

Ask HN: Can you write high quality mobile apps in HTML5 yet? - CJefferson

I wrote a not-particularly successful, but well reviewed, iPhone game.<p>I am considering writing a sequel, for iOS, Android and the web, and the obvious way to do this would be via HTML5.<p>I have heard the odd horror story about HTML5 apps doing very badly, and having to be rewritten, but such apps are often GUI-intensive, whereas my game it much simpler (think chess).<p>Has anyone released any successful HTML5 games, on Android and iOS? Any advice?
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detour
I'm dabbling in this a bit, currently designing a game as a hobby project.
There's a number of frameworks available that can ease development though none
are perfect.

LimeJs (<http://www.limejs.com/>) - seems the most mature. Its built upon
Google's Closure library. I personally found it a bit cumbersome, though
certainly powerful. Optimal performance is obtained by using the Closure
compiler.

CraftyJs (<http://craftyjs.com/>) - was the easiest to get something up and
running quickly. If you've ever played around with Unity3D, it basically
follows the GameObject model wrapped in a jQuery like syntax; which feels very
natural. Performance was decent but I've run into bugs as the project is
fairly new.

Cocos2D Js (<http://cocos2d-javascript.org/>) and EaselJs
(<http://www.easeljs.com/>) - are probably good options but I preferred the
other two.

There's also a few vaporware projects that would be amazing if they would ever
release, namely RocketPack (<http://rocketpack.fi/>) and GameClosure
(<http://gameclosure.com/>)

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gbelote
One thing to watch out for is JavaScript performance on the iPhone, it's
abysmal. This makes it hard to do physics games, but not necessarily a show-
stopper. For instance, you could probably make a good Scrabble-like game in
HTML5.

