Trigger Raises $1M From SV, Paul Graham etc For Cross-Platform Mobile Dev | Hacker News Reader

Trigger Raises $1M From SV, Paul Graham etc For Cross-Platform Mobile Dev

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95 pointskunle29 comments

Looking at their API docs, why would you use this instead of PhoneGap?

For instance, with PhoneGap, I can easily add native Objective-C or Java classes to my project to do things you just can't do with a native UIWebView.

I solved some really interesting enterprise-y integration problems on PhoneGap by writing some Objective-C. Looks like forge makes you modify the authentication server to return a forge://url which is nice, but could be tough to get some IT environments to do. (http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.2/features/modal.html#external-...)

I do see that you can build browser extensions, which is a nice feature.

PhoneGap's a good product, and definitely has its place. However, we've heard from lots of people (some of whom we now value as customers) that for apps which don't need bespoke native functionality it can be too heavy-weight: this affects everything from tooling to build process to bloat in the platform itself.

Some of the main tangible benefits we offer over our competition, and PhoneGap in particular:

* much faster build process (apps re-generated across 6 platforms in < 1s in the main-line case)

* unlimited support, and help prototyping your app at higher tiers: Nitobi is/was basically a consultancy based on PhoneGap whereas we see ourselves as building and licensing a software platform

* guarantee we'll never be bought by Adobe and get rolled up into Dreamweaver (not a guarantee)

* make no requirements on the IDE or other tools you use - you're good to go with a terminal and a text editor

In general, we try to be light-weight, get out of the way as much as possible, and offer a great, streamlined experience for users writing apps in the bottom 50% of the complexity spectrum.

Disclaimer: you might have guessed I work for Trigger :)

Sounds great. Any chance you guys will be getting involved in HTML5 game support?

Yes, most of our early customers are in development mode, but here's an early example in the Android Marketplace:

https://market.android.com/details?id=forge.generated.galact...

Please fix the mobile debugging process. We have developed a lot (... A LOT) of cross platform mobile apps on Phonegap (most), Sencha, Appcelerator and the debugging process, crossplatform, is horrible. I don't think you would be much help without better debugging (we find Phonegap quite good for everything anyway), but you might surprise us :)

This is my issue with HTML5 bridges as well. My PhoneGap project ground to a halt due to intermittent WebKit crashes. I'm trying to chase down JS memory leaks by hand, but put simply, the UIWebView debugging options suck.

Interesting that Paul was mentioned specifically as an investor rather than YC. Is Trigger a YC company?

Yes, Trigger is the new name of Webmynd. I invested my TechFellow award (http://techfellows.com) in them. They have a novel model where they give you some amount of money to invest in the co of your choice, and you split the proceeds.

Ah, very cool!

Congrats on the launch Trigger team!

Thanks Gordon :).

I'm pretty excited to be working in this area and with this team and investors. It has taken us a year of iterating with our early customers to get to this point and it's really just the start. There's so much to fix to make cross-platform app development simpler.

Congratulations guys, always great to see a start-up move on to the next phase. Good luck with everything.

It's an interesting service, however, I feel like this would create apps that don't native on the intended operating system and are kind of bland.

iOS's native functions and hardware operate much differently from Android's, which is completely different from Windows Phone. Android has an hardware based back button, and the iPhone doesn't, which means you'd have a different UI for the iPhone and Android version (back button in top left on iPhone, no back button on Android). The iPhone has front facing camera which can be incorporated into apps, where as most Android phones don't have a front cam yet.

I'm sure they'll figure out the issues pretty quickly though.

Thanks Andy - yep, we're constantly balancing two desires: the desire to expose every last shiny detail of the native platform on one hand, and the desire for consistency across platforms on the other.

The list of amazing, engaging, good-looking apps implemented in HTML5 is long, and growing. Personally, I think performance was the biggest hurdle in the race to make HTML5 look "as good as native", and rendering and JS execution speed is incredible now - and getting even better!

List 5 of these "engaging, good-looking apps implemented in HTML5."

Congrats Trigger team! Tools with command-line toolchains add freedom to use any implements you want for webapp dev. I think that Trigger fits in nicely between html5-based ventures like Phonegap and more low-level, savvy approaches like GPL-licensed MoSync - www.mosync.com and Marmelade - www.madewithmarmelade.com, the latter not entirely open source, but good for games.

I don't see anything this adds to what PhoneGap already offers.

Looks like a great service.

Q - I couldn't find any docs on site to get started with an iOS app. All I could find is Chrome & Android tutorials.

Congratulations to a well deserving team :)

This sounds like exactly what PhoneGap, a superb, free, open-source project accomplishes very nicely.

There is always room for someone to do it better.

But I would say part of the appeal of mobile development is the joy of using frameworks designed for applications, instead of relying on document frameworks. I wonder why all these cross platform toolkits all hinge on web technologies?

Where are the toolkits in the OpenStep-vein of mobile cross platform software development?

PhoneGap's great for many purposes, but some developers find it too heavyweight.

We've designed our wrapper and tools to appeal to developers who may not have any mobile dev experience before and who don't need the flexibility to write native code that runs along-side the generated code. Which is why we call it 'wrapped HTML5' rather than 'hybrid'. This means we can make the whole development flow faster and simple.

So, definitely looking to solve the same problems, but we're targeting a different set of developers who value speed and simplicity and may not have any mobile dev experience before.

You're targeting web developers who find PhoneGap too heavyweight, slow, and difficult to learn?

I don't think that's fair. He's targeting every single developer who uses HTML 5 and doesn't do any mobile development at all but could use a wrapper; some of his target is with the competition, some isn't using anything but knows about his competition, and some isn't using anything and DOESN'T know about the competition. You can pick up any of your target from the second two groups with ease, and possibly some of the first category. Think back to the introduction of the iPhone and the smart phone genre. blackberry users would have been the first group.

Does it offer any help implementing Newsstand? All independent publishers would be interested if it made Newsstand completely easy.

Interesting... what sort of thing are you thinking of: the ability to easily manage subscriptions from within an app, or view content, all of the above?

All of the above. Currently, a non-technical user who knows html and web development (or has a designer on staff) can use your software or other open source software to create one magazine issue, and then they get stuck. You need to know objective-c to add Newsstand, and its not very intuitive on how it's set up. You also have to host the files yourself.

What I think small publishers would pay for is code that automatically sets that up for them. For example, something that generates the html that sets up a Newstand page inside the app, and then allows me to enter my information (where my files are stored, price, etc) and then shows me where to insert it into the code (or does it for me). All I would need to do would be to upload my issues to my website. Basically, help people sell their magazines, and people will pay you for it.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the issues we have been having.

I can tell you that you've got at least one guy here interested.

Linux-only guy who wants to take some lightweight weekend web projects and create installable native app versions of them.

PhoneGab doesn't work on Linux and seems like overkill for what I need anyway.

Awesome, sounds like a great match: Sign up and give us a try!

Most of us develop on Linux, so our support there is pretty mature.

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