Intel XDK: An HTML5 development IDE | Hacker News Reader

Intel XDK: An HTML5 development IDE

software.intel.com

157 pointsmoonlighter51 comments

It's a good idea and apparently a slick package, but useless due to the restrictive license and binary-only distribution.

I certainly won't build and distribute mobile apps with whatever obscure (and non-removable according to ToS) "security features" Intel has decided to bundle with the runtime e.g. to comply with arbitrary requests by various rogue government agencies.

If they want us to build HTML5 apps for their own sake (Intel's, they want to fight back against native ARM binaries), they'll have to try harder. Make it Open Source and ask a lawyer who hasn't been stuck in corporate litigation and patenting stuff for several decades to write a modern license (or use the LGPL/BSD/MIT license...).

Completely agree with the open sourcing part. It looks like they want to create HTML5 app for their own sake.

Can you please explain what the restrictive licences and "binary-only distribution" are in layman's terms. I'm a front end developer this looks like a good introduction to developing and distributing mobile apps.

How will the ToS hinder me from doing so?

For a complete analysis you'll have to ask a lawyer. But for me, the fact that you "may not reverse-assemble, reverse-compile, or otherwise reverse-engineer any portion of the Intel Materials provided solely in binary form" (http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/, see II.2.C) is enough of a red flag already. I'm not going to use or distribute something to my users for which I signed away my rights to examine and see what it actually does.

Furthermore, they want the right to disable access to some content somehow if they think it is illegal (i.e. they have rights to arbitrary censorship of content and apparently also some mechanism built into the runtime to enforce it). Am I going to distribute or even sell stuff to users that Intel can disable any time they like? Certainly not.

If they wanted a license that puts off developers who have plenty of choices nowdays, they succeeded.

The license you are referring to (http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/) applies to the XDK itself, not to the apps you create with the XDK. Intel is not restricting how you choose to redistribute the apps you produce with the Intel XDK, they belong to you and you can redistribute them however you wish (in source form or binary form).

It is based on AppMobi that Intel bought some months ago. AppMobi was an alternative to PhoneGap, but it attempted to streamline the whole process of wrapping an HTML5 app into a native app, with an "IDE" (more of a GUI for the build process) and a cloud-based assembly and provisioning platform. And of course a lot of proprietary APIs for stuff like in-app payments, social integration, etc.

I tried AppMobi early on but as a developer I much prefer something open like PhoneGap, even if (or because) I have to glue the pieces together by myself. I don't really see the demographic that knows how to develop an HTML5 web application but prefers a closed black-box environment for putting together the mobile app.

The AppMobi XDK was pretty slick though. But from the announcement it seems like they pretty much tore it down and started over from scratch.

These days I hold higher hopes for real convert-to-native tools, that actually translates HTML5 (f.ex. the canvas API) to native code.

AppMobi actually used Ejecta[1] for their Canvas2D rendering on iOS - which it seems also made its way into the Intel XDK[2]. I believe they have their own implementation for Canvas2D on Android, but sadly, it's all closed source.

I should really get a cross-platform effort for Ejecta going. We have CocoonJS and Intel's XDK, but afaik there's no Open Source alternative right now.

[1] http://impactjs.com/ejecta

[2] http://www.html5dev-software.intel.com/amdocs/readmes/ios.ap...

Ejecta is awesome. I remember helping out in the early days of it, fixing up some alpha and rotation bugs... it's a shame how badly intel's "accelerated" canvas performs on android. On the nexus 4, native canvas looks better and performs roughly the same.

There is an effort to port ejecta to android, which a company I used to work for is now maintaining. That means accelerated canvas for the big two.

I thought I'd put more detail in. The project is called ejecta-x. http://wizcorp.github.io/Ejecta-X/

I've been praying for something like Ejecta and CocoonJS that is both cross-platform and open source. I always imagined that the canvas API should translate rather easily to native graphics mode, but it is probably not that simple.

If you're curious why Intel is making an HTML5 IDE and what their goals are, you can check out this blog post: http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/blogs/why-intel-xdk-ne...

Dang, all those asterisks that don't actually refer to footnotes are really confusing. I wonder if they are supposed to be trademark symbols...

They're tiny ® (registered trademark) symbols.

Kind of. They're actually footnotes (asterisks), referring to the same footnote. On this particular website it appears to be referring to the "*Trademark" link, which has the extended legalese.

In the standard Intel style (whitepapers, etc), trademarks to other companies are designated with an asterisk and a footnote to the effect of "These are trademarks from companies other than Intel. They own the rights to the name, and not us"

Yes, those asterisks just refer to a footnote that declares that "*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others." --> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/trademarks.html

When Intel are saying they want to "promote cross-platform HTML5 app development - for all platforms, not just Intel's", I'm wondering if what they are really saying is they're not fans of the current processor-specific native apps (because they are compiled for ARM, not Intel CPUs), and they are trying to stop that avalanche before it grows into a huge pile of legacy making it impossible to compete in the mobile/phone space with a non-ARM CPU?

