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Ask HN: What are people experiences with cross platform mobile development.

4 points by nickik 13y ago

So its all in the question. What frameworks have you worked with, what worked what didn't. Should it be done? Is it a overall win or does it constrain you to much?

strick 13y ago
I used appcelerator titanium to build iOS and Android versions of an app, primarily using javascript. It worked pretty well, although you still have to code for some platform differences. I prefer this approach to working with Java. I have coded some in java and would like to have those hours of my life back, thanks. Appcelerator the company has not been great to work with. I paid $50/mo for an individual account, they did away with that plan and made it free, but kept charging me the $50 every month. There was no web interface to downgrade. I had to contact them multiple times to fix this. This might be due to growth and being stretched thin as opposed to maliciousness, but it left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. The app has been downloaded thousands of times and has good reviews so I think it gets the job done. I built it for a gov entity, so contact me via my profile if you want to know more about it.
dave_sid 13y ago
I've just begun coding with Titanium to create an iOS app, and so far so good. The fact it uses JavaScript, meant I could get an app working incredible quickly. Even, if you are only developing for iOS or Android, I think that Titanium would help you a lot if your Java or Objective C knowledge is minimal (like me). It depends what you're comfortable with I guess. I'd second the point that Titanium isn't 100% write-once, run-anywhere. You'll certainly get a lot of reuse between your app for iOS and Android if using Titianium, but you'll have to tweak your code for each platform. I'm still a big fan however. I tried writing an app using JQuery Mobile, with plans to deploy within Phonegap. To be honest, the performance just isn't good enough. Since Titanium builds the app using native components, then it's so much more slick. I do love JQuery Mobile still however, and will definitely keep what I have for the actual Mobile Web UI. NB. Titanium also seems to compile to a Mobile web version, but I couldn't get that working. I might look into that more in future.

4 points by nickik 13y ago

So its all in the question. What frameworks have you worked with, what worked what didn't. Should it be done? Is it a overall win or does it constrain you to much?

strick 13y ago

I used appcelerator titanium to build iOS and Android versions of an app, primarily using javascript. It worked pretty well, although you still have to code for some platform differences. I prefer this approach to working with Java. I have coded some in java and would like to have those hours of my life back, thanks. Appcelerator the company has not been great to work with. I paid $50/mo for an individual account, they did away with that plan and made it free, but kept charging me the $50 every month. There was no web interface to downgrade. I had to contact them multiple times to fix this. This might be due to growth and being stretched thin as opposed to maliciousness, but it left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. The app has been downloaded thousands of times and has good reviews so I think it gets the job done. I built it for a gov entity, so contact me via my profile if you want to know more about it.

dave_sid 13y ago

I've just begun coding with Titanium to create an iOS app, and so far so good. The fact it uses JavaScript, meant I could get an app working incredible quickly. Even, if you are only developing for iOS or Android, I think that Titanium would help you a lot if your Java or Objective C knowledge is minimal (like me). It depends what you're comfortable with I guess. I'd second the point that Titanium isn't 100% write-once, run-anywhere. You'll certainly get a lot of reuse between your app for iOS and Android if using Titianium, but you'll have to tweak your code for each platform. I'm still a big fan however. I tried writing an app using JQuery Mobile, with plans to deploy within Phonegap. To be honest, the performance just isn't good enough. Since Titanium builds the app using native components, then it's so much more slick. I do love JQuery Mobile still however, and will definitely keep what I have for the actual Mobile Web UI. NB. Titanium also seems to compile to a Mobile web version, but I couldn't get that working. I might look into that more in future.