FAQ
Smartface Platform® is an end-to-end service platform that enables operators, mobile
service providers, developers, designers and enterprises to create and manage On-Device
Mobile Applications and Solutions. The Smartface Platform® is composed of Smartface
Designer, Smartface Server and Smartface Player.
Smartface Platform® uses OTA (over-the-air) technology for pushing content, functional
changes, UI changes and updates to handsets. By linking seamlessly to numerous services
and handset functionality, Smartface Platform® creates a dynamic communication channel
to the users, which enables the utilization of real-time mobile services anywhere,
anytime.
Smartface Platform® supports Symbian (2nd and 3rd editions), J2ME and the Blackberry™
Platforms.
Smartface Platform® enables project development without targeting any specific mobile
platform. The project developed will be adaptable for various operating systems
and mobile platforms. Smartface Platform®’s features support the following operating
environments:
When a Smartface project is published for delivery; XML, XSL, and resource files
are transformed to intermediate formats for all supported platforms and packaged
as compatible installation files. Smartface Player automatically creates installation
files (JAD, JAR, SIS, SISX, COD etc.), which are ready to be installed on devices.
When you open the Smartface Designer, on the Start Page window, click the link “List
of supported handsets” or visit:
http://www.smartface.biz/www/supporteddevicelist.aspx
The list of supported devices is updated quarterly. New devices which are tested
with the Smartface Platform® functionalities will be added to the supported devices
list.
Even if no coding experience and skills required for developing applications on
the Smartface Designer, basic Web designing skills would be helpful for developers.
Smartface Platform® enables drag-and-drop capability in application development
by using visual components. Applications are developed with the use of wizards and
defined visual objects without need of software coding. These enable developers
and designers to develop mobile applications fast and easy without considering technical
background and processes.
-Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
- 200 MB Hard Disk Memory
- Active Internet Connection (to access to your Smartface Server)
Download the Smartface Designer from:
http://www.mobinex.biz/smartface-designer.html
Once you finished downloading, click on “Smartface_Designer_setup.exe” and follow
the installation steps in Smartface Designer Setup Wizard until completing the installation.
If your system requires Windows and Java Updates, leave the checkboxes related to
required updates selected and click on “Finish” button. If you have left all the
checkboxes selected, you will be directed to Windows and Java update pages in your
browser and the Smartface Designer Activation Wizard will be opened. Fill in the
information fields (with valid e-mail address) and click “Next”. A dialog box message
informing you that the activation code is sent to your e-mail will be displayed.
Click “OK” to close it. To get your activation code, click the link in the activation
e-mail in your mail box. On the activation wizard, enter the activation code into
the activation code textbox. Once you entered your activation code, the Smartface
Designer will be opened.
If you have installed the Smartface Designer Setup and filled in the activation
form but did not receive any e-mail, please check if the activation mail is in Spam
or Junk Mail folder. Sometimes, Hotmail or Gmail Servers may decide that the activation
mail is spam.
No. You only create your application and during the publishing process you select
the platform(s) that you want your application to be published. In fact, the Smartface
Platform® provides Cross Platform Support when you publish your projects.
Yes, you can find RSS Feed, Web Service and Smartface Feed objects designed for
enabling developers to use XML sources within their projects.
The Smartface Platform® supports WSDL 1.1 and SOAP and you don’t have to run web
services as encoded. The best practice for creating your XML web services is creating
them in tabular format and just repeating one element which actually represents
a row. For example:
You can easily send your projects published on your local file system into your
devices via Bluetooth, cable or you can publish your application on your web site.
You may also use the Smartface Platform®’s OTA (by sending WAP push messages or
by giving WAP links to your application) distribution functionalities.
Note that for downloading your application into BlackBerry devices by using the
browser of your handset, all the (.cod and .jad) files created during the publishing
process shall be uploaded on your server. Then, you can download and install your
application from your handset’s browser by using the link of the application's .jad
file. (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/yourproject.jad)
Smartface Platform® provides two options for application developers for designing
their projects to download multimedia files: You can either use default device tables
or your handset’s web browser to enable users to download and save external files
to the mobile.
Smartface Platform® enables developers using web services and device tables to manage
download processes of multimedia files used within your applications. Designing
your application for downloading multimedia files by this way provides a robust
user experience.
Another way to design your applications for multimedia file downloading is using
the “Link” action. By this way, your application will use your handset’s browser
and this provides an easier way for implementing standard download processes.
