Mobile app development framework

[mark1976]

I came to know that there are some app development framework where you can develop in one language and compile the same code to run in iPhone and Android. I would like to open a discussion on such frameworks. What are the popular framework for this ?

[kgun]

Freedom to the people. We live in a free world. Personally I would use a WebKit http://www.webkit.org/ enabled browsers

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit's HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.

and the PhoneGap http://phonegap.com/ framework. The simplest may be to "mobilize" an existing website by using JavaScript libraries lik jQueryMobile, jQtouch, modernizer and the minimalistic XUIJS library. Note every byte counts when you develope for mobile platforms and mobile websites.

The only open source mobile framework that supports 7 platforms

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best.

And test your application or site on the

Opera Mobile emulator: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/o...bile-emulator/

Download it here: http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mobile/

or FireFox mobile emulater: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/

Opera has had these tools for years with Opera Mini and Opera Mobile: http://www.opera.com/mobile/

Opera and FireFox are my preferred browsers. Opera because IMO it is the most secure and mature mobile web browser, FireFox, because it has so many plugins that can be invaluable for a WebMaster.

Much more information on my bulletin board: http://www.oopschool.com/phpBB3/view...php?f=10&t=122

[DaveSawers]

It's one thing to develop HTML5 apps for phones, quite another to develop native apps.

To get an app on iTunes for the Apple platform, it has to be written using Apple's SDK. They will also reject it if it's just a wrapper around HTML.

[mark1976]

It's one thing to develop HTML5 apps for phones, quite another to develop native apps.

To get an app on iTunes for the Apple platform, it has to be written using Apple's SDK. They will also reject it if it's just a wrapper around HTML.

Do you have any personal experience with that kind of rejections?. According to some developers, I came to know that apps built using this platforms can be published in appstore. I would like to know this in details with some experienced people

[kgun]

It's one thing to develop HTML5 apps for phones, quite another to develop native apps.

Yes, but without having done it, I have got the impression that you can build hybrid applications for more than one platform from one common code base with frameworks like PhoneGap. Correct me if I am wrong.

[DaveSawers]

Do you have any personal experience with that kind of rejections?.

Yes I do. The rejection note said:

"Specifically, we noticed your app does not take advantage of the iOS platform. It would be appropriate to add iOS specific UI and functionality rather than displaying just text and images.

Please evaluate whether you can make the necessary revisions to improve the user experience of your app.

Alternatively, you may wish to consider building a web app using HTML5. HTML5 is the major new version of HTML and enables audio and video to play natively in the browser without requiring proprietary plug-ins. Using HTML5, web apps look and behave like native iPhone and iPad apps, and using HTML5's Offline Application Cache, your web apps work even when the device is offline. With web apps, you have flexibility to deliver as much or as little functionality as you desire.

If you wish to build an HTML5 web app, you can do so and distribute it directly from your web site. It is not appropriate to resubmit an HTML5 web app to the App Store."

Now, since the approval process is split between lots of different reviewers and since the rules are at best ill defined, different reviewers may respond differently.

[mark1976]

@DaveSawers Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us for app submission. Anyway I will be doing some test on several mobile app framework and post some more finding about this

[kgun]

Using HTML5, web apps look and behave like native iPhone and iPad apps, and using HTML5's Offline Application Cache, your web apps work even when the device is offline. With web apps, you have flexibility to deliver as much or as little functionality as you desire.

Great information.

A lot of websites offer app downloads here. Our main Tv station http://www.nrk.no/ is exellent on an iPhone. You can rotate through the programs and watch Tv on your iPhone.

And in the USA, everybody should know http://www.cnngo.com/ that offers http://www.cnngo.com/mobile

[azeemi]

I am Using iPFaces. iPFaces is an open source framwork developed by Edhouse for easy creation of native apps for iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Mobile Java (J2ME) devices.

[southplatte]

Sencha Touch 2.x is great along with PhoneGap. jQueryUI with PhoneGap is pretty good too. Or you could use Titanium Appcelerator.

The key is to make it work, look, feel and function like an app. If you just want html/css mobile web site type of app, likely you won't be accepted by Apple as Dave Sawers points out.

However, having had experience in helping develop and publish a major sports entertainment business' apps using Sencha Touch and PhoneGap, it can be done easy enough with minor tweaks between the platforms.