Prototype Android apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

Prototype Android apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

jaunesarmiento.me

It looks like this will be the first sceptical comment... ;)

I didn't try Fries, but I tried using PhoneGap for prototyping and found that building such a web app is not much faster than building one in XCode (and I was a web developer for nearly 15 years!). So why bother?

Another problem is that if I want to build prototype in your framework, I must learn its conventions (what was that CSS class again, "buttonnormal" or "button-normal"? Since the web frameworks can't really compete with native apps in terms of user experience (behaviour of UI elements differs from what user expects), I will have to build in Objective C - which means I have to learn both iOS programming AND your framework.

Granted, such a tool would be useful if UX team wants to build prototypes and they only have web knowledge - and you have a separate team for building a final (native) version. Other than that I fail to see a point.

I would love to be proven wrong though. :)

BTW, my comment doesn't apply to Titanium which basically produces a native app (but I don't use it for other reasons).

Okay, thanks for your comment bud. :)

I see a huge flaw in your understanding of Fries. You mentioned Xcode and Objective C in your comment but the whole point of Fries is to prototype Android apps on HTML, CSS, and JS.

Fries aims to make creating Android apps/prototypes easier. If that doesn't apply to people who finds that doing it on Eclipse UI Builder is much easier then Fries isn't for them.

If that doesn't answer your questions, hit me up with another comment. :)

Cheers!

I think the parent comment is saying that, once I'm done prototyping with Fries, I'm going to move to native technologies, so I'll have to learn two systems total—and, since the parent comment asserts that prototyping in native technologies doesn't take too long, it wouldn't save me much time to use Fries, especially if I have to take the time to learn it.

I think the idea that 'I have to learn your framework' might be a fairly minor one when you're dealing with html and css. The learning curve is tiny compared to learning Objective-C or Java (for Android apps).

For getting a proof of concept together, and for early stage testing on multiple platforms, you can't beat html. As you mentioned Titanium and it's competitors have some challenges, that honestly, HTML just doesn't have.

That isn't to say that every app should be an html app, just that in early the early stages, if multi-platform, levaraging of web developers (rather than finding app developers) is your goal, a tool like this can be very valuable.

one potential benefit to HTML/CSS prototyping is that it's quite easy to share ideas. Upload somewhere and share a link. The equivalent for native would be screen sharing or sending an XCode/Eclipse project (or binary) which is slow and limits sharing to devs.

Pretty cool ... reminds me of ratchet http://maker.github.io/ratchet/

Why would you use that only for prototyping and not in production?

Actually, you could. :) It's really inspired by Ratchet that's probably why it reminds of you of it.

I'm already thinking of putting up a tutorial on how to integrate it with PhoneGap. So let's all hope that comes out soon. Cheers!

That would be awesome! Thanks for the great work ... Companies like Google should be in charge to maintain these kind of projects as it's going to bring a higher volume of developers to their platform!

Wow, thanks for the awesome feedback! :)

I am really looking forward to the phonegap integration.

Another reason for me to write it then. :)

Seconded!

Prototyping them in the IDE is pretty damn easy tbh..and you've done some of the work to build them.

How is it different from using jQuery Mobile with phonegap(cordova) ,just curious.

It's not all that different. Although, Fries aims to deliver components just how you'd see them in a native Android app (check out Android Holo Dark theme) and employs Android UI guidelines. Most prototyping frameworks out there all look iOS-ish. That's where Fries is different.

So it should be possible to use this as a bootstrap theme for a phonegap app? I've been looking for something like that.

This is really great. I was going to use Ratchet for a Android prototype but having the native UI components sets better expectations of how the app will look and fell. Thanks for putting it together

Yes, very well said. I was hoping someone would help me out explaining things better. :)

Updated the docs! http://jaunesarmiento.me/fries

A visual demo would be nice too.

(If its there,via didn't see it on nexus7 4.2

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