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Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

kickstarter.com

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Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#51

Post by foz »

This feels like a marketing fail. Kickstarter is supposed to be about helping people create things who would normally not have the resources to do so. Impressing the audience by showing off expensive luxury items (player piano, supercars, etc) does not help this cause.

They also failed to really communicate how the app changes your normal development workflow. Does it replace interface builder processes? Besides styling with CSS, how does it help in creating complex vector elements that would normally be made in Photoshop? Is it a standalone dev environment or a lot of pieces? Can you mix assets (pixel and vector)?

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#52

Post by gbraad »

oxwrist wrote: post #17

is this not backwards in any ways?

same feeling; you either develop native apps and deal with the provided options or you move to html5 and css3. why create a frankenstein solution by botching native apps together with a css engine; feels like an intermediate and futile attempt.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#53

Post by caller9 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #34

here's a message I sent on Kickstarter: I'm very impressed by your demo, but I'm also skeptical about performance, how well this integrates into existing apps, and what happens to my apps built on your framework if you go out of business or get acquired. Along the same lines, I'd love to be able to pitch this to my clients, but I can't in good conscience without knowing that they're never going to get screwed in the…

Agree wholeheartedly. The tradeoff for cross platform is tying your fate to these guys.

Also code once run anywhere doesn't work for native apps. You usually get an Android app that looks like iOS. Barf. Or your have to use some new UI paradigm foreign to both. Chance of being featured in either market without conforming to UI guidelines: 0%.

This only really works for games and Unity has that covered.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#54

Post by jefflinwood »

dotmanish wrote: post #48
jefflinwood wrote: post #36

I know I'm missing something here, but if they get enough money, they'll add Android support - but doesn't Android already do this (not with CSS, but with XML, like everything else in Android) http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html

I think it's more to do with making it "cross-platform", the code-once-build-multiple-platforms aspect of PhoneGap, etc.

You can't use this tool with PhoneGap - it's for styling native code.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#55

Post by brianfryer »

While I'm totally stoked for seeing this concept come to fruition, these are the worst reward tiers I've ever seen on a Kickstarter campaign.

The $5 minimum should be $10 or $15, and there needs to be a tier between this one at the $50 tier.

And the rewards themselves? For $2k, I get "Access to a private forum to influence product direction." For two grand, I can't get a phone call to the CEO? I get access to some forum?

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#56

Post by EwanG »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #10
ericdykstra wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kickstarter is being used, more and more, as a way to build interest and create revenue before the official "launch" of a product; even a product that would be produced anyway. It seems to be a rather effective way to get press coverage for a percentage of projects, and presents a clean interface on a trusted system for interested potential purchasers. The risk, of course, is that a huge goal is less likely to be rea…

It feels like a lot of kickstarters are barely more than a "pre-order" mechanism. I'm not sure what happens if a project gets funded but then fails to deliver. It seems like when you give to a kickstarter, you should go into it fully prepared to never get your money back and never get the finished product.

You mean like the Astronaut MMO that got all the press earlier this year, and now even the forums are gone?

Yes, that is the risk with Kickstarter and any other investment. It's just there seems to be less visibility into the viability of the company or person behind the project than most investments. Since I rarely go beyond the $20 range, I only feel mildly burned on the ones that don't go anywhere. For folks who hit the maximum (I've seen some with $10K options), I suspect the hurt is a little more real.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#58

Post by podperson »

mstepanov wrote: post #42
podperson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needed? It looks to me like a terrible idea not very well implemented. It's easier (and more WYSIWYG) to style controls in Interface Builder using the properties. It's probably just as easy to write NIBs by hand.

Ha, I doubt you are an iOS developer at all :)

Doubt away.

It's not like this eliminates any of the complexity of ios development. Stuff like animating properties of controls is one of the things iOS handles beautifully. Any graphic workflow that doesn't eliminate rework and isn't WYSIWYG is a step backwards.

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