Write your app in HTML5, upload it and get back app-store ready apps

The new LinkedIn and OkCupid apps are primarily HTML5 based. Not quite the same, but every new release of the Facebook app seems to have more of its existing views replaced by HTML5 counterparts.

Apple's "App Store" app on iOS uses HTML...

Mobile browsers are getting better and better, and apple's iOS happens to have the best. I think the app store distribution mechanism is the main reason you don't see many html apps. It's the big entry point, there's a huge network effect and its cool to say "we have an app for that". Maybe facebook's project Spartan will spark the inevitable switch to html. I mean, check out twitter or kindle on the ipad... what are they lacking in?

Just wait till Spine Mobile is released on the 4th of October at FOWA:

http://cl.ly/Aa4V http://cl.ly/Aa7P

> But, are there any successful apps made with PhoneGap?

Define successful. Because, let's be honest, if I need an application for my company that will be used internally, does it matter if you haven't heard about it? Don't get caught look at this from just one point of view.

Our app (Zite for iPad) is 90% HTML5+js and (I think) is reasonably successful.

This has always been my feeling. It hasn't made me any friends though.

Phonegap is a great feel good piece of technology, that browser enthusiasts can point to and say, "See this is what you can do with the web".

The FT app is based on html5. Initially, they had an app, but transitioned quickly to html5. Takes a wee bit longer to load, but barely notice that anymore. The experience otherwise is pretty much the same. And for what its worth, it's the best news app on my ipad.

It's "just" a code generation tool

Check out AppMobi[1], it may be what you need - at least, from my brief glance at it, it looks like it: build iOS and android apps using HTML+JS, no need for a Mac or the iOS developer kit. The core tools are free too, but they charge for services such as compiling your program for iOS and such. They also have something called DirectCanvas which is basically HTML5 canvas without the rest of the browser cruft, for higher performance canvas apps (eg, games - they have built in support for the Impact JS game engine, for example).

[1] http://www.appmobi.com/

This is a surprisingly often ignored limitation of the browsers. You need threads to achieve decent performance given any significant complexity, and mobile CPUs are going multi-core.

The menu button, back button, and search button all work with Phonegap. What version are you using?

http://docs.phonegap.com/phonegap_events_events.md.html

Yes. Policy changed in 2009.

https://code.google.com/p/phonegap/downloads/list

What plugins have you been using? Last time I look at pg, the plugins I found were alpha quality or just abandoned. I'd love to hear what's current. Thanks.

Nice. Anyone know how they achieved the transition effect? It's not a simple CSS3 transform. The bottom of the page seems to move first, then the top of the page is dragged over.

$ git clone http://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-start.git

You still need PhoneGap to build an iOS/Android app.

"Native app" could be a critical bit for marketing or payment processing.

Required? No. But there are benefits to being available on said platforms such as free distribution and eye balls.

But there are also drawbacks, more specifically with Apple, if you have to spend a lot of time in the black hole review process.

It's about being found in the app stores. That's where people look for stuff on their phones, that's where you need to come up if you have something you want on someone's phone.

Of course there is a lot of down-side to this, but it is what it is. I wish the App Stores, particularly the Android Market, would create a much more elaborate system of categories allowing people to narrow their browsing down to exactly what they want, then it wouldn't matter so much if there was a lot of useless crap in the app stores, because we would never see it.

HTML+CSS+JS certainly implies a website, but it doesnt have to be.

We built a prototype mobile game in two weeks using PhoneGap and we were able to deploy to Android effortlessly. The visibility of the app store gave us (zero marketing, free app) brought in 2k downloads in two days.

That kind of free distribution is hard to replicate on the open web.

There are plenty of good reasons to write apps this way, not the least of which being access to the app store. (Unless you've figured out a way to charge $1.99 for access to a mobile web site, in which case, God bless.)

That's what I've been saying for years, until I was dragged into the Apple store by a friend and, to kill time, tried my web app on an iPad. It worked pretty well. An intrigued 10-year-old or so girl across the aisle asked, "What app is that?" "It's not an app but a site and you can see it at [redacted].com." She was turned off by the time I said "site" and tuned me out.

After that incident, I resolved to take my web app to the various app stores and am working on that with PhoneGap now.

PhoneGap gives you access to much of the phone's hardware in a cross-platform compatible way:

http://docs.phonegap.com/

Well, one advantage of the app store is that you can charge for your app.

I'd say they're both hard. As an interface designer who works on iOS apps, it always pains me to see a web technology mobile app that's trying to look like it was built with UIKit but it's ever-so-slightly off. Some pixels are broken, text looks wrong, padding is off. I know why it's alluring, but I'd much prefer to see them craft their own interface style without aping Apple's UIKit look and feel.

If someone is trying really hard to emulate a native app's interface but without native technologies, I think they're already doing it wrong. Focus on the UX, not taking a different framework's exact visual style and copying it pixel for pixel.

HTML5 is JavaScript. Without JavaScript, HTML5 is just a few semantic HTML tags (like header and section) and a few extra form input attributes (like required and placeholder).

As far as JavaScript frameworks go, you could use Sencha or jQuery Mobile or one of the other few dozen frameworks out there --- or you could roll your own.

I've been doing mobile web development for about a year now. I've done both PhoneGap and over-the-air mobile web/native apps (with embedded webviews that load HTML/CSS/JS from the web when requested). Both types of apps accepted by Apple and in the Appstore as well as in the Android Market. I would recommend rolling your own and not trying to imitate the look of native apps. One of the strengths of using HTML5 is that you can create a custom look and feel that doesn't look like every other app out there.

Since you mentioned Sencha and jQuery Mobile, here's what I think having used both:

Using Sencha is nothing at all like using HTML5. You don't even write HTML or CSS. You write JavaScript that uses Sencha's classes/methods. The look and feel very much tries to mimic native and they do a pretty good job at it...except that most widgets look like they were ripped from an iPhone, which is disorienting for users on Android. That said, you get good performance and a boatload of widgets/ui controls out of the box. The price for this is a large, multi-hundred kb framework and a commercial license.

jQuery Mobile doesn't really try to look native and it really doesn't "feel" native either. jQuery has it's own ui controls that more or less look identical on iPhone or Android. With jQuery Mobile, you do write HTML and have a more transparent view of that as well as of the CSS. But, you have to write HTML the "jQuery Mobile way" to utilize the UI built into the framework. You don't get as many widgets and ui-controls as you do in Sencha and overall, the look and feel is not of the same caliber either. But, it's smaller than Sencha, has your standard MIT license and is more easily modified.

Neither is perfect and both have pluses and minuses. If you know some HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you will absolutely get better performance and and a smoother look and feel by rolling your own light JavaScript for your app that does just what it needs to do.

If you'd like to see an example app I built using PhoneGap and handrolled HTML/JavaScript/CSS, you can download Easy Baby from the Android Market. It's free. You'll find a link to it on my website: http://newbabysleep.com

nope

cool web app. i think the difficult part of converting it for mobile would be the screen size necessary to work effectively and possibly getting the touch gestures to work properly for moving and resizing the controls.