incremental sync and Ruby code precompilation)
- much easier to do ongoing development (with build scripts for all platforms)