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Ask HN: Best way to write an app for both Android and iOS?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to write an app for both Android and iOS?

#51

Post by cpeterso »

eapen wrote: post #36

Adobe AIR/Flex has the option to export files to iOS, Android and Blackberry. I tried exporting a demo app to Android and it worked well. I havent tried the other platforms though. Obviously, I doubt the performance would be as good as a native app but a mobile application for a school which doesn't require a game engine, I would say Adobe AIR/Flex is the way to go. But since you require Wifi triangulation or GPS, th…

> I would say Adobe AIR/Flex is the way to go. But since you require Wifi triangulation or GPS, this might not be an option.

Adobe AIR supports geolocation (using GPS and/or Wi-Fi) for both Android and iOS devices:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/quick_start_as/quickstarts/q...

Re: Ask HN: Best way to write an app for both Android and iOS?

#53

Post by matty »

semanticist wrote: post #50
matty wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get an idea how terrible PhoneGap can work in practice, check out the O'Reilly iPad app. The performance just isn't there for some applications.

Remember that PhoneGap really isn't anything more than a thin wrapper around a web app. Performance/usability is going to be heavily influenced by how you write that web app. I'd be more interested to know what web framework O'Reilly used that was slow, rather than it being PhoneGap per se.

They used PhoneGap, in fact it was Nitobi that created the app.

http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2010/10/18/an-update-on-ou...

Re: Ask HN: Best way to write an app for both Android and iOS?

#54

Post by semanticist »

matty wrote: post #53
semanticist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that PhoneGap really isn't anything more than a thin wrapper around a web app. Performance/usability is going to be heavily influenced by how you write that web app. I'd be more interested to know what web framework O'Reilly used that was slow, rather than it being PhoneGap per se.

They used PhoneGap, in fact it was Nitobi that created the app. http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2010/10/18/an-update-on-ou...

Have you personally used PhoneGap? It sounds like you don't quite understand how it works.

For an iOS PhoneGap project, inside the Xcode project there is a 'www' directory into which you stuff your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files from your mobile web app. PhoneGap then creates a webview and loads your index.html in it.

PhoneGap by itself cannot be used to make any kind of an application. You also need a web app that works outside of PhoneGap (barring some PhoneGap-specific JavaScript APIs which you can optionally include to get access to device-specific information and features), and that web app presumably would either use one of the common frameworks or be written from scratch.

Hence my point that what's more interesting to know is what web app framework they used, since that'll have a bigger impact on performance and especially usability than just "it's PhoneGap".

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