

An HTML5 app turned native in 10 minutes with PhoneGap Build? - posabsolute
http://www.position-absolute.com/articles/an-html5-app-turned-native-in-10-minutes-with-phonegap-build-its-possible-kind-of/

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yesimahuman
Addressing the jQM concern, this is why we built Ionic
([http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/)). It's still alpha
and we have a ways to go, but the UI is more "native" centric and we have been
improving animation performance over the last week, and on new iOS devices
it's hard to tell the difference between simple native app and the hybrid one.
Hopefully you'll find it a better solution for hybrid apps.

~~~
onion2k
I tried Ionic on Friday last week. The example code didn't work 'out of the
box', and there isn't any documentation explaining how to use it. I tried with
PhoneGap, with Cordova and running it in a browser both with and without
Ripple. I got pretty much nowhere. Contrast that to trying jQM 1.4 RC1 and
having a working example running _on my phone_ in about half an hour with
Phonegap.

Open source projects live and die on their community, which springs from
examples and documentation that people can learn from. I like the look of
Ionic, especially if it was decoupled from Angular, but until it's possible to
actually do something with it I (and I imagine many others) can't help out
with it.

tl;dr Documentation is critical. Write some, don't just rely on your "doc
generator".

~~~
yesimahuman
Trust me, we know we need to work on docs and tutorials, and we are. Also note
that we weren't actually ready to go live last Friday, so there's that, too
(someone else submitted our test site).

The community has actually been more active than we expected, and the forum is
seeing a lot of activity in the last week:
[http://forum.ionicframework.com/](http://forum.ionicframework.com/)

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jheriko
don't be mystified. all of this comes from your lack of knowledge and
experience of native development. if it works in a webview then making a
'native' app out of it is not going to be complicated - you make something
with a webview and the html or whatever other source data in the package.

its not magic, its not even hard, you just happen to not know about how it
works... if you are interested this is easy to fix with google and
experimentation. :)

knowing about android sdk versions is something you would also know if you
were an android developer. its everywhere from the first time you install an
sdk or ndk - i agree that Google suck at developer tools and docs, absolutely
110%, and this is a good example of that - a lot of their tools I consider
'unshippable' they are so bug riddled and unusable - but thats a tangent.

i do wonder though why even use a native app like this? isn't a web app more
friendly? you certainly won't get any of the performance benefits of native
code without some real heavy lifting on the part of the framework/library/sdk.
isn't a landing page asking you to download a native app just annoying? i know
its popular but its just a UX fail however I look at it...

~~~
barclay
> i agree that Google suck at developer tools and docs, absolutely (...) a lot
> of their tools I consider 'unshippable' they are so bug riddled and unusable

This absolutely mystifies me. Especially after coming in from the iOS
development stack, the android sdk's, simulator, et al, are shockingly bad.
And it's been YEARS now.

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davidjhamp
Are we calling phonegap/cordova native now?

Phonegap build is nice if you don't use any prosperity /closed source plugins.

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wil421
I really like the _idea_ of these multi-platform bridges.

But in reality the ones that I have seen suffered from being terribly slow.
The last app demo that I saw using phonegap had 3-5 second loading bars come
up _every time_ a button was pressed. This was on Android so I am not sure if
the platform was to blame or not.

~~~
posabsolute
While phonegap is a bridge between a lot of functionalities, not all features
has been created equals.

The app is only has good has the html5 app behind it. On android it's tricky,
we just did a test run for our mobile app & we have weird issues with a lot is
samsung phones while other phones perform perfectly.

We also decided to remove animations on android for all phones below android
4.2 because the browser was to slow to handle them perfectly.

~~~
wil421
Interesting, the slow demo was using a Samsung phone and had many animations.
Next time I am going to do some comparisons on different manufacturers and
with/with out animations.

The app wasnt one I was involved in so I didnt have chance to mess around with
it.

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Sephiroth87
You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

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tudorizer
Exactly my tought.

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nezza-_-

      But there is reports that Apple will not let you through
      since jQuery mobile animations perform too poorly, oups.
    

If you read the first answer on the page he links to it sounds like the
application was missing a lot of optimisation and was overall executed poorly.

~~~
rfnslyr
I work at a big bank and we're developing a very complex application using
only jQuery Mobile and Angular JS & fastclick.js. If properly executed, the
app runs beautifully and very, very smoothly. Even as a webapp it performs
exactly as native.

JQM is beautiful if you really know how to use and know what you're doing.

We're deploying on _20_ devices with only one code base and it works
flawlessly, it's amazing. We only use native to patch holes or do things we
can't do easily with html/css/js.

~~~
tsunamifury
No, what you are doing is likely not that complex and just a series of forms
and buttons, which jqm is fine for. If you are doing anything truly interface
heavy and complex, the hard parts either having nothing to do with jqm or
can't be done in jqm smoothly.

And your single codebase likely has a UI and ux that feels wrong on all
platforms.

(I built two of the largest US banks mobile apps using Yui and jqm. )

~~~
rfnslyr
Do you talk like this in real life to people? If I told you about an app I was
making, you would tell me its garbage, then brag about what you built?

Unless you've actually been in my environment and used my app that we've been
developing straight for the past _year_ , kindly fuck off.

~~~
camus2
unless you actually have a product to show, it's his word against yours. Devs
always brag about how fast their html apps are, these "fast" apps are nowhere
to be seen, or do very little things that require performance.

~~~
rfnslyr
It's my word against his, I'm the developer, I know what I'm making. I have no
problem in him not believing me. The problem is disbelief and then commenting
on it, which is fruitless as I'm not in a position to preview my app to the
public, nor is he in any position to comment on an application he hasn't seen
or used.

Take my experience for what it's worth, if it's worth nothing then skip me.

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codehaha
"But you should know that the webview used by phonegap is generally one
generation older than the current mobile browser provided with the device."

Is that right? Is web browser used by WebView a different thing that a default
Android browser?

~~~
posabsolute
It absolutely is in android 4.2. After that it depends on the android version.

My app have perfect smooth transitions in the chrome browser. yet in the
phonegap webview animations are slower & I have rendering bugs I never saw in
chrome.

Can't find direct sources right now, but it's fixed in android 4.4, you get
chrome

[http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-4-4-kitkat-browser-
ch...](http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-4-4-kitkat-browser-chrome-
webview)

~~~
codehaha
I'm honoured to get a reply for post's author. Thanks for a link to very good
article.

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gchokov
.. or just check [http://www.icenium.com/](http://www.icenium.com/) which has
integrated IDE and does all this without the manual hassle of uploading files.

~~~
rip747
I really don't like the fact that they tout using VS to create and publish
apps right there on the homepage however you have to purchase the ultimate
package at $119 a month in order to do this. you would think that every
package would include this feature if its their main advertised feature.

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dotnetkow
I built Fitwatchr for Fitbit
([http://www.fitwatchr.com/apps.html](http://www.fitwatchr.com/apps.html))
using PhoneGap Build and absolutely love it. I can develop locally in Chrome,
switch between Android/iOS using the DevTools, then deploy using Build.
Coupled with Kendo UI Mobile, which auto translates the UI of your app to fit
the platform, it took days to get a basic prototype running instead of weeks.
Highly recommended!

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patatino
Just finished my first phonegap 3 app. I used kendo mobile for the ui,
performance is pretty nice. It's not free but saved me probably days.

~~~
dotnetkow
Nice, congrats! I used Kendo UI for my app as well - it's incredible, such a
time saver.

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krrishd
> Its free for one app

Actually, its free for anything that can be hosted publicly and open-source on
a Git repository

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p_papageorgiou
Totally agree with the author here. Being primarily an Android developer I
hate when I need to get access to a Mac to anything iOS related. Phonegap
Build solves this problem. I work for avocarrot.com and I managed to do a
Phonegap wrapper of our iOS SDK with the build service only using my linux
machine.. Pretty awesome!

~~~
patatino
If you want to install the phonegap app on your ios device for tests and later
publish to the app store you still need a mac.

~~~
posabsolute
Well, I saw some people creating the certificate with openssl on windows, you
should in theory be able to use this for device testing

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Happymrdave
Not native. You have a launcher but it's still basically just running through
a dedicated browser.

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dan_sim
If you want to use angular and phonegap, I create grunt tasks that you can use
with the angular generator for yeoman : [https://github.com/dsimard/grunt-
angular-phonegap](https://github.com/dsimard/grunt-angular-phonegap)

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girvo
Now, this is pie-in-the-sky thinking, but I'd love to see something like
Xamarin, that uses JS (for logic) and HTML/subset of CSS (for presentation)
that builds cross-platform using native widgets.

Hey, one can dream, can't they?

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wsc981
I think this will stay a dream for a very long while. If Xamarin would create
controls based on the lowest common denominator of each platform (with regards
to functionality), the capabilities of said controls would be very limited
indeed, likely only useful for the most basic of apps.

~~~
girvo
Mmm, yeah that's a good point, I didn't think that quite through, and to be
honest I've not used Xamarin myself. How does it handle the UI layer? Is it
re-done for each platform, using C# but with the Android UI and iPhone UI
classes?

~~~
pistle
It's up to you, but mostly, yeah, you write out as much into the shared code
area (C#) as possible then, write up/wire up your UI layer using native layout
tooling. How far you go to using stuff like iOS storyboards or just doing
code-based implementations (C#) is up to you. You have the flexibility.

This yields a massive reduction in time and cost associated with managing
multiple code bases while holding onto the native experience.

It's not quite as fluid as html+css, but you don't hear nearly the
performance-horror stories.

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mariolorente
Nice project but i think steroids js is the best out there at this moment!

