PhoneGap 1.0 Launches Today | Hacker News Reader

PhoneGap 1.0 Launches Today

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40 pointstbassetto25 comments

I'm really rooting for Phonegap. I really want to write apps written in html5/css/javascript, but what is really need is "proof" that it is possible to write a great app using these tools.

I've seen all the demos, and all the Phonegap apps in the App Store, but none of them are "killer apps". They don't have many ratings, and the ones that do have several ratings aren't so good. Hoping this changes soon.

You don't need Phonegap to write apps in html5/css/javascript. We did it with Zite using a WebUIView wrapped in a native app with a little bit of glue to hold things together. Obviously it is a matter of opinion whether the performance is on par with native, but I think it reaches about 95% of the native experience on an iPad 2.

We did have to spend a significant about of time optimizing css transitions to make it happen.

(It's highly and multitudinously rated, FWIW.)

Great, we now have another way of making crappy iPhone apps using JavaScript. I can't speak as to the other platforms, but what the iPhone needs is less low-quality apps, not more. Accessibility is not always a good thing.

Additionally, the idea that you can "write once, deploy everywhere" is ludicrous. It has been disproved time and time again, as the market chooses native apps over apps that have been crippled to the lower-common-denominator of the range of platforms it supports.

> Additionally, the idea that you can "write once, deploy everywhere" is ludicrous. It has been disproved time and time again, as the market chooses native apps over apps that have been crippled to the lower-common-denominator of the range of platforms it supports.

I'd argue that it has been disproved time and time again because it hasn't been done right. The ideal is native UI with platform independent backends. I get that Android and iOS have different UI paradigms, but what's going on behind the scenes is exactly the same in a lot of cases.

Appcelerator sort of provides that, but last time I tried it, it made huge bloated apps. Not good.

> I get that Android and iOS have different UI paradigms, but what's going on behind the scenes is exactly the same in a lot of cases.

Sure, it's the same, if you call being turing complete the same.

The traditional way of doing that has been to write a low-level C library with the core functionality, and write a native app for each platform that leverages the library. This is how the best cross-platform apps are made.

I can see a bright future tho in JavaScript-based game engines, so long as they're wrapped in a native app (written by a developer, not generated by an SDK).

Can you run a C library on Android?

Yes. The Android NDK lets you write and use code in C / C++:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

"Write once, deploy everywhere" seems to have worked awfully well for Google and a host of other companies. Granted, Google docs is not as feature complete as MS Word, but it's good enough for a lot of people.

There's a time and a place for native applications, no matter what the platform. But for a large percentage of apps in the different mobile market places writing them in HTML5 + JS wouldn't hurt them quality wise.

If you need to support an app on multiple platforms I think it makes easier to turn out a higher quality app as your attention isn't split between three different releases.

Granted, I work on private enterprise applications that the public will never get to see, but I think in a lot of cases a technology like phone gap makes a great deal of sense.

Not really. There are plenty of cases of applications that don't look native, but are successful for various reasons (quality, niche, speed).

Ah, yes, because if you don't want to take the time to learn objective C, you're a crappy developer? Is that right?

Phonegap basically just addresses shortfalls (read: inbuilt, intentional limitations) of the iPhone.

If iPhone supported things like image uploads from the browser, phonegap wouldn't be necessary, people would write webapps, and yes, "write once, deploy everywhere" would work, as it has for almost every major webapp ever written.

Look at desktops right now. Most of the things I do with my desktop actually happen "in the cloud", I'm just running clients for them in my browser.

The reason this can happen is that my browser isn't artificially limited, like the iPhone. Phonegap addresses this.

Ah, yes, because if you don't want to take the time to learn objective C, you're a crappy developer? Is that right?

I never said anything like that—however, since we're on the subject, I will say that if you're an iPhone developer [1] and you don't want to learn the correct way of making apps, you're most likely going to make some very crappy apps.

[1]: By that I mean anybody making an iPhone app.

(The reason that the sentence had a question mark at the end was because I was asking you a question.)

Why? Why can't iPhone developers make web apps instead?

Why? Why can't iPhone developers make web apps instead?

Fully leveraging the platform to create great apps requires using the APIs the platform provides, such as:

* Using GameCenter for peer-to-peer head-to-head game matchup over bluetooth and local wifi.

* Using Airdrop for immediate no-configuration, no-network entirely local file sharing.

* Using GCD to take advantage of the iPad2's multiple cores, and implement high-performance I/O (see iOS 5).

* etc, etc.

Non-native platform shims (such as webapps) will always be behind native applications when it comes to taking advantage of the vendor's OS platform enhancements and differentiative features.

I built an iPhone/android app with phonegap 0.9.x. My target market can't tell that it isn't a native app. Only other developers can tell and I could give a damn about them bc they aren't my market. So there.

My target market can't tell that it isn't a native app. Only other developers can tell and I could give a damn about them bc they aren't my market. So there.

I imagine non-developers can tell that your UI is poor and non-standard, but couldn't tell you why.

This is great news. I want to love PhoneGap, but I also want my apps to look 'native'. I wish it was easier to match up the two.

They are planning to add more native controls in future releases: http://wiki.phonegap.com/w/page/28291160/roadmap-planning

I like PhoneGap, but I like Appcelerator better simply because it creates native apps vs most other cross-platform frameworks that do most of the UI rendering inside a browser component/container. They do this by compiling the framework code (i.e JavaScript) to Objective-C. And the apps created in Appcelerator can be as visually impressive as the ones written in native platform, this is because the framework gives you the ability to create native UI components. Checkout wunderlist, they have used the framework to build their iOS apps and Android app and its a really beautiful app.

They only support iOS and Android right now, that might not be a problem for some, but honestly iOS and Android are the only relevant platforms for now.

But for folks who think cross-platform does not work and creates low quality app should checkout Appcelerator. I think CNBC's latest app is also built using this framework.

no ahem no..they are not compiling js to objective-C..they are exposing their objective-C via a javascript api..big difference! How big? Try debugging an app..

You're a bit off here. Appcelerator doesn't actually compile ANY javascript to native code. They expose a device specific API via a proxy/bridge system they call Kroll. They have a bunch of ObjC code that they then front with their Kroll Proxy. They also have a small shim between their JS interpreter, and Kroll on the other side.

So in effect any app you run on Appcelerator is still bound to the characteristics of their chosen JS interpreter, AND the characteristics of their proxy, AND lastly the performance of their native API.

It does provide a relatively simple path, to getting relatively simple apps up and running with native widgets but not inherently native performance.

Disclaimer: I've only ever dug into the iOS source, I can't swear this is 100% valid on other platforms.

So this is a competitor to Adobe then?

That makes me think Palm should get into this. It is a mostly JS based app platform. They should make it cross platform. A very good way to make their development tools attractive to devs and also help themselves in the process.

I've really been enjoying developing an app with Phonegap and Sencha Touch. Sencha Touch has a pretty steep learning curve, but once you get it, its pretty nice and you can put together a cross platform app REALLY quickly.

I plan on using Phonegap + Sencha touch to release first iterations of apps. If the app looks like it is picking up steam in either the iOS or Android markets, then I can decide to invest the time in making a native version.

I agree, you can build an app quickly. But Sencha Touch is painfully slow on most Android phones and iPhone 3G + it's very hard to respect Android guidelines :/ You can spot a Sencha Touch app on the Android Market quite easily.

How much have you tested it? Try running it in Android on an HTC device from last year.

Phonegap is not the problem, hardware and browsers of mobile devices are simply not up to handle the javascript required for a webapp.

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