How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap • Hacker News Board

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#21

Post by tluyben2 » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 8:57 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #9

Why are people still using phone gap? What's the point? Might as well just build a web app. PhoneGap is the Dreamweaver of mobile.

Clients want apps in stores. It's much easier to promote than mobile web apps. And even though for a nicely looking, nicely working cross platform phonegap app you will be paying a lot of money (the tweaking takes a lot of time between different phones/pads), it is still cheaper and faster than going native.

We advise native for productivity apps and such; day to day use apps should be fast and snappy, while promotional apps / marketing apps should look pretty.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#22

Post by mephju » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 10:09 AM UTC

So much wasted effort to achieve something which a) doesn't really work well b) comes for free if you just go native. And your Android users will of course be super happy to find a bad iOS interface which is just slow. And once you are done imitating the iOS interface, the real work only begins ;)

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#23

Post by jmitcheson » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 11:36 AM UTC

Why do people hate on PhoneGap so much? Specifically, I mean when people complain that the UI of the apps produced with PhoneGap don't "feel" right. PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas (a boost to development speed, and making it easier for a novice developer to get started).

The argument against PhoneGap seems to be either that there isn't a place at all for such a technique, or that people think the benefits don't outweigh the drawbacks. Another option is that people dislike the developer accessibility aspect out of pure snobbery.

However, I rarely hear people making these arguments. I just hear (not necessarily in this thread, but in previous ones) "blah blah it sucks blah blah why not write native code blah blah".

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#24

Post by veeti » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 12:03 PM UTC

jmitcheson wrote: post #23

Why do people hate on PhoneGap so much? Specifically, I mean when people complain that the UI of the apps produced with PhoneGap don't "feel" right. PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas (a boost to development speed, and making it easier for a novice developer to get started). The argument against PhoneGap seems to be either that there isn't a place at all for such a technique, or tha…

> PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas

You said it yourself. PhoneGap is an easy way to get a sub-par user experience and that is what matters the most, not development speed.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#25

Post by matwood » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 12:34 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #21

briandear wrote: post #9

Why are people still using phone gap? What's the point? Might as well just build a web app. PhoneGap is the Dreamweaver of mobile.

Clients want apps in stores. It's much easier to promote than mobile web apps. And even though for a nicely looking, nicely working cross platform phonegap app you will be paying a lot of money (the tweaking takes a lot of time between different phones/pads), it is still cheaper and faster than going native. We advise native for productivity apps and such; day to day use apps should be fast and snappy, while promotio…

it is still cheaper and faster than going native.

It sounds like you make apps for people. Assuming you have someone on staff who knows iOS and someone who knows Android is it still faster to do it in PhoneGap? We attempted a phonegap app which ended up failing because of performance reasons. We rewrote the app in native iOS and it didn't take nearly as long as the original phonegap did with the constant tweaking in an attempt to get it to look and perform acceptably.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#26

Post by tehwebguy » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 12:58 PM UTC

mdellanoce wrote: post #6

tszming wrote: post #5

Are there any working examples using these tricks so we can test the difference? (The author's product request an invite to use)

Unfortunately, the app is still in review with Apple, so not at the moment. I also didn't realize this post would do so well with HN. I will work on a more in-depth follow-up with some working examples. Thanks so much for reading!

Looking forward to it, I already feel like you saved me 2 weeks in testing.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#27

Post by tluyben2 » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #25

tluyben2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clients want apps in stores. It's much easier to promote than mobile web apps. And even though for a nicely looking, nicely working cross platform phonegap app you will be paying a lot of money (the tweaking takes a lot of time between different phones/pads), it is still cheaper and faster than going native. We advise native for productivity apps and such; day to day use apps should be fast and snappy, while promotio…

it is still cheaper and faster than going native. It sounds like you make apps for people. Assuming you have someone on staff who knows iOS and someone who knows Android is it still faster to do it in PhoneGap? We attempted a phonegap app which ended up failing because of performance reasons. We rewrote the app in native iOS and it didn't take nearly as long as the original phonegap did with the constant tweaking in…

It depends definitely on the app; we have been in the 2 camps. The problem is that often we are also asked to make the mobile web site and then you have 3 very similar things in Phonegap while native you need to write 3 different things. I do agree though that for a lot of apps native is faster to write if you target one platform.

And the Phonegap experience isn't really good unless you spend a huge amount of time. Webview is just not very good; you need something which is native but crossplatform to replace it; everything we tried so far (appmobi, appcelerator, rhomobile) actually was worse than Phonegap/jqm to get right. But we keep at it as we know what our clients want.

Often the Phonegap version is treated like a prototype; then the client saw it and knows what they want; after that they have it rewritten to native on the platform which makes them the most/gets the most attention (etc). Which is almost always iOS by the way.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#28

Post by eli » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 1:17 PM UTC

veeti wrote: post #24

jmitcheson wrote: post #23

Why do people hate on PhoneGap so much? Specifically, I mean when people complain that the UI of the apps produced with PhoneGap don't "feel" right. PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas (a boost to development speed, and making it easier for a novice developer to get started). The argument against PhoneGap seems to be either that there isn't a place at all for such a technique, or tha…

> PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas You said it yourself. PhoneGap is an easy way to get a sub-par user experience and that is what matters the most, not development speed.

That is hardly a universal truth. I'd take ugly code that ships on time over beautiful code that doesn't.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#29

Post by mdellanoce » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

kerrishotts wrote: post #16

One thing I didn't notice, but is important in stoping overscroll is to se the UIWebViewBounce property in Cordova.plist to NO. This ensures you don't have to worry about things like ScrollFix which almost-but-not-quite-solves the same issue. Why Cordova defaults this to YES is beyond me.

Great point, I wish I had remembered to add that!

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#30

Post by briandear » Sun, Sep 02, 2012, 1:19 PM UTC

veeti wrote: post #24

jmitcheson wrote: post #23

Why do people hate on PhoneGap so much? Specifically, I mean when people complain that the UI of the apps produced with PhoneGap don't "feel" right. PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas (a boost to development speed, and making it easier for a novice developer to get started). The argument against PhoneGap seems to be either that there isn't a place at all for such a technique, or tha…

> PhoneGap sacrifices the quality of the UI for benefits in other areas You said it yourself. PhoneGap is an easy way to get a sub-par user experience and that is what matters the most, not development speed.

The UX is the absolute most important thing. Anything that sacrifices the user experience just to make it easier to develop is a bad tool. It's a tool for the lazy.