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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3280590

by CJefferson • 15 years ago

8 2 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I wrote a not-particularly successful, but well reviewed, iPhone game.

I am considering writing a sequel, for iOS, Android and the web, and the obvious way to do this would be via HTML5.

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).

Has anyone released any successful HTML5 games, on Android and iOS? Any advice?

gbelote• 15 years ago

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.

detour• 15 years ago

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/)

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

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