Smart Phone Development Using Web Technologies
The document discusses various options for developing smartphone applications using web technologies, including PhoneGap and Titanium. PhoneGap allows developing apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that run on multiple platforms, but performance is slower than native apps and some native features are not accessible. Titanium compiles JavaScript to run natively on each platform, allowing native-like performance and access to full device APIs, but with a less familiar development model compared to web development. Overall, PhoneGap is better for prototyping and simple cross-platform apps, while Titanium enables better performance for native-like apps.
9. Disadvantages
Much slower than native
Harder to look native
Can’t access everything (yet)
No position: fixed support
No debugger!
File system support is limited
10. Lifecycle
e
Start Up vic !
De dy
a
Re
Load Web
Browser
Load HTML Load JS
Load CSS
11. Webkit or go home
HTML 5 + CSS 3
SQLite
Hardware accelerated animations
Use your favourite framework
jQuery
ExtJS
13. jqTouch
Combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript libraries
Designed to emulate native look and feel
HTML + CSS kind of clunky
Worth it for the JS
14. SenchaTouch
Combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript libraries
Uses ExtJS (better for app development)
Better performance than jqTouch
Weird license
15. iScroll
Not a full framework
Fixes the scroll problem
Uncanny valley problem
Author working on full framework (GhostTouch)
16. Go Speed Racer!
Image loading is slow
Rendering a gradient, makes an image (use canvas)
Accelerated CSS animations
opacity
translate3d (NOT translate)
Use native touch events
17. Pretending to go Native
Input fields have
additional types (email,
phone, search)
Turn on/off auto
correction and auto
capitalize
Notification API
provides alert, confirm
18. In the Wild
Memory and CPU are an issue
There is some arbitrary 10Mb image limit
Only handles text files (base64 FTW)
Working Asynchronously is hard
27. Disadvantages
Documentation is a little lacking. (Though forums are
pretty good)
Structuring code is less defined than on the web
Again, no debugger
Code - Build - Crash cycle much slower than Code -
Refresh cycle
Unit testing is hard
28. Conclusion
PhoneGap better for non-native UIs, fast prototyping,
simple apps, and web based apps
Titanium better for native UIs. Nice gateway drug for
those of use that don't understand C-pointers