

The Problem with Sencha Touch and PhoneGap - pmuk
http://www.moneytoolkit.com/2011/05/the-problem-with-sencha-touch-and-phonegap/

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cdonnellytx
What makes it really bad is that there is also this bug in mobile WebKit from
four years ago that nobody has ever gotten around to fixing:

[http://blog.johnmckerrell.com/2007/03/07/problems-with-
safar...](http://blog.johnmckerrell.com/2007/03/07/problems-with-safari-and-
innerhtml)

Basically if you are at or near 100% CPU, Safari’s HTML parser silently fails
to parse your HTML.

Additionally, we have found this is not limited to the innerHTML property; we
have observed the problem to happen with the W3C recommended method
Range.createContextualFragment.

EDIT: formatting and cleanup

~~~
greendestiny
I had a big problem with HTML not parsing in phonegap. It was intermittent but
far more often than I would expect for near 100% CPU. This fix on
stackoverflow solved the problem entirely for me:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3644474/calls-to-
update-d...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3644474/calls-to-update-dom-
are-ignored-in-phonegap-app-with-iphone-3g-running-ios-3-0/5273001#5273001)

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lukifer
My own PhoneGap-based iPad app is going really well so far, practically
indistinguishable from native, but for one thing: WebKit refuses to let you
have manual control over hiding and showing keyboards. (I tried filing a bug,
and it was closed as "works as intended".)

This makes me feel like I have one hand tied behind by back when creating UI
flow, and it's maddening.

~~~
cmelbye
Do you have a link to your app? I'm really interested in seeing web apps that
work similarly to native apps, I've yet to see a great example yet.

~~~
greendestiny
I'm working on a phonegap app at the moment. I definitely wouldn't say it
looks native - I haven't really tried for that - but it is fast. You do have
to be very careful about performance issues, but phonegap does make it
exceedingly easy to incorporate native code if that is required. I would say,
purely as a limited anecdote, that jquery mobile and other frameworks just
weren't really fast enough for the performance I wanted to see.

~~~
lukifer
Are you using any Javascript plugins at all? Regular jQuery, Zepto, Backbone,
etc?

~~~
greendestiny
Regular jquery, jqote2, Kelvin Luck's jquery date picker, jquery autoresize
plugin (though its not really working out so far) and all the phonegap
javascript functionality.

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dstein
It sounds like most of these complaints are about mobile Safari and not
specific to Sencha's libraries or PhoneGap.

~~~
danmux
True, to an greater extent, Ive rolled things together but I do try and not
apportion the blame fully, by saying...

"The title may present a slightly unfair impression. Not all of these issues
have anything to do directly with the PhoneGap or Sencha Touch codebase, but
are simply limitations of browsers, web-views and performance of mobile
devices, though Sencha Touch / Phonegap framework does inherit those problems
(and go to some lengths to work round the issues)"

But there are defects and issues in both PhoneGap and Sencha Touch that I
mention. But I also recognise that they are both doing a good job on balance
to further the cause.

------
danmux
Updated with a video of the scroll lag problem <http://youtu.be/EEMCqqyeEDY>

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truthtechnician
The irony is... running back to native platforms because the web sucks is
_exactly_ why the web still sucks.

~~~
mustpax
On the contrary, there is plenty of desire build cross platform applications
on the web as evidenced by this article. How would this developer sticking to
Sencha/Phonegap against contrary evidence improve the web for others?

~~~
danmux
Well, I am still plugging on with HTML5! for now, even if I am now wiring in
iScroll4 to compensate for the poor scrolling of long lists!

