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PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

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Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#21

Post by freddywang »

icebraining wrote: post #19
newhouseb wrote: post #11

I spent an inordinate amount of time fighting webkit before switching all of our stuff to native. The four biggest problems, I think, with the state of webkit are: 1) Implicit memory management of large images/surfaces isn't reliable. There's basically nothing you can do (outside of not doing anything) to prevent your page from crashing webkit if you use too many (where too many is undefined) accelerated elements/tot…

I'm not a mobile webdev, but about (2), did you try using Webworkers for the background tasks? iOS Safari supports it nowadays, right?

Web workers doesn't really work. Somehow, It still blocks the main UI thread.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#22

Post by scriptproof »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #9
scriptproof wrote: post #4

Another point: You have to pay to have you app reviewed on the AppStore, and it may be refused. If it is accepted, Apple will take 30% of your incomes. And your app will remain slow if it is connected to a database online.

What about the exposure it gives you app, and (potentially) much more sales (it has hundreds of millions of users with credit card, and buying stuff is just one click)?

Zero exposure when your app is removed from the store (look at the news). Beside that, I am not a fan of Apple the patent troll and very reluctant to build an app specifically to them. HTML 5 has great exposure on EVERY computer.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#23

Post by Mavrik »

Funny how that exactly mirrors my experiences building a HTML5/JS app on iPad - I've quickly managed to get 90% of the app done and then wasted hours and frustrating hours of hunting WebKit performance issues, bugs without pretty much any help from tools or operating system.

Especially annoying are intermittent bugs that show only in certain minor iOS versions, which are hard to look for and test because of Apple no-downgrade policy on devices :\

Choosing native app was just a better way to keep my sanity.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#24

Post by RowanH »

blago wrote: post #15

I am equally productive with web as well as native development so it makes no difference to me. Not surprisingly, Phonegap never appealed much - same work, inferior results, single (but dubious) benefit: cross platform. I was pleasantly surprised by Titanium mobile though when I had to evaluate it at my job 2 years ago. I set to reimplement one of our (non-trivial) apps and summarize my experience. I ended up writing…

Titanium has come a long well, I eval'd it around 18months ago and was frustrated with 'how the heck do I build something that doesn't leak'. I was amazed at how quick I got something running, until it crashed... I hugely struggled with the best way to build an app.

12 months later, the SDK has improved, and documentation has improved. I circled round to Titanium again. Now I've got an app in my spare time that's pretty close to store submission, not leaking, not crashing, all native. I'd find it very hard to go past Titanium now. Once you get into a groove with the CommonJS style (https://wiki.appcelerator.org/display/guides/CommonJS+Module...) of constructing your app, and follow some of the latest examples, it all clicks into place.

I haven't tried to learn Objective-c (Rails/Javascript guy) however if you're not building a game, or trying to get 10/10ths out of a native app, I think it's damn good solution.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#25

Post by edwardhotchkiss »

Your limits are defined by the memory size of Mobile Safari (embedded). Have you ever opened 10 tabs to see what would happen on actual apps? Now imagine full fledged JS hungry apps. Last year I warned a firm about this. Client insisted. Result - 90% was complete and the client hated the result (responsiveness & a literal boot time).

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#26

Post by pooriaazimi »

scriptproof wrote: post #22
pooriaazimi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the exposure it gives you app, and (potentially) much more sales (it has hundreds of millions of users with credit card, and buying stuff is just one click)?

Zero exposure when your app is removed from the store (look at the news). Beside that, I am not a fan of Apple the patent troll and very reluctant to build an app specifically to them. HTML 5 has great exposure on EVERY computer.

I'm an Apple fan on the whole, but like many others completely dislike many of their behaviors, including random rules on the App Store.

But, App Store is a very good thing for developers. You can make a Chess game both with ObjC and HTML5, but chances of someone finding your HTML5 app via Google (search) is practically zero. On the other hand, because there are less than 150 Chess games for iPhone, if a random surfer searches the App Store for 'chess', they see your icon down the list. That's the exposure I'm talking about.

And again, I don't like Apple's rules very much, I'm just stating that being on the App Store brings you a lot of exposure.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#27

Post by Kiro »

RowanH wrote: post #24
blago wrote: post #15

I am equally productive with web as well as native development so it makes no difference to me. Not surprisingly, Phonegap never appealed much - same work, inferior results, single (but dubious) benefit: cross platform. I was pleasantly surprised by Titanium mobile though when I had to evaluate it at my job 2 years ago. I set to reimplement one of our (non-trivial) apps and summarize my experience. I ended up writing…

Titanium has come a long well, I eval'd it around 18months ago and was frustrated with 'how the heck do I build something that doesn't leak'. I was amazed at how quick I got something running, until it crashed... I hugely struggled with the best way to build an app. 12 months later, the SDK has improved, and documentation has improved. I circled round to Titanium again. Now I've got an app in my spare time that's pre…

I disagree with the "if you're building a game" part. I build games in JavaScript/HTML5 for iPhone/Android, package them to apps using appMobi and it works pretty good. I haven't tried PhoneGap though but I guess it's more or less the same thing.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#28

Post by mwsherman »

My suspicion, not first-hand in this case, is not that Webkit is buggy but that it’s a web browser. Browsers are not designed for embedding into applications. They are designed for wrangling a wild west of code, downloaded from untrustable origin, involving at least 3 languages (HTML, CSS, JS), and parsed at runtime.

It just a different use case than what PhoneGap is trying to do.

I don’t think it’s the wrong thing, I am quite attracted to it honestly. But we might be better off thinking of browsers as “web content displayers” than “runtime-programmable application plugin”.

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#29

Post by RowanH »

Kiro wrote: post #27
RowanH wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Titanium has come a long well, I eval'd it around 18months ago and was frustrated with 'how the heck do I build something that doesn't leak'. I was amazed at how quick I got something running, until it crashed... I hugely struggled with the best way to build an app. 12 months later, the SDK has improved, and documentation has improved. I circled round to Titanium again. Now I've got an app in my spare time that's pre…

I disagree with the "if you're building a game" part. I build games in JavaScript/HTML5 for iPhone/Android, package them to apps using appMobi and it works pretty good. I haven't tried PhoneGap though but I guess it's more or less the same thing.

Sorry I should preface it with 'if you're building a game to squeeze all resources out of a system'. As obviously there is a (pretty small) overhead with running the interpreter..

Re: PhoneGap vs. Native: Some Thoughts on Going Native

#30

Post by mcrider »

newhouseb wrote: post #11

I spent an inordinate amount of time fighting webkit before switching all of our stuff to native. The four biggest problems, I think, with the state of webkit are: 1) Implicit memory management of large images/surfaces isn't reliable. There's basically nothing you can do (outside of not doing anything) to prevent your page from crashing webkit if you use too many (where too many is undefined) accelerated elements/tot…

For 1) I discovered a hard limit on image sizes a while back when I was writing an (abandoned) Phonegap App: http://bit.ly/J4CT0I
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