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Back in Febrary, we covered a series of interviews with webOS developers-to-be, with Palm OS developers such as Resco and Ilium sizing up the new platform. Now that the SDK early access is rapidly expanding and a beta has been leaked, more and more devs are getting aboard the webOS train.

It comes at a good time then, that Ars Technica interviewed webOS developer Ed Finkler, whose popular Spaz Twitter client is one of the first third-party app to be available through the App Catalog (which just passed a million downloads). And whether you're already expecting your app to reach the top of the App Catalog or just testing the waters with your first scene, it's always good to hear from someone who has already been there, done that.

Although still under a strict NDA, Finkler had some insights to share from porting Spaz from the desktop to the Pre.

"Anyone who has done some significant rich application work in either the browser or a Web runtime like AIR or Titanium should be fairly comfortable with webOS. I'd say that getting used to the way applications are structured in mobile is more of a challenge, with the separation of functionality into different scenes and passing data back and forth between them."

Developers accustomed to JS frameworks such as YUI or Dojo, will have little difficulty with webOS, he notes. Also, the HTML from Spaz is heavy on nested div elements (with a few Palm-specific attributes throughout), and uses the open source jQuery library extensively. This is a sign that Pre developement model is conducive to reusing JS code, making it ideal for existing web developers. More after the break (including source code).

However, the transition didn't happen overnight. Porting Spaz required a complete rewrite for webOS, taking a month of full-time work, including learning the APIs and familiarizing himself with the platform.

"Getting the basics going wasn't very hard. The more difficult stuff was adapting the way I had been used to developing desktop apps in Web runtimes to the card model of webOS. Doing a simple port that runs might have been a much shorter process, but making it use the native OS widgets and such meant learning how to harness that stuff. It probably could have [taken less time] if I wasn't committed to keeping a webOS-'native' look and feel."

And the potential for great apps? The framework is robust enough to build apps comparible with Palm's own, and webOS apps are much more sophisticated than the web widget system the iPhone had prior to their SDK. Finkler also had a "consistently positive" experience with Palm representatives during the development cycle (Palm recently also had a show of support for the upcoming worldwide PreDevCamp). Palm's more modest approach to the hacker / homebrew community also helps to give hope that less severe restrictions will be put on the community than Apple has, with their nebulous policies and an inconsistent review process.

Finkler also considers webOS "a more useable, superior platform" than the iPhone, with the advantage of multiple network adoption and hardware configs (i.e the thinline Palm Eos, and possible netbooks). However, like many, he wants the development process to be more transparent, emphasizing collaboration and sharing of code. For him, the support network of peers to collaborate with just wasn't there, and his source code could only be released after launch.

"I wanted to share my code to help people learn and learn from them, but I couldn't. It was frustrating."

As for the future, he sees Palm being in a bold transition, and hopes for the best once the dust settles. "I think they're trying to figure out how to make that step from being essentially a proprietary, closed-source company into being a company that embraces open-source." And while not expecting webOS to displace Apple's user base, choice is good. It may be the first time HTML and JavaScript has been elevated to first-class status as a third-party development solution for a handheld, and the Pre is its proving ground.

"I think more interesting for a dev standpoint is that webOS legitimizes interpreted languages for mobile development—and Web runtimes specifically. I think connected applications are becoming more pervasive, and aren't just limited to the browser anymore. There is a massive developer community [around Web technologies] and tons of resources, so it's a good move if you can support the memory and CPU needs."

So do you agree with Finkler's assessment of webOS, and how do you feel the developer community will evolve as we move forward?

Spaz is fully open-source; you can study his source code on GitHub and contribute improvements of your own. Spaz is the first public example of a large-scale webOS program.