Documentation
How to distribute a biNu app
Once your app is published, i.e. it is registered in the biNu system and registered to be permitted via the biNu server, you may wish to distribute the app or at least make it easily available for people to find and use.
There are many ways to distribute your biNu app. We will discuss two methods here as these will most likely be the most popular. However you are free to distribute your apps in any way you like once they are published.
Listed in the biNu Catalogue
Because of the way biNu works, a handset only needs one installed biNu app (effectively the biNu client) to be able to access any catalogue listed application. This is because a biNu application is actually just a shortcut or bookmark to a web address that returns XML conforming to the biNu schema. Refer to this page for an explanation of how it works.
Within the biNu framework is a feature called ‘My biNu’ (accessible via the menu button on most biNu apps). Currently ‘My biNu’ displays all biNu apps that have been published to the catalogue. This means that users of biNu apps are free to access all other apps published to this catalogue, without the need to download another version of the biNu client to their handset. This is a powerful feature that promotes sharing and increased usage of all apps within the catalogue.
We would therefore encourage all developers to publish their apps to the biNu catalogue.
Listed on a 3rd party distribution channel such as GetJar
There are a number of distribution channels available for applications – currently GetJar is the most popular of these. In order to publish your application to GetJar, the developer is required to create an application package that can be uploaded to the website, and that an end user will download and install on his handset.
The biNu Dev Central website allows registered developers to create this package, which consists of:
- A JAR file which contains the executable code to run the biNu client on the handset
- A JAD file which contains all the information that defines the application, e.g. start URL, home URL, etc.
Developers can use the ‘Export’ feature against any of their published apps to create and download the JAD/JAR file package.