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Closed 10 years ago.
I’ve got some apps on the cards, my target platform of choice is Android, however I’m aware that there are some SDK’s around advertising the ability to write once and deploy to multiple mobile Operating Systems. One such seems to be Marmalade.
This product in particular claims compilation to native code per device to achieve compatibility. What I’d like to know, before i commit to the price tag, or even developing outside the manufacturers intended frameworks – is peoples thoughts on the matter.
Compilation to native code would assumedly have high performance, however I am guessing there’s a tradeoff where you lose easy access to all of the API’s provided by google/apple, etc.
Looking for any other pros/cons and whether or not people who went with something like marmalade hit road blocks, wished they had not made the move.
My apps will not require a 3d engine, which seem to make up the bulk of the sample apps on the marmalade showcase. My apps will however generally want to store quite a lot of relational data & hit web services, so convenient access to sql compact would be nifty.
I work at Marmalade caveat.
The solution that we provide offers high performance because it does not rely on a virtual machine like other cross platform solutions do.
Additionally you can use native APIs directly using our EDK (Extension Developer Kit) that allows you to package up calls to native calls on iOS and Android. So you need not miss out on these.
Take a look at this blog by one of our developers who has taken his game across a whole bunch of platforms with little effort using Marmalade http://www.drmop.com/
For the last comment, we do provide sqlite support through our open source modules.
Look at Cut the Rope or Plants vs Zombies. I doubt that you need more than they need - and they use Marmalade to port games to non-iOS devices.
Regarding sql - you can use sqlite: https://github.com/marmalade/sqlite
The only trade-off is development speed. It's several times faster to write scripts in Unity and use their visual tools but you are also forced to use Unity tools and if you have more than 40K vertices visible per frame game will be slow at iPhone 3GS (10K for 3G and older).
With Marmalade in theory you should know Visual C++ but when you need some things specific to iOS or Android and no one still made library for that you have to take their EDK, native SDK and write libraries by yourself. It's not that hard and you can outsource that if you don't have time to learn new SDK.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm about to start building my first mobile app and wanted some direction. The app will need to:
run on iPhone, Windows Phone, and Android
access data from a database
be able to determine where it is (e.g., when I cross a state border, when I enter a city, or, generally, when I change locales)
the GUI will be relatively straightforward
After doing a bit of research, I have a few questions:
Should I use a framework (e.g., Rho, Appcelerator, or PhoneGap) or HTML5/CSS3/JS? Or, would I use both of those in combination?
I want to sell the app, so does that preclude building it as a website (i.e., HTML5/CSS3/JS)? In other words, if I build it as a website, doesn't that mean a user won't have to download it and install it like a native mobile app? I like the idea of making it a "native" mobile app vs. a website, although maybe I shouldn't.
Is REST the best way to access my data? My thought is to have a SQL Server database and build a REST service using .NET.
And other tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jay
If you use a tool such as Appcelerator then you the end product will be native. Appcelerator framework obfuscates the underlying native interfaces for android/iOS. There are a few instances where you'll need to know the differences between the two, for example when to use what Appcelerator class for each device, but in essence, you can write once and deploy to each device. Been using it for a while and is very nice. Appcelerator will give you all the hooks you need to tap into the devices natively.
PhoneGap will just wrap up your app and create a 'web app'. Basically a packaged website. IMO Appcelerator would be the way to go. This is more similar to your second bullet. You'll build the website, you just won't host it on a server. It will be packaged up and deployed to the device. In essence the phone becomes the 'web server' but only in the sense that the device is reading web pages that are local to the device.
As far as data, REST might be the best way to go. the calls would be quick. You may not really need to build your own DB. You might want to look and see if some of the data you are going to use is already out there. Unless you are collecting data. I don't know the details of your app so I'm not sure what help this opinion provides.
Hope this helps.
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Closed 10 years ago.
why would I prefer Google Apps server over one of Amazon's various offerings?
the main purpose would be to store data for mobile apps, so I suppose cost and programming language are the biggest deciding factors.
