
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - abrudtkuhl
http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596805784/
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kogir
At Loopt we tried to do this. We made a hybrid app (Loopt Star), using web
views for content and native code for tabs, Facebook Connect, modal dialogs,
animations, etc. It didn't work. WebViews/Safari basically don't cache
anything at all, and javascript performance is awful.

Out of desperation we even tried including a reverse proxy as part of the app
to force meaningful image and css caching. Yes, the webviews were serving
content from localhost, which was proxied transparently to our real servers
and cached aggressively. Even that wasn't enough.

If you want your app to have a first class user experience, you have to go
native. Maybe in the future things will improve, but right now users can tell.

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marknutter
I've been thinking about getting into iOS development but I'm on the fence
about diving into learning objective-c. I'm a ruby/javascript guy primarily
and I think I'd rather go the js route than objective-c, but I want to know
what the limitations will be? Anyone have any insight they could share?

~~~
arn
The main limitation is not technical in nature. The App Store is a marketing
force that you get benefit simply by releasing a native app.

Can you name any good HTML/CSS/JS iOS "apps"? Either there aren't many (any?)
or people don't know about them (which is basically the same thing)

edit: responses noted, guess I didn't read carefully enough

~~~
Encosia
You'd likely never even know that an HTML5 app wrapped in PhoneGap or Titanium
wasn't native. There are many of those on the app store already. In fact, the
subtitle of the book specifically mentions the app store: Making _App Store
Apps_ Without Objective-C or Cocoa.

~~~
bytesmith
It's worth noting the response to O'reilly's own Safari To Go iPad app on the
Safari Books online blog which was based on PhoneGap. The app has since been
pulled from the App Store. See
[http://safaribooksonline.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/ipad-
app-s...](http://safaribooksonline.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/ipad-app-safari-
to-go-update-november-24-2010/)

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RobertKohr
Using phonegap I created an app using Canvas & javascript called Tank!
(knockoff of atari combat). It was super simple to do and banged it out in two
weeks on the side while working full time. I probably spent less time
developing it that it would take to actually learn objective c to start
developing it using that language.

The biggest issue was framerate, which when tracking 4 fingers at the same
time, it drops down to 6-8fps on the original iphone. Tracking touches is more
cpu intensive than actually drawing the sprites. I capped the framerate at 8
fps and slowed down the tank movement so that this effect wasn't noticeable.

The major upside is that you can test and develop in the browser every change
you make without compiling anything, then dump it into the framework and push
it to the device. This really speeds up development.

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shadowpwner
Tl;dr: jqTouch jQuery plugin, convert webapps into real apps, tips on HTML5
client databases, and accessing some ipod info.

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Subskii
Anyone looking at jqTouch should also check out jQuery Mobile
<http://jquerymobile.com/>

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blub
As long as you're using web technologies why not make it cross-platform? It's
pointless to use them JUST for the iPhone.

