MaePadWeb 2.0: Take your MaePad anywhere (even on a N8)

The companion app to MaePad that has been announced some days ago is now available in Extras-Devel for your N900, with some nifty features:

• Fully edit the checklists in your database
• Native Maemo 5 look and feel in the browser (title bar, toolbar, lists, ...)
• Dynamic themeing based on current Maemo theme
• Per-session password for some security (inspired by MAD Developer)

This means that if you are using the NSeries theme, it looks like this, but if you are using Digital Nature, this is how it looks (and that should work for all themes). On your device, you will see a simple info window. Now, that's bringing the Maemo 5 UI to your Desktop computer's web browser. But does it work on mobile devices as well? Of course! Let me present you MaePadWeb running in the Symbian web browser on a N8-00:

If you think that this looks shopped, check out the video for further proof and to see the checklist editor view in action :)

This project brings together some great technologies: Python (for the backend) and HTML/CSS and JavaScript (using JQuery for convenience) for the frontend. Apart from the artwork, it does not depend on anything from Maemo 5/Hildon that isn't available in MeeGo already. In fact, Python with SQLite3 support is the only real dependency of this app on the backend side. With all the confusion on what to use for MeeGo Handset UIs (MeeGo Touch Framework, QWidget-based Qt, QWidget inside QGraphicsView, QML, Qt Components, ...), the HTML/CSS/JavaScript combo seems like a good cross-platform alternative (you still have to run the backend somewhere, but it can run on the same device, of course). All you need is a good browser/JS engine/rendering engine combo (Fennec/QtWebKit on MeeGo Handset, MicroB on Maemo). This also works on the N8x0 with MicroB :)

MaePadWeb - A Web UI for MaePad running on your N900

One of the annoyances with task lists on mobile devices is that there is no easy way to view or edit your task list on your computer as well (there are some web services that allow for these things, but you have to trust your data to these services, and not all these services have a full-featured Maemo client app, and they mostly need to synchronize data between different clients).

So, what about having a simple HTTP server that you can start on your N900 and access from your computer's web browser to view and edit your MaePad checklists? Here's a short video of how it works at the moment:

Here's a screenshot of how the checklist view looks right now:

The MaePadWeb application will be available soon. On a related note, MaePad 1.8 is out now with live search support for the memo list - check it out and test it/vote for it!