Demo of building for iPhone and Mobile Web from same HTML5 codebase | Hacker News Reader

Demo of building for iPhone and Mobile Web from same HTML5 codebase

trigger.io

51 pointsamirnathoo18 comments

I have an awful time using webapps that pretend to be real apps. I think it's mostly a performance issue. Choppy scrolling, sometimes layout gets stuck in odd ways, slow repaint when screen is flipped, text entry is awkward (keyboard unintentionally gets hidden).

Take Facebook's iPhone app, majority of its slowness and bugginess is caused by it being actually a web page.

Great demo, the only thing I take issue with is calling this "fully native". If you start defining "fully native" to mean "mostly JS but with some native components", what are we supposed to call actual fully native apps, then?

WebViews are great for content presentation. Especially true when what you are presenting is static content. But beyond that you are just going to struggle a lot to make it interactive.

And were we complaining a few years ago about how the web was a bad application platform? Just seems silly to try and port broken shit... what do I know...

But seriously write-once-run-everywhere is bullshit guys. Just like it was for Java. There is a reason write-once-debug-everywhere was the silly comeback. I just don't trust a technology (trigger.io) that claims "dead simple" when they haven't told me how this is better than the "dead simple" easy cross platform stuff Sun spit out in the 90s. (great for servers terrible for clients)

Also this is a native app in the demo? The navigation bar scrolls off the screen. Are you fucking kidding me. This is one of the most basic stock components in an iOS app. IT DOESN'T SCROLL OFF THE SCREEN.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126589/sharepicts/Screen%20Shot%2020...

Now I know that "fixed" in a UIWebView is kind of a pain in the ass. Because it doesn't work as you'd expect. But, you kind of have to solve that problem to make the UX native.

By using these tools for multiplatform development you give up the opportunity to get featured. Apple and Google like to show off glitzy apps that look good and show off the power of the platform. Not something that has been reduced to the lowest common denominator: Android 2.2 running on some POS LG Optimus V from Virgin Mobile.

As someone who has only dabbled with Obj. C but has 10+ years of traditional web dev experience this looks v. attractive. What am I losing by not learning Obj.C/xcode to build native iOS apps?

If you use web technologies you can build for more than just iOS devices.

The Phonegap project (now called Apache Cordova) is maybe a bit better because it supports more platforms:

http://incubator.apache.org/cordova/

Yes, they are an established project. But most people we speak to only care about iOS, Android and the mobile web. Maybe Windows Phone next year.

And they much prefer our simple dev process, fast builds, and native UI components.

</plug>

I don't think Phonegap has native push notifications?

When the iPhone SDK was released, I got serious about learning Objective-C and Xcode. It was a slow painful process, but now I strongly prefer writing native apps to doing front end web development. The Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks are really great, and Objective-C has really been improving as a language. Xcode... yea it still sucks but things like provisioning profiles have gotten far more manageable since the early days.

What you are missing out by not building native apps is an environment that is designed to really help you create great apps for users. Even with the crazy rate web technologies have been developing, a lot of it still feels like a bunch of hacks compared to native app development, which feels much more natural to me.

Try AppCode. It has none of the suck of Xcode.

The other side to that argument is what can't be done in native. From what I understand, you can't do a/b testing, you aren't going to be able to iterate as quickly, push bug fixes out instantly, etc. etc .

Andrew Cross did a write-up about it (http://www.andrewcross.ca/2012/03/16/quick-tips-from-sxsw-fo...) the gist being that many companies started out using something like trigger.io/phonegap/others so that they could benefit from the quick iteration cycles and other benefits of web. Once the things settle down a bit, they built native apps.

Access to the camera, gyro, file uploads, push notifications etc.

Not true. You have access to all of these using systems like this (PhoneGap and Titanium also provide these and many other native features).

Sure. I thought GP was asking about what you get writing purely webapp stuff.

Phonegap/Titanium are great, but they're hacks. Phonegap is just running your app in an uiWebView, then exposing some of the camera/etc. stuff via its own API, yeah?

That's great, but IMHO, it shouldn't have to be like that.

> Phonegap/Titanium are great, but they're hacks

How is that any different then what Apple originally intended, and still makes available for web apps? PhoneGap is just exposing more native features than Apple does?

Can someone break it down for me?

Should I use Trigger.io, PhoneGap, Appcelerator, or Sencha for my next app? Also, how much gaming performance might I lose with Trigger.io?

Thanks

The thing that ruins the user experience for me? Non-sticky toolbars that scroll with the page. Fix that and people may actually believe it's a native app.

You didn't watch the video did you? They have the API that allows you to easily create REAL NATIVE TOOLBARS...

It should be on by default.

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