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We will develop a, social network integrated mobile application which will need to access native device capabilities but 90% of the logic will be implemented in the HTML5/Javascript code posted by Ruby back end to the device. Thus, we would like to update or change the logic/GUI of the app without user involvement. We have strict deadline and have to support iOS, Android and Blackberry.

In this case, what approach would you recommend us? We considered the approaches below but could not decide since we do not have any experience with mobile development even if we are experienced in Ruby, C/C++, Java, Javascript, Flex.

Our considerations:

  1. Develop native apps for each platform and embed the native browsers to implement our logic, which can take too much time.
  2. Use one of the frameworks for cross-platform development such as PhoneGap or rhomobile. In this case, we are afraid of facing some performance issues. We would love to hear the experience of developers with those frameworks.
  3. Use Adobe Air for accessing the device and its WebKit component for the rest.
Marvin Pinto
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gench
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  • Any new insight, was the answer useful? – Walter K Mar 13 '12 at 21:40
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    Yes, thanks for the useful answer. After long searches, readings and trying the apps, we decided to develop two native apps for Android and iOS. We will implement most of the business logic as HTML5/Javascript (Dojo or jQuery Mobile) and use the webviews. For other platforms such as Blackberry and Nokia, we will probably use Phonegap even if we would like to avoid Adobe products. We gave up on rhomobile since we could not see any solid application developed in this platform and we experienced some crashes during our simple try-outs, but probably it was our fault rather than the framework. – gench Apr 11 '12 at 14:22

3 Answers3

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First, I hope you understand that there is no simple answer. At this junction, having been looking at cross-platform solutions for mobile development for two years, I feel that in order to get fully native UI look, and to access all the device and UI features, one is forced to produce native application on each platform.

But, since you asked about cross-platform tools, here's a list of the main contenders:

Sencha http://www.sencha.com/products/touch “Sencha Touch is the world's first app framework built specifically to leverage HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript”

Dojo http://dojotoolkit.org “Dojo saves you time, delivers powerful performance, and scales with your development process”

Phonegap http://www.phonegap.com “PhoneGap is an open source implementation of open standards”

jQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com “Touch-Optimized Web Framework for Smartphones & Tablets A unified user interface system across all popular mobile device platforms”

Rhomobile http://rhomobile.com “Free and open source mobile application framework”

Titanium from Appcelerator http://www.appcelerator.com

There are plenty of comparisons online, including on SO, and this fellow actually tried to use several platforms, code included.

Anecdotally, I have seen Phonegap produce a rather iPhone-centric look, that may not mesh well with Android, plus showing performance problems when loading screens (there may be workarounds via pre-loading). Also, access to more complex devices was limited, or at least lagging. Rhomobile is a good fit for data-driven apps (simple display of large databases), but architecturally could show performance issues, so check for yourself. Personally I did not get into Sencha, Dojo seemed a little small, and Titanium showed dated architecture. So next time I'm attempting a cross-platform app, I'll give jQuery Mobile a serious try.

Let us know what you pick and how it works out.

Community
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Walter K
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Iam using this rhomobile rhodes for my cross-platform development App which will run in Android, Blackberry and iPhone.

We have developed application and sucessfully runned in all devices without any issues. we used ruby for backend webservice call, And remaining app is constructed with HTML5 and java Script. I didn't face any issues regarding rhomobile.

intially we faced memory issues, But later on we resolved this issue by implementing local storage for our App. For android it wont supports local storage so we used Rhom Storage only for Android Device.

Nag
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Sounds like a project doomed to fail.

If I were you, I'd build a mobile-friendly site for all 3 platforms if deadline is tight. What native features do you even need, first off? If it's something like a camera, you're better off just build a native app for all 3.

Henley
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