

How I built my first mobile app with Trigger.io - legierski
http://blog.self.li/post/26068453853/first-mobile-app-trigger-io-weightconverter

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marknutter
I'm evaluating Trigger.io currently for a new project. I've used phonegap on a
couple large projects before, as well. For me, Trigger's best value
proposition isn't the ease of development. For the average hacker the few
extra steps you need to take to use Phonegap/Cordova aren't overly complicated
and in the end you have a better idea of how everything fits together. If
Trigger.io's main selling point is going to be "easier to use than phonegap" I
think they may fall flat.

Where real value can be provided, however, is in providing turn-key modules
that allow developers to drop in native controls to supplement their web
applications. The biggest issue with hybrid mobile application development
today is embedded webview performance, especially on older devices. Using a
framework like Sencha works wonderfully for newer devices (it feels positively
native on my iPhone 4s), but because they have to rely on javascript to fix
elements and scroll certain sections on older devices, it ends up delivering a
sub-par experience for those users (on older androids the scrolling
performance is atrocious).

Trigger.io is currently offering API calls that allow you to drop in a tab bar
and a navigation bar which are native components. These are the two elements
in a mobile app that are most likely to require fixed positioning, so this
frees the webview up to simply serve a normal web page with natural, native
scrolling on all devices. This is essentially what Facebook is doing with
their current app - fixed native navigation elements and scrolling UIWebViews.
However, as we all know, Facebook's results have been less than satisfactory.
They admit that this hybrid approach helped their developers iterate faster
and be more productive, but instead of sticking with that strategy and
figuring out clever ways to make it perform better, they've capitulated and
are going full native.

If Trigger.io was able to solve that problem and make a hybrid HTML5/native
app perform as well as any other native app, they would really have something
there. My advice would be to figure out how to get UIWebViews to load faster
and cache better, how to allow customization of native UI elements so that
designers can deliver a unique, beautiful interface that scales across
multiple platforms, and continue to provide best-in-class hooks into the
native functionality on the leading platforms, such as dead-simple push
notification integration. Focus less on competing with phonegap and more on
solving the hybrid app problem.

~~~
subpixel
"Where real value can be provided, however, is in providing turn-key modules
that allow developers to drop in native controls to supplement their web
applications."

I'm curious - how is that different from the way other frameworks allow plug-
ins? As I understand it (perhaps not fully) plug-ins let you drop in chunks of
native code where desired.

~~~
marknutter
It's no different than phonegap/cordova plugins other than the fact that you
get support on them. With phonegap/cordova however, you're on your own and
from my experience the plugins out there are poorly maintained and are rarely
available for all three major platforms. If Trigger.io or a similar company
can provide supported, proven, bullet-proof plugins that work across all three
major mobile platforms, they truly have something there.

------
Xion
Looks like the author has partially succumbed to Hello World Fallacy. His
first extremely simple experiment (I'm reluctant to call it 'app') was
successful and he is extrapolating this in slightly too optimistic direction.

~~~
justinsb
I think this blog post is a great starting point and exactly what a platform
evaluation should be: an "app" that combines HTML Boilerplate, Zepto.js &
Twitter Bootstrap to build something that includes some useful user
interaction. And it's open source on github. I find a minimal starting like
that _more_ useful than something with lots of additional functionality that I
then have to remove for my use case.

Because it's standard HTML with common frameworks, I then have my pick of
docs/examples/tutorials/mailing lists on using those frameworks to build
something bigger, rather than being stuck with e.g. only Android resources.

I think that's what the author is basing his positive evaluation on; he's got
to the point where the Trigger.io technology has disappeared into the
background and is just "magic". He recognizes the pros & cons (e.g. needing to
be online to deploy), and is excited to use Trigger.io.

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amirnathoo
Thanks for the write-up and your recommendation Peter :D

We're working on supporting more and more native features, such as the ones
you describe. And you'll see from our blog that we're getting features out
reasonably fast at the moment.

You can send a text message using our SMS module right now though:

<http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.3/modules/sms.html>

~~~
amirnathoo
By the way, if you email us at support@trigger.io we'd love to send you a
t-shirt! :)

~~~
legierski
i was thinking about sending sms without user's interaction rather than
prompting user to send a predefined sms.

BTW email sent :)

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papsosouid
What is the deal with all these "I made an app using trigger.io" blog posts
that seem to have been paid for by trigger.io? I don't think I've seen a
mention of trigger.io yet that doesn't grossly misrepresent phonegap as being
some difficult, arcane, "only greybeards can use it" monstrosity.

>I decided to go with Trigger.io to achieve my goal, as I wanted to spare
myself endless hours spent on configuring environment (as opposed to
PhoneGap/Appcelerator)

Huh? Have you tried phonegap? How does "click next on a couple of installers
and extract a single zip file" take hours of configuration?

>Trigger.io provides you with a pleasant environment, where you don’t have to
touch command line at all! It works as an app within your browser, from
localhost. I do understand that a lot of folks may prefer “hacker-style” black
terminal over Trigger’s clean and minimalistic web app, but for me clicking a
button that i can see instead of typing a command is a much better experience,
especially at the beginning.

I can't figure out what on earth he is trying to compare it to here. What
html/js mobile app framework involves typing commands in "hacker style black
terminals"? With phonegap you just click "run as android application" (or
whatever you want to run it as).

This is how hard it actually is to setup phonegap:
[http://docs.phonegap.com/en/1.8.1/guide_getting-
started_andr...](http://docs.phonegap.com/en/1.8.1/guide_getting-
started_android_index.md.html#Getting%20Started%20with%20Android)

~~~
justinsb
The first step you've linked there for PhoneGap Android is to install Eclipse.
The first step for PhoneGap iOS is to install XCode (=> OS X). The first step
for PhoneGap Windows Mobile is to install Visual Studio Express (=> Windows).

Regardless of whether you choose to point-and-click or use the command line,
Trigger's web-based approach seems to have a huge advantage over all that
installation/configuration. Heroku for cross-platform apps, as it were; of
course you can assemble everything yourself, but it's a lot more work to get
to the "it's easy now" stage which this blog gets to very quickly using
Trigger.

It does seem Trigger are sending out T-shirts (see below) - it doesn't count
as paid in my book, but then maybe the T-shirts are _really_ nice :-)

~~~
papsosouid
>The first step you've linked there for PhoneGap Android is to install Eclipse

Uh huh? You've never used an IDE before? And that makes you think clicking
next in an installer is hours of configuration?

>Trigger's web-based approach seems to have a huge advantage over all that
installation/configuration

See, this is exactly what I mean. You are welcome to say "I prefer editing my
code in a web browser", and I will certainly believe that (although I'll
obviously assume you are insane). But trying to characterize the alternative
of "using an editor" (which everyone already does for every other kind of
development) as some arduous task is absurd.

>but it's a lot more work to get to the "it's easy now" stage which this blog
gets to very quickly using Trigger.

No, it isn't. That's precisely the point. I just did it yesterday, that's why
I know. It took 5 minutes to have a nicely documented example app up and
running ready for me to edit it. I typed 0 commands. Deliberately
misrepresenting software X is a bad way to sell people on software Y. It just
makes you seem dishonest, and then your opinion isn't trusted.

~~~
amirnathoo
Just wanted to point out that Trigger.io doesn't require you to code in a web
browser as this comment implies. We don't provide any kind of IDE, web or
otherwise.

We do provide a cloud build service so you don't compile the apps locally. You
interact with that via command-line tools or our UI toolkit.