You can create a “Premium Charging” process within your applications by using “Send
SMS” action and its sub-actions. For example, you can add a link action (with the
feed URL of the content to be charged) to the “OnSuccess” sub-action of the “Send
SMS” action while you design your application. So the content that you want to be
accessible in the end of a premium charging process will only be accessible if “Send
SMS” action resulted successfully and the requestee is charged.
Below, you can see an example of a premium charging method implementation within
a Smartface application.
User interface update functionalities of the Smartface Designer allow you to update
design, actions and page navigations of your mobile application. Your mobile application
can only be updated by Smartface Server. During the application update, Smartface
Server and Smartface Mobile use private and optimized syncXML. Remember that you
should use Update Status object in your project in order to be able to follow the
update process within your application.
After having published your project into the server, run the application in the
handset. You can follow the update process by Update Status as follows. At first,
it is checked whether a new version is available or not. If yes, then the updates
are downloaded. Finally the application is updated.
A basic Smartface Project with an Update Status Object
After the application update is completed, the new version of the application will
be displayed on your handset.
Smartface Player works like a layer between the Smartface Application and the mobile
device’s operating system. It may be considered as a Sub-Operating System, which
is installed in order to run Smartface applications.
During the Update process, Smartface Player is also updated. Note that Smartface
Player’s version is not incremented as a Smartface project’s version. When a new
version of an application is uploaded on the server, the version is automatically
updated.
Features offered by Smartface Player include:
• Small size (about 185 K)
• Works on Symbian OS, J2ME, Blackberry platforms
• Support GSM and Wireless internet platforms
• Supports 3G and Wi-Fi handsets
• Supports standard OMA OTA Protocols
• XML based markup language
• Content previews (AMR, MP3, Video Content, etc.)
• Access to PIM functionality
• Full access to network functions (SMS, GPRS, WAP, USSD, etc.)
• Common architecture across all device platforms
• Offline event logging
• Automatic navigation algorithm
• Animation and Multimedia support (Video, MP3 and etc.)
Anchoring and other user interface designing capabilities are provided by the Smartface Designer. You can benefit of these capabilities and create applications which can be displayed properly in different screen sizes.
Smartface Platform® is supporting most of languages and characters. If you think
that there are some missing characters, please contact support@mobinex.
You can optimize your project in order to improve the performance of your application
and this can be done in two parts: Optimizing the project’s resources and optimizing
the graphical design.
As each application’s performance is limited by the hardware resources of the device
on which it is supposed to be run, you would better optimizing your application’s
resources sizes in order to increase the performance of your application. For example,
by preventing using the same design objects repeatedly, you can visibly diminish
your project’s size. Another way for reducing the size of your project is reducing
file sizes. As an example, you can use picture files of .png format as .png files
are compressed and are in small sizes.
You may also optimize your application’s graphical design in order to improve the
performance of your application. For example preventing the usage of “stretching”
as much as possible within your projects will provide your application to use your
device’s resources in a more economical way.
This is a known issue for some devices such as Nokia N73 or Nokia E61. To fix the
problem, open the “Application Manager” of your handset. Select “Settings” from
the options menu. Change "signed only" to "All" in the “Software
installation” option.
All projects created in Smartface Designer will be published with Smartface Demo
License in default. If you have your own license, you can publish your projects
with your logo and with the name you prefer.
The only restriction of Smartface Demo License is that it does not allow you to
change the name, the icon and the splash screen of your application which are displayed
in the mobile device’s menu; they remain as the default Smartface Demo, Smartface
icon and splash screen.
Smartface Demo License cannot be used for commercial purposes.
In order to activate Smartface Designer, you need to be registered for the first
time it runs. After the registration, you can publish your project with Smartface
Demo License. This demo license includes all the features of Smartface Designer,
except the ones that are related to Smartface Server
Smartface Mobile License allows applications to have different names from each other.
Thus you can publish applications to a mobile device with different names, icons
and brands from each other.
Smartface License Server account should be obtained from Mobinex. By the given account,
you can download the provided client licenses from License Management window in
Tools menu of Smartface Designer.
Smartface Server is a Smartface Platform® component which allows the applications
to be installed and updated OTA and also to be reported.Smartface Server can either be used from a common host at http://www.smartface.biz or a dedicated installation can be provided by Mobinex.
Smartface Server is not free or open source software. In order to use Smartface
Server, you need a Smartface Server account which will be provided by Mobinex when
requested. Please mail to sales@mobinex.biz and contact Mobinex Sales Department
to obtain an account.