

Ask HN: How do I build cross-platform phone apps? - bakbak

Instead of making apps for different platforms (iphone, ipad, android etc.) , is there a way to build cross-platform apps ? can we build it in HTML5? what are the challenges?
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filipcte
You should look into Appcelerator Titanium (<http://www.appcelerator.com/>)
and PhoneGap (<http://www.phonegap.com/>). They allow you to build _native_
mobile apps using HTML/JavaScript, by exposing device specific API's (camera,
location, address book etc.) to JavaScript.

There's an excellent review and comparison between the two, on StackOverflow:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1482586/comparison-
betwee...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1482586/comparison-between-
corona-phonegap-titanium)

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ecommando
Some others:

<http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/>

<http://www.airplaysdk.com/>

Cheers, R

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bdfh42
I am currently trying jQuery Mobile - which is promising but at the current
alpha stage there are rather too many issues at the moment to commit to it.
However I do think that this framework has all the right signs for the future.
<edit> link here <http://jquerymobile.com/> </edit> Oh and Jo looks
interesting as well <http://joapp.com/> </>

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gspyrou
Try <http://www.phonegap.com/>

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charlesdm
If you're writing games, you should probably go with a C or C++ based solution
with OpenGL es. That can run on all platforms except for Win phone 7 (for
now).

For applications there are a couple of iOS/Android solutions such as
Appcelerator or Phonegap

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neworbit
I like appcelerator but they really need to step up things on the Android side
of the house

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binaryfinery
Depends. Let me start by addressing the HTML/javascript toolchains out there:
they suck. One of my clients has experience of this. The first thing they
tried was using one of those javascript/html systems. Its a fairly simple app
that one would think was ideal for HTML/javascript, but it was barely usable
and tech support was awful. Thats why they hired me.

What platforms are your target - the "etc" you mention? Blackberry? Blackberry
is still huge but by iPhone and Android standards they are hardly smartphones.
How about WP7? Interesting but so far tiny.

Next question: what kind of app? If its games, you use C/C++ and OpenGL for
Android and iPhone.

Personally, I use C# and manage core business logic libraries with platform-
specific user interfaces in Silverlight, MonoTouch and MonoDroid. I have a
client who wants Android and later Blackberry, so for that we do the Android
version in "normal" java so we can share libs with Blackberry in the future.

I don't think there's a one size fits all. The ones that do (e.g. Flash, or
HTML/javascript) end up looking or running like ass.

