IDE for developing PhoneGap HTML5 Apps

http://www.vinisketch.com

by dthevenin • 14 years ago

42 21 14 years ago

Yarnage• 14 years ago

Sometimes I feel like the only person who is NOT a PhoneGap fan. It just has so many oddities (white flash on Android for one) and the apps never seem to work as well as anything native.

Am I missing something? Serious question, not trying to troll.

untog5• 14 years ago

I haven't used it extensively, but it's one of few ways to make a truly functional app using just JS+HTML5- allowing you to skip past Java, Objective-C, etc.

Of course, there are huge prices to pay for that- particularly on the UI front. But if your mobile app is a very small part of your business (as opposed to the primary offering, which it is for many) then it can make sense.

I've actually ended up making an app that's a hybrid of native (for top bar navigation) and one big webview for the rest:

http://www.taxono.my/

I think it's come out as very close to a native experience- it's just a case of putting the time in to make it so.

MatthewPhillips3• 14 years ago

Very nice looking app. Are you using Leaflet for your maps?

funkyavocado• 14 years ago

That's a great looking app. Can I ask what framework you used?

quanfucius2• 14 years ago

Great job on the app! How's the reception been so far from taxi cab companies?

tluyben22• 14 years ago

Well, you cannot deliver apps on iOS/Android/WP7 at the same time for a small budget in a short time natively. With Phonegap you can. Most companies really don't care that it is not that polished because most users don't care. We are talking about apps for the average company, not for companies where the app IS their business or anything like that.

The pizza chain with nice revenue rather has a Phonegap app THIS WEEK on all platforms which works a bit flaky, but works, than having to wait a few months to churn out different versions tweaked and tuned for all seperately.

MatthewPhillips3• 14 years ago

All you're observing here is that the mobile browsers are not as developed as their native runtime cousins. This is an indictment of the browsers (and perhaps the platform owner's priorities), not that of PhoneGap.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

The simple answer? It is good enough. Not great, but good enough.

tluyben22• 14 years ago

Downloading this now! It looks great so far, cannot wait to try it. I have tried many of these tools coming out; most are browser based and horrible to work with (besides being slow, they basically don't work usually :). So very curious; will give you feedback.

dthevenin2• 14 years ago

You are welcome to give feedback :-)

We try to develop some thing like xCode for HTML5 apps so I hope VSD fits developers needs.

quanfucius2• 14 years ago

Has anyone here tried Titanium Appcelerator? You can build native cross-platform apps in javascript. I've been using it to build my app: http://getswaggur.com and it's been pretty good so far.

tannerburson• 14 years ago

I wrote a post on my blog about that a little less than a year ago. I'm sure some things have improved, but in general, I've moved on.

http://tannerburson.com/2011/04/03/Thoughts-on-Appcelerator-...

spacy2• 14 years ago

me too!

ryanackley• 14 years ago

Some constructive feedback for the website. There are three thumbnails along the bottom of the screen. I immediately assumed I could click these and a larger image would appear.

When I see a new product linked on HN, I want to quickly look at screenshots. I couldn't find any screenshots of the product on your website besides those thumbnails that look like any other IDE at that resolution. I did eventually find the movie but I would've preferred some screenshots.

dthevenin2• 14 years ago

Thank for the feedback. I've fixed the home page and will add additional screenshots.

spacy2• 14 years ago

Judging by your comments, I think you should take a look at MoSync 3.0, iPhone/Android/WP7 and supports NativeUI/OGL and everything phonegap/titaniun does plus much more, it comes in two flavors, a JavaScript SDK called 'Reload' and a Hybrid SDK (JavaScript and native C/C++), beats the others hands down. But don't take my word for it, see for yourselves.

IDE for developing PhoneGap HTML5 Apps

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