They did a nice job on this framework, but I think it is a fundamentally wrong approach. Here is why: http://www.springenwerk.com/2011/09/thoughts-on-mobile-ui-de...
Or, if you prefer a video: http://vimeo.com/32256530
Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
61–70 of 131 posts
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#62Wow what a tough crowd. So many off topic discussions. The framework is buttery smooth, and very well done. Kudos to the dev!
I have never seen any html5 framework (like ionic, jqm, wink etc) nail swipe to delete row so acurately
Awesome job!
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#63The limit we've run into with iOS is not getting a good looking UI. Rather it's the performance of Javascript in Safari. We have a fairly large one page webapp that looks great on iOS however the performance is an order of magnitude slower on an iPad than Chrome on an old laptop.
My take on this is that phones are only getting faster and people upgrade their phones far more frequently than they do their laptops/desktops. Compare what you're able to do with HTML5 apps today on modern phones to what you could do even 2 years ago and it's astonishing how fast things are progressing.
That's analogous to the advance of desktops. The hardware kept getting faster ("what Intel gives") but at the same time the software became more complex ("Microsoft takes away"). If you deliver software based on it performing better on future revs of hardware, you're going to get a reputation for delivering pokey software.
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#64I'm baffled that a technology stack (HTML, JS) that every single web developer think is broken (but still have to deal with) is being considered for iOS development, and being promoted as an easy way to develop native apps.
This is where I think RubyMotion offered the best of both worlds: native APIs and Ruby's flexibility (even if Objective-C is really not that bad or hard to learn).
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#65There is nothing native. Go home and read a books.
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a nice dream. Pity reality is so very harsh on nice dreams.
See my comment above: I am under no delusions that cross-platform frameworks are truly cross-platform on the UI level. But, for our app, the UI layer is roughly 50% of the app. What about the core of the business logic? The code in a cross-platform framework is truly cross-platform. How do I approach that doing full native development for Android and iOS? Is there a way to create a cross-platform library?
It's called C++.
And I can tell you, from my own experiences, your backend isn't going to be as cross platform as you dream of it being because everything from networking on down is done differently on Android and iOS. Which isn't to say that you can't front-end all of that with a shim in C# or C++ or whatevs, but on mobile, the bulk of the hard stuff is UI anyways and there is no cross-platform panacea as of this writing.
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#67I remember that you built this in the Static Showdown hackathon! Congratulations, and it looks like a really promising project :)
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if you want a web app, an android app, and an iPhone app, you have to code it up 3 different times in three different languages. The reason why the web exploded in popularity as a development target is precisely because it made it easier to target a larger number of customers. Imagine if Facebook had started out as a Windows XP / Linux / OSX native application. It never would have even got off the ground. My take…
I don't buy it. Enterprises definitely buy into that idea and they do have their employees work with these crippled apps because they have no other choice. But the experience for this 'CRUD' app is definitely not good enough. It's by forcing it that it gets used. It depends on how intensively it will be used in reality, but I definitely know quite a few companies who went from BYOD and an HTML5 Cordova app which was…
You don't have to buy it, it's an undeniable reality. Yes, if you're an enterprise and you can afford to write native apps for all platforms, then that's the better choice. If you're a small startup or a single developer, writing the app 3 times is just not cost effective.
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#69I'm not knocking this or any particular xxxx-to-mobile platform, but as a native iOS and android developer, I would highly recommend just learning the native languages and frameworks. First, you have the absolute most control you will ever have over your application. This may not be true when a particular tool becomes popular, say at the release of a new tool, but this definitely shows up as time progresses. Who know…
> First, you have the absolute most control you will ever have over your application. You have 0 control over distribution though, which is pretty important to me. > There are some amazing libraries for both platforms that you definitely don't want to miss. I don't doubt that the platforms have good 3rd party support, but it's absolutely dwarfed by that of the web community, and that will only grow larger over time.
> You have 0 control over distribution though, which is pretty important to me.
Simply having to wait a week to get approved for the iOS App Store (and less on Android) doesn't constitute 0 control over distribution. You can still release the app to the store when you want, if you plan ahead, and pull it whenever you like. Less control, yes, but not zero.
Also, how is this different from writing a non-native app? The same rules apply to distributing web apps if you want them to be in the store. True that you can release it as a website whenever you want, but that's not really the same thing.
Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has used several cross-platform frameworks (Titanium, Cordova/PhoneGap, investigating Xamarin), I have a question about going "full native": how do you handle shared core code? Our app has an engine that drives the business logic, and the cross-platform frameworks have been useful because we don't have to deal with modifying the core codebase for different platforms [0]. Is it possible to create platfo…
If have read before that C++ can be used to share logic. An interesting development with iOS7 is that it has a JavaScript runtime of some sort (I don't know the details) - perhaps it will be possible to use JS for cross-platform code.
You're thinking of JavaScriptCore. It allows Objective-C objects to be used inside of JavaScript (and vice versa).
It's actually a pretty cool technology. I gave a talk about it this month at Berlin CocoaHeads, and I'm gonna put some blog posts together about it soon!