Is there a good primer I can read? I'm mainly looking for resources to then come back here with more detailed questions
I think google app engine is good but I found it rather limited. I could only push my python or java code to it. I decided to go with AWS because I realized, in my specific case, I need other services running and different versions of certain software(some of my apps run python3 and some run python 2.6).
I also found the usage pricing of google a bit confusing. For example, how do I know how many IO requests my system will have? With EC2 I didn't have to measure it, it gives you unlimited IO on your server and to S3. I only pay for an hour.
With that said, there are good reasons to choose google over AWS. If you are simply pushing code and do not depend on any third party services(all the services stem from your own app) then google maybe a good choice.
If someone can provide a good primer than great but I would strongly suggest you just get your feet wet and try both services out. AWS offers a micro instance for free for a year ( http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ ) and I believe google does as well( http://www.google.com/enterprise/cloud/appengine/pricing.html ). Test both out and see which one you like.
This thread seemed to generate some good discussion and is centered around games:
Final GAE vs AWS architectural decision
Another SO post with lengthy discussion:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine
IBM DeveloperWorks has a nice comparison between major PaaS vendors here.
The main drawback of Google App Engine is the lack of flexibility: it only implements partially the Java EE standard and it forces you to use a Non-Relational data store for persistence (although, Google SQL is planning to get out soon). With this restrictions, your application is less portable.
On the other side, Amazon offers includes a Tomcat Container that it's a fully complaint Java Web Container. Amazon also lets you choose between a relational and a No-SQL repository so flexibility and portability is assured. But the prices are quite expensive, so it’s not recommended for small projects or hobbyist developers (like me)
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Closed 11 years ago.
in the last months the development of mobile apps has become more and more a focus of mine. I already created a few apps with PhoneGap and also dived in into mobile frameworks like jQuery Mobile ans Sencha Touch.
In a next step I would like to use a mobile apps builder and I stumbled on Tiggr and Application Craft. There are probably even more.
So I wanted to ask if some people here already have experience with those two or maybe even another app builder and share it with us. As both seem to cover the same area and I am not so interested in learning them all. I would like to know if someone can tell me which is "better".
I know that there has been a big topic about PhoneGap vs Titanium Appcelerator that helped me a lot so I hope I can get some helpful answers about this topic as well.
Thanks for reading,
Marvin
I have been using Application Craft for about a month (on and off) and so far i'm really impressed. They seem to be putting LOTS of work into it: things have broken only a couple of times, never anything serious. Also, they are building really thorough documentation, etc. they host the apps for free, and they seem to be adding features etc all the time. I would bet that in a year or so they will be huge; quality services on the net tend to grow fast thankfully.
I hadn't heard about Tiggr until now. From what i can see on their site, it looks as though their free service is far inferior to what Application Craft offer. They may be worth a try too?
Hope that helps
I haven't specifically tried Tiggr or ApplicationCraft, but as you've already mentioned there are quite a few different app creation systems out there, all of which work in slightly different ways. Many, for example MobileRoadie or AppBaker, supply a series of pre-built templates that you can customise and plug together in various ways. This is great if their templates support the type of app you want, but there's often no scripting support so if you want something custom you need to pay for their developers to add the features you need, or you should go elsewhere.
If you want complete control over how your app looks and works then you should use a more IDE-like system with built-in scripting support. Things to look out for in such a system would be a good code editor, a way of immediately previewing your app inside the tools, decent documentation, support, and examples. If you're planning a cross-platform app, you'll want a system that can simulate your app running on different phone screen sizes, so you can tune your GUI appropriately.
AppFurnace is a new cloud-based app development platform that provides all of the above (I should point out that I work for AppFurnace, of course).
Tiggr Mobile is a great service! Check out thier tutorials on creating an app that will run on any mobile device at http://blog.gotiggr.com/. They've also received good press and have an impressive gallery of apps that users have created and submitted.
You should probably put NS Basic/App Studio on your list as well. It provides a complete IDE, including a 'drag and drop' interface for adding elements to your forms. The overall feel is something like Visual Studio. You can program in JavaScript or Basic. More info at http://www.nsbasic.com/app.
(disclosure: I work for NS Basic)
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Closed 11 years ago.
I'm trying to develop a mobile app I've been thinking about for a while. I want to know if anyone has used PhoneGap and what your experience has been with using their service.
PhoneGap is a framework for developing mobile applications using HTML and JavaScript. It is not a "service" per se, though they do have some services available, like support and cloud builds, but I suspect that is not what you mean.
PhoneGap is a fine framework and can definitely get the job done if you need cross-platform support for your applications. But it does have some limitations too. So whether or not it will suit your needs depends on what you mobile application does.
If you application is a graphically intense game with real-time rendering, or heavy communications between peer devices or something, then PhoneGap might not be for you. However if your application does not require any of that and is more about using less intensive features of a phone (Contacts, GeoLocation, Accelerometer, LocalStorage) and your UI can be easily created using HTML and JavaScript, then I would say PhoneGap would be great for you.
Some would say that PhoneGap is fine for simple apps and that for really complex, robust stuff you need to go native. I am hesitant to say it is that simple. PhoneGap is capable of making very complex applications in terms of logic, UI, etc.
Where PhoneGap really shines is its ability to work on multiple platforms. If you need to support multiple platforms (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, etc) and do not have the resources to support multiple native code bases, then PhoneGap and the other cross-platform choices (Adobe AIR, Titanium, etc) are awesome choices.
That is the situation that I am in. I am a lone developer that needs to support 3+ platforms. There is no way that I am going to waste my time doing native development for iOS, Android, Blackberry, etc, when I can get exactly what I need with PhoneGap, AIR or Titanium. I can get what I need in a fraction of the time with MUCH less maintenance using one fo these frameworks.
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Closed 12 years ago.
Assuming you are trying to sell large business/government software then IE6 will be a fact of life for many years to come. If you are dealing with the UK government, NHS, or local government in the UK then IE6 support is a given.
A lot of customers will not move from IE6 as they have other web apps that will only work on IE6, they are also not willing to install other browsers for control reasons.
However I have come across cases when the customers would install Silverlight on all of their machines. How common is this?
(I am not asking if you like IE6, or if you like Microsoft, Sorry we have to many money in the world as it is today.)
Some people think this is off-topic; however as a programmer I have to decide the best technology to use when asked to create a “web app”. Most users just think of “web app” = “no need to install” and “it runs in the browser window”, so this is an important questions when planning a product.
To my knowledge, that's quite common. The main difference between Silverlight and IE7/8/9, Firefox, Chrome, etc. is that Silverlight, like Flash, is a browser plug-in the user can install by himself.
Most large businesses and government offices have an IT department managing all the machines, and the users aren't allowed to install any setup package by themselves. And if IT says it's gonna be IE6, then it's gonna be IE6, period. No IE7, no Firefox, no nothing.
However, assuming management allows the users access to the Internet, they often leave them in control of what they do with their browser, including installing plug-ins. The users then usually install Flash (essentially so YouTube works) and/or Silverlight.
The trouble is that the issue isn't usually so much "we'll install some things, but only things we think are safe", but more like "we won't install anything". The kind of organisations that are still using IE6 are the kind that are so risk-averse that you'll have a hard time getting them to install anything.
Therefore you're more likely to get satisfaction with Flash than Silverlight. The simple reason being that Flash has been around long enough that it might actually be in place on their systems already, thus negating the "we won't install anything" argument. (if they haven't even got Flash installed already, then good luck getting them to accept Silverlight)
If they are willing to install Silverlight, you might also consider trying them on the Google Frame plug-in for Explorer, which effectively turns MSIE into Chrome, but only for sites that specifically request it. The security imlications for that are pretty much the same as for Silverlight (or Flash for that matter), and if they accept it it'll mean you can write standards compliant HTML to your heart's content.