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kring edited this page Jan 29, 2013 · 28 revisions

Supported mobile platforms

Cesium currently runs on a variety of Android phones and tablets in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome Beta. In Firefox, WebGL support is enabled out of the box. In Chrome, it must be explicitly enabled by visiting chrome://flags.

Enabling WebGL in Chrome Beta

As of this writing (October 2012) only two mobile browsers officially support WebGL: Firefox and Opera Mobile, both for Android. Of those, Cesium is not currently able to run on Opera, so Firefox is the only viable choice. Not all Android hardware is currently able to run Cesium on Firefox for Android.

UPDATE(1) 04-Nov-2012: In early October 2012, testing showed WebGL problems in Firefox Stable that didn't exist in Firefox Beta. By November 2012, Beta had been promoted to Stable, correcting this particular type of problem (tested Firefox 16.0.2 for Android).

UPDATE(2) 04-Nov-2012: Issue #309 corrected a problem with Dojo widget startup order that fixed some serious issues on the Motorola Xoom and other platforms.

  • ASUS Transformer Prime TF201, Android 4.0.3
    • Needs re-testing (believed fixed per updates above).
  • Motorola Xoom 4G, Android 4.0.4, tested 04-Nov-2012
    • Firefox Stable & Beta both work with CesiumViewer and the Simple CZML Demo.
    • Unit tests show some failures, such as Renderer/BuiltinFunctions has czm_eyeToWindowCoordinates (Expected { 0 : 0, 1 : 0, 2 : 0, 3 : 0} to equal [255, 255, 255, 255].
    • Dojo drop-downs appear broken, with Illegal operation on WrappedNative prototype object.
  • HTC Evo 4G LTE Sprint, Android 4.0.3, tested 04-Nov-2012
    • Firefox Stable & Beta show a black screen, don't count time, nothing appears in tab thumbnail.
  • Nexus 4 and Nexus 7, Android 4.2.1, tested 05-Dec-2012
    • Cesium Viewer in master runs in Firefox Stable.

Future potential platforms

We are hoping and expecting both Apple and Google to enable WebGL on their mobile browsers by default, but there is no known time frame for this. Apple iOS apparently has hidden options to enable WebGL via undocumented calls to the WebView interface, that has been discovered and published by bloggers. WebGL Browser takes advantage of this to provide a WebGL implementation.

Supported features

  • The CesiumViewerWidget supports single-touch-slide globe rotation
  • The TimelineWidget supports single-tap to change time, single-touch-slide to pan (only when zoomed in), and double-touch-slide to zoom.

Planned features

  • CesiumViewerWidget should of course support double-touch-slide to zoom.
  • It's been recommended that TimelineWidget should always set the time with single touches, and pan and zoom only with double touches. This would make it behave more like the desktop version. Care must be taken to not mistake the first touch of a double-touch for a time-setting event.

Debugging tools

The primary tool used so far is the Android USB debugging bridge, which displays Firefox console messages on a PC. Better tools are available:

Keep an eye on the JSD2 branch of Firebug which will enable remote debugging via Firebug.

Remote debugging with Firefox:

  • Install the Android SDK.
    • If Eclipse is already installed or you do not plan to develop with Eclipse, expand "Use an Existing IDE" and download/install the SDK tools.
    • Otherwise, download/install the "ADT Bundle", which is bundled with Eclipse and has the plugin configured.
  • In Firefox on the desktop and on the Android device, browse to about:config and set the devtools.debugger.remote-enabled preference to true. Restart Firefox.
  • Connect the Android device to the desktop.
  • Open a command prompt in the location of the Android SDK Tools and run the command: adb forward tcp:6000 tcp:6000.
  • Open the remote debugger on the desktop at Tools > Web Developer > Remote Debugger.
  • On the desktop there will be a dialog to enter the hostname and port. Accept the defaults and press OK.
  • On the Android device, you will see a prompt to accept the remote connection.

You may need to repeat the last two steps until a connection is made.

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