Hey friends,

Ben here. Our team has recently returned to Madison, WI after living in San Antonio, TX for three months while we participated in this year’s TechStars Cloud class. Now that we’re back and settling into our new office (more on that soon), we’re swinging things into high gear around here again. With that said, I’m really excited to announce a stellar update for Codiqa today!

Codiqa now supports jQuery Mobile 1.3.1!

This is a big one. We *finally* updated all of Codiqa’s components to the latest version of jQuery Mobile. With is update some of you may experience icons out place or other theming issues. Just make sure your theme is updated to 1.3.1. To do that, simply go to ThemeRoller and click the “Import or Upgrade” button at the top. Then, paste in your theme’s CSS to update. That’s it! Trust me, it’s well worth is because 1.3.1 brings faster transitions, broader device support, and better performance overall!

Many of you have been asking for this for a while, and we’re sorry it took longer than we would have liked to release this. Regardless, you can rest assured that we will be on top of the jQuery Mobile version updates with Codiqa from now on. If you experience any troubles with the latest version, send us a message!

That’s it for today. Expect more exciting updates from us in the coming weeks. We have some great stuff lined up for May!

As always, we want to know what you think.  What other updates would you like to see added next? Let us know!

Ben

I'm Ben, one of the co-founders of Codiqa. I like pushing pixels and building simple products. Minimalist at heart. Say hello to me on Twitter!

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Today we are happy to announce a few feature that lets you include external Javascript and CSS files in your Codiqa projects.

One great feature this enables is the ability to use a Backend-as-a-Service or BaaS product to add server-side functionality to your app in minutes. This means you can build your app from front-to-back on Codiqa without ever having to run your own server!

One feature we’ve had a ton of requests for is the ability to read RSS feeds into your Codiqa project. While this initially seems like a simple thing to do, it becomes much more complicated as you deal with processing the data from the blog feed which is often incorrectly formed, and caching the data so it loads quickly for your clients, among other concerns.

Enter: Firebase. Firebase is a hosted service that provides an easy to use backend “server” for storing and retrieving data that works in real-time with multiple users loading and updating data. The great thing is you don’t have to have a single server running in order to use it, they handle all that messy work for you!

Firebase recently released a service called FeedTheFire, which takes an RSS or blog feed and loads it into a Firebase data store. They handle all of the processing of the blog feeds which can get really complicated. I decided this was a great opportunity to show off our new external services feature in Codiqa.

I made a short video detailing the steps to set up a Firebase account, link your blog with FeedTheFire, and load it into Codiqa. Watch the video or follow along with the steps detailed below the video.

1. Create a Firebase Account

First, we need to set up a free Firebase account. Visit https://www.firebase.com/signup/ and create an account. When asked to create a new firebase, use something short and unique. For example, if your company is Acme and you want to make this for your blog, put in acme-blog.

2. Create a FeedTheFire Account

Next, visit http://feedthefire.in/ and click “Sign in with your email”

Next, you’ll see a screen to add the RSS feed for your blog:

The blog feed I used is from this blog, and the URL is http://blog.codiqa.com/feed/

Once you’ve found the feed, enter it and then enter the URL for your Firebase account. I put in “codiqa-feed-demo” so my Firebase URL is http://codiqa-feed-demo.firebaseio.com/

You can skip the Firebase secret. Hit Add Feed and your Feed will be processed into your Firebase account!

3. Add to Codiqa

The last step is to simply link your Codiqa project with Firebase.

To do this, create a new project, and drag in a List View. Click the List View and give it an id of “feed”:

Also, go ahead and delete the first default button.

Now, we want to link up the Javascript file for Firebase so our app can grab data from Firebase. To do this, click the “Code” button on the bottom of the page, click the “JS” button, and click “External JS files…”:

Then, copy and paste this URL into the box: https://cdn.firebase.com/v0/firebase.js

Hit “Add” and then Close. You’ve just linked in Firebase directly to Codiqa!

Now, to finish up, copy and paste the following code into the Javascript editor:

Make sure to change YOUR_FIREBASE_NAME to the one you created in step 1.

Now, toggle Test Mode, and the list should now show the feed of your blog!

Any thoughts or comments on this tutorial? Having trouble? Leave a comment below!

Max

Hi, I'm Max, Co-founder of Codiqa, the easiest way to build jQuery Mobile prototypes. I'd love to talk with you: follow me!

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Codiqa has been busy the last month: we are part of TechStars Cloud in San Antonio, TX.

We applied to TechStars to help us take our business to the next level. We see the future of HTML5 on mobile as extremely exciting, but only in its infancy. We want to be the leading developer tool company in the mobile HTML5 space, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get there.

If you are interested in reading about the first month of TechStars from our perspective, check out my guest post on the Madison-based Capital Entrepreneurs blog and leave a comment here or there!

Max

Hi, I'm Max, Co-founder of Codiqa, the easiest way to build jQuery Mobile prototypes. I'd love to talk with you: follow me!

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Last night I took a trip down memory lane as I was browsing the Internet Archive snapshots of websites and projects I made while in high school.

There was one project that I now claim was Facebook before Facebook (it was my idea all along!) that was basically a private hang-out spot for kids from my school. Another was a way to share poetry snippets with each other.

But one project in particular stood out, and really makes it clear that I’ve been drawn to building visual creation tools ever since I was young.

That project is Snow Studio. I started Snow Studio in 2004 (I was 16), and I was trying to clone Adobe Illustrator. Here’s a screenshot:

Looking back at Snow Studio, it’s really no wonder I jumped right in at the chance to build a visual development tool for mobile apps. I think there is a lot of innovative work left to be done in this space, to basically enable people to create things in an intuitive way, that translate to code a device or browser can understand.

So now I have a little more understanding of why I get so excited about building tools. It’s something I’ve literally been doing for over 8 years, and I’m just getting started. It’s also funny to think that I probably wouldn’t be doing anything else besides this even if Codiqa wasn’t a company. I just love building visual tools!

I’ve also learned another lesson: properly save all your work, it will blow your mind when you get older and look back on it!

Max

Hi, I'm Max, Co-founder of Codiqa, the easiest way to build jQuery Mobile prototypes. I'd love to talk with you: follow me!

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