Developer interview 'Pasquale Granato'

Introduction

Hello! I’m 33 years old and I’m from Naples, Italy. I earned my software engineer's degree in 2001 and since then I worked in the computer industry. In the years I’ve been involved on several kinds of software projects but what I really like are games and mobile technologies.

Currently I live and work in Switzerland in a mobile-related start-up called Playyoo (www.playyoo.com and m.playyoo.com ) , a web community focused on mobile Flash Lite games. A step closer to my dreams.

Why mobile widgets?

I know and use Opera and widgets since long time and I recently discovered Betavine and mobile widgets because of my current work. So I tried to create a game to explore the capability of this new exciting environment.

What inspired you to write the Widget?

I like puzzle games very much (despite the disappointing fact that I’m not a good solver…) and they are really fun to program. So I thought that Picross could be a good choice to explore the world of widgets.

I hope that people will have good time playing my game as much as I had programming it.

How have you developed the Widget?

I roughly sketched up the interface and wrote in two or three days the foundation of code. So far the widget was really ugly and messy. Then my precious partner (I will never thank her enough) helped me with graphics and many interface advices.

Then I worked on levels, trying to create something compelling and fun. And finally… I started the bug-haunting and the performance improvements which took me several days.

Have you any advice for other developers?

Since the beginning of computer era the best way to learn a programming language is to analyze other people’s code.

Out there, there are a lot of good applications to learn from and since the code of widgets is readable the first thing to do is learn by reading other widgets.

Javascript is apparently a simple language but can soon become tricky and lead to buggy code. Keep your work tidy.

Always test on real devices. What emulators show in almost all cases is an encouraging lie.

What’s good and what needs improving?

The Betavine tutorials and the documentation on dev.opera.com are great starting points but there’s a lack of a more structured documentation.

The testing phase would have been greatly improved if a good emulator was available because, as I stated above, you cannot rely on Opera alone.

How did the BV website help you?

The forum was a source of interesting info but above all the availability of many good widgets made the difference.

Do you have a demo/video clip?

Well, the short answer is no. But the story is a bit more complicated. I tried to make a video of my widget using several tools (DeviceAnywhere, Perfecto Mobile, etc.) but for some reason I did not succeed. I’ll try again soon.

What is your favourite app/Widget on Betavine and why?

There are many amazing widgets on Betavine. Just to choose one among others, I would say SongDNA for its smooth interface and the wealth of information and media.

What feature would you like to see brought to the Betavine platform/community?

As many other developer pointed out, a wiki would be helpful to improve and keep tidy the documentations and the tutorials.

I think that an easier way to hit the market (and the real users) would be a great improvement. Right now widget.vodafone.com/dev seems to be the only way and honestly the process is a little bit confused and disorganized.

I’m not talking about making money out of mobile widgets (even though that would be the hope of many) but just reach a wider audience and somehow create a market.

How did you hear about the Vodafone-Betavine Widget competition?

My company is making a partnership with Vodafone Italy to distribute Flash Lite games and they suggested us to create a widget to show up our catalogue.

We started working on it and so I heard about Betavine and the competition.

I would like to thank you all again for organising it. See you soon!