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Cross-platform mobile
development
choices and limitations
Rohit Nayak
Talentica

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The mobile market
How Mobile apps differ
Native app landscape
Cross-platform approaches
Closer look at Titanium, PhoneGap
Other options
Summary
Agenda

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Last Gartner report

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Always Available
Alternative Inputs
 Tap/Flick/Rotate/Pinch/Shake
Location
Accelerometer
Local Storage
Orientation
Camera/Contacts/Phone/SMS
How Mobile Differs: Features

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Interruptions
Screen Size
Speed
Memory
Keyboard
Battery Charge
GPS, CPU tick, memory refresh, display
How Mobile Differs: Limitations

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Criteria for comparison
Smartphones
Social Network / Enterprise Clients
Standard skillset
US market
iPhone / Android / Blackberry
Cool factor

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Cross-platform Apps
Native Apps
Cross-compiled Native Apps
Packaged native browser control based
Hand-crafted browser control based
Web application

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Dev Env Distribution Strengths Weaknesses
iPhone Mac/Objective C AppStore, iTunes Uniform experience
Tight Control, learning
curve, need a Mac
Android Any/Java
Android Market,
Web
Open, Multi-vendor
Non-uniform
experience, Version
incompatibility, Chaos?!
Blackberry Any/Java App Market Enterprise, Security Support
Symbian Any/QT (C++) Ovi store Market reach
Support, C++!, New
platform
Windows
Mobile
Windows/.Net MS Store Microsoft Dev community Very new, closed
Native Apps

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iPhone Development
Mac-only, Objective-C
XCode graphical IDE
iPhone simulator
Interface (UI) builder

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Objective-C
Object-oriented extensions to C
Message passing
Interface (UI) builder
No GC on iPhone
Custom URLs (tel://, sms://)

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Cross-compiled Native Apps
Rhomobile
Titanium by Appcelerator
MoSync

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Titanium
HTML/JS/Ajax
Titanium Developer
iPhone / Android / Blackberry
Demo

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Installing Titanium
Install Java 1.6, Android (1.6-2.2)
Download/install Titanium
Install KitchenSink reference app
Create new project
Test on simulator
Test on device

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Titanium Internals
Converts JS to Symbols
Native compiler
Android: .class, javac
iPhone: .o, gcc
Translates HTML to native view elements
Plugin architecture

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Titanium - Device APIs
 Location
Accelerometer
Contacts
Device Orientation
Camera
Storage

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Titanium - Issues
Complex tool
Keeping pace: iPhone 4.0
Device support
iPhone bias
Doesn’t work as advertised

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Rhomobile
Supports max devices
Native apps, MVC
Controllers in Ruby, byte code
interpreted on device
Views (HTML/CSS)
Views rendered in embedded browser
Some UI elements (Tabs/Menu) native

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Rhomobile Architecture

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MoSync
Build toolkit with SDK,
Most platforms (Blackberry WIP)
C/C++ (Eclipse)
Device specific run times

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Packaged (native browser control)
Phonegap
Rhomobile UI

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PhoneGap
HTML/JS/Ajax
Eclipse Based dev env
Device specific libraries
Javascript extensions
Demo

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PhoneGap Internals
iPhone App Flow
Javascript queue/marshalling
UIWebView integration
Extending PhoneGap

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Mobile Web Applications
HTML5!
Mobile Safari
jQTouch
Storage
localStorage, sessionStorage, sql database

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To Conclude
Native Apps
PhoneGap
Web Applications