Hacker News Reader

So does it compile to Objective-C? It sounds more like an 'engine' that is a part of your actual app and interprets the CSS realtime. Sounds more processor intensive than just loading up flat graphics. (not an expert, please chime in)

View on HN

They are somewhat vague on the technical details - however, it sounds like they are indeed basically rendering out their own graphics context and not using Apple's native UI components ("[a] 2D graphics engine facilitates the rendering of scalable, resolution-independent vector graphics).

As to performance, it depends how they do it. I wouldn't want to comment until they revealed some more technical details about this 'graphics engine'. They say 'style native apps and components', but it's unclear to me whether this means they are interpreting CSS and applying these styles to UIKit elements or rolling their own UIKit-like elements (I suspect the latter, but I might be wrong).

The Pixate Engine styles native controls using the standard iOS bitmap approach. Bitmaps allow your controls to take advantage of the speed offered by the GPU. However, in contrast to today's workflows, the Pixate Engine renders and caches content to bitmaps dynamically as needed at runtime, giving you the ultimate in flexibility in your designs.

I think you got it right.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com