The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#1

Post by pmuk » Wed, May 11, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap
moneytoolkit.com

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#2

Post by cdonnellytx » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:45 PM UTC

What makes it really bad is that there is also this bug in mobile WebKit from four years ago that nobody has ever gotten around to fixing:

http://blog.johnmckerrell.com/2007/03/07/problems-with-safar...

Basically if you are at or near 100% CPU, Safari’s HTML parser silently fails to parse your HTML.

Additionally, we have found this is not limited to the innerHTML property; we have observed the problem to happen with the W3C recommended method Range.createContextualFragment.

EDIT: formatting and cleanup

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#3

Post by truthtechnician » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:59 PM UTC

The irony is... running back to native platforms because the web sucks is exactly why the web still sucks.

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#4

Post by lukifer » Thu, May 12, 2011, 12:46 AM UTC

My own PhoneGap-based iPad app is going really well so far, practically indistinguishable from native, but for one thing: WebKit refuses to let you have manual control over hiding and showing keyboards. (I tried filing a bug, and it was closed as "works as intended".)

This makes me feel like I have one hand tied behind by back when creating UI flow, and it's maddening.

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#5

Post by dstein » Thu, May 12, 2011, 12:58 AM UTC

It sounds like most of these complaints are about mobile Safari and not specific to Sencha's libraries or PhoneGap.

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#6

Post by cmelbye » Thu, May 12, 2011, 12:59 AM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #4

My own PhoneGap-based iPad app is going really well so far, practically indistinguishable from native, but for one thing: WebKit refuses to let you have manual control over hiding and showing keyboards. (I tried filing a bug, and it was closed as "works as intended".) This makes me feel like I have one hand tied behind by back when creating UI flow, and it's maddening.

Do you have a link to your app? I'm really interested in seeing web apps that work similarly to native apps, I've yet to see a great example yet.

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#7

Post by mustpax » Thu, May 12, 2011, 1:11 AM UTC

truthtechnician wrote: post #3

The irony is... running back to native platforms because the web sucks is exactly why the web still sucks.

On the contrary, there is plenty of desire build cross platform applications on the web as evidenced by this article. How would this developer sticking to Sencha/Phonegap against contrary evidence improve the web for others?

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#8

Post by danmux » Thu, May 12, 2011, 1:23 AM UTC

dstein wrote: post #5

It sounds like most of these complaints are about mobile Safari and not specific to Sencha's libraries or PhoneGap.

True, to an greater extent, Ive rolled things together but I do try and not apportion the blame fully, by saying...

"The title may present a slightly unfair impression. Not all of these issues have anything to do directly with the PhoneGap or Sencha Touch codebase, but are simply limitations of browsers, web-views and performance of mobile devices, though Sencha Touch / Phonegap framework does inherit those problems (and go to some lengths to work round the issues)"

But there are defects and issues in both PhoneGap and Sencha Touch that I mention. But I also recognise that they are both doing a good job on balance to further the cause.

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#9

Post by danmux » Thu, May 12, 2011, 1:24 AM UTC

mustpax wrote: post #7

truthtechnician wrote: post #3

The irony is... running back to native platforms because the web sucks is exactly why the web still sucks.

On the contrary, there is plenty of desire build cross platform applications on the web as evidenced by this article. How would this developer sticking to Sencha/Phonegap against contrary evidence improve the web for others?

Well, I am still plugging on with HTML5! for now, even if I am now wiring in iScroll4 to compensate for the poor scrolling of long lists!

Re: The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap

#10

Post by greendestiny » Thu, May 12, 2011, 1:38 AM UTC

cdonnellytx wrote: post #2

What makes it really bad is that there is also this bug in mobile WebKit from four years ago that nobody has ever gotten around to fixing: http://blog.johnmckerrell.com/2007/03/07/problems-with-safar... Basically if you are at or near 100% CPU, Safari’s HTML parser silently fails to parse your HTML. Additionally, we have found this is not limited to the innerHTML property; we have observed the problem to happen with…

I had a big problem with HTML not parsing in phonegap. It was intermittent but far more often than I would expect for near 100% CPU. This fix on stackoverflow solved the problem entirely for me: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3644474/calls-to-update-d...