How selfless of them ;)

Maybe it's because web apps perform so badly on ARM: http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-slow...

That's really because web apps are just slow.

Intel mistakenly believe that they'll have an easier time by forcing ARM to compete at full speed, which is brilliantly ignorant of history. The very first ARM outperformed contemporary x86s at computation, and just happened to be low power, it's that they've been diverted off into low power as their reason for existing for 20 years.

ARM can, and will, redefine their instruction set dramatically to suit their needs at any time, so while the x86 world is stuck with x86 the mobile world has been through several major changes to the ARM ISA since just the original iPhone.

The Intel PR has persistently been saying "but our next one" for the last few years, and each time it's gone nowhere. They are merely performing the role of a stick device makers can hit ARM with to control prices though, but seem oblivious to this.

After playing with it, seems like Brackets (anecdotal guess, though I'm pretty confident) wrapped with a bunch of mobile device stuff ala Ripple (does intel own ripple now?) combined with a pretty deep build system.

Could be really handy for making quick apps for conferences or hi-fi prototypes imo. Particularly the cross platform build system - seems really easy.

I can confirm it's brackets.

Yes It is Brackets - Says so here : http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools - Look for "More creation options" or just search for "Brackets" on this page.

Seems like the most advanced node-webkit [1] application so far. Great to see how node.js is used for more and more crossplatform non-web apps. Cites Atwoods law here...

[1] https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

Has anyone tried to develop node-webkit apps with XDK? I'm using IDEA at the moment with few workarounds, but if this works better I'll make the switch.

You cannot use the XDK to develop node-webkit apps. The XDK itself is a node-webkit app, but you use it to develop HTML5 hybrid apps for mobile devices.

Why must I signup to Intel XDK ? This should be optional

Downloading it is optional.

That is not the idea

Am I the only one who finds the UI is horribly ugly? The tabs make no sense. Why is it all hogging the ide space when most of the things are rarely used (services, build) - why not put them in the menu?

Products likes these are what give HTML5 a bad name.

Yeah is ugly and dated and the users experience is not there, i don't know why a big company like Intel doesn't know that the first layer of conversion is the design. Make thing pretty and pleasant to use before launch!.

I feel that UX designer cannot be fulltime job at some of these places

Which products do you think do a good job?

Incredible, the website looks terrible on tablets and phones.

Really great engine, I highly recommend it. I'm even looking for somebody who would know how to write native bridge plugins for it (or convert existing phonegap ones) - I just want alarm clock controls that actually work on iOS (android is easy). Anybody?

It is too bad that XDK is still on Cordova 2.9. 3.3 is out now and is a big jump from 2.x.

Cordova 3.0 support is coming. :)

I love the Linux support, but why the IDE theme is so ugly?

Not just the theme. The alignment, layout, heavy use of text everywhere is just off-putting.

Yeah it doesn't look well for my 1024x600 laptop, all looks chopped and cluttered.

is it open source ?

Doesn't look like it. http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/

Seems fairly permissive, but has provisions to do with de-compiling anything distributed in binary form so it looks fairly mixed.

This may though just be due to use of some legacy, licensed library somewhere rather than deliberately restrictive licensing. I haven't looked closely at what comes with XDK so I'm not sure what components are used.

personally, I won't use for anything important to my software business on license that is non open source.

Intel, I won't be using it for my money making business. This corporate license thing is so 1990's.

Get with GPL alfaro. You will create way more wealth for the planet that way.

No but it does run on Linux! Just remember to get the 64 bit version of the download.

Why does an IDE require a username and password to use it?

The username and password is needed to manage your cloud account; a backend server that is used for build services and to manage the wireless test and debug features. If you are not connected to the Internet when you start the XDK it will still function, but you will, obviously, not be able to use those features that require access to the cloud services to function.

Disappointed to see that it's Windows only.

I got it running on my HP pavillion Chromebook 14 (stable) in developer mode using croutonized debian jessie (64-bit). It works but I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it :)

They are just targeting the 95% of developers.

While there are certainly a lot of developers using Windows, I'm skeptical that it's as high as 95% given the number of developers using Mac OS these days.

The XDK itself is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. When you go to the download page (http://xdk-software.intel.com/) it detects the OS you are using and provides you with the appropriate download. At the bottom of the download page are links to download the XDK for a "non-detected" system.

The XDK operates identically on all three platforms, one of the reasons for using node-webkit to create the app.

Interesting. I just assumed since it seems to have detected that my Linux machine is running Windows. The fact that they were using node-webkit did make me surprised that it appeared to be platform-specific.

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