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As someone working on a phonegap project, I'd really advise against committing to this framework for mobile app development. It is good for really quick and dir

As someone working on a phonegap project, I'd really advise against committing to this framework for mobile app development. It is good for really quick and dirty proof of concept things for devices, but for fully fledged mobile apps on iOS and android, there is an enormous gap in terms of performance. In order to get performance at least on par with native, you'd have to sacrifice TONS in terms of user experience. Want gestures? You'll have to look towards things like iScroll and hammer.js, which work "sometimes". Add that to framework issues