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How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

mikedellanoce.com

41–48 of 48 posts

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#42
You know a great way to get the native iOS look/feel? Use Kendo Mobile. It gives you native UI without all the bugginess of other frameworks like JQuery Mobile.

Out of the box, using Kendo on iOS gives you a pretty native feeling app, esp. for things like form and image viewing type apps.

Just know going in that PhoneGap has limitations and it is not going to be 100% perfect, but it's outstanding for hitting the first 80% to prove out an idea and get it on the app store.

For an example of an app I wrote using Kendo Mobile, check out ReMeme on the app store. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rememe/id536802283?mt=8

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#43
post #41

Hiding elements by applying offscreen translation - how's the support on non-iOS devices?

Having just worked on a mobile site using this technique: it's fine. The one issue we found is that some older Android browsers support 2D translation but not 3D. We ended up using translate(x, 0) for the actual movement, but kept translate3d(0, 0, 0) around for the performance boost.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#44
post #24

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.

I've seen a pretty complex app which had been implemented a both a native iOS app, and as a PhoneGap app. The PhoneGap version launched faster and was smoother.

I suppose the lesson of the story is that the developers matter more than a the framework used.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#45
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

in my experience more often than not the only people who can tell a well-done app is phonegap/cordova rather than native are nit-picky, self-righteous developers. if it works as advertised, users are generally happy and cannot tell the difference... and, unless your app is built specifically for developers, that's all that really matters.

No, they cannot say "this is not native, must be PhoneGap". They don't even know what "native" and "PhoneGap/Cordova" is. They just say "it's does not feel snappy/right" and that's it.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

General statements are dangerous. UX is often but not always the most important part of a project. For projects where speed of development or cross platform support trump UX, PhoneGap can be an awesome tool.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience more often than not the only people who can tell a well-done app is phonegap/cordova rather than native are nit-picky, self-righteous developers. if it works as advertised, users are generally happy and cannot tell the difference... and, unless your app is built specifically for developers, that's all that really matters.

No, they cannot say "this is not native, must be PhoneGap". They don't even know what "native" and "PhoneGap/Cordova" is. They just say "it's does not feel snappy/right" and that's it.

Are you stating that native apps are always snappy/right? Because if you are, I have a list of App Store apps for you to look at.

Re: How to get that native iOS feel with PhoneGap

#48

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…

Yeah, I deal with this on (almost) a daily basis. My response is, "I'm not LOOKING to emulate the iPhone interface. I design my own buttons and widgets" There is nothing that does a great job of emulating the iPhone interface. And even if you DO get close, it looks foreign on an Android device. As far as performance, all these kids that follow a few Obj-C tutorials and build a couple of forms in Xcode make me crack up. You're NOT gaining performance, you're probably leaking memory like crazy because you don't understand C very well. I agree with the sentiment of the snobbery. Hey, if you write Java and Obj-C at the speed that I can code a web app, great. But don't complain when mine looks nicer than yours... and the performance isn't THAT much different.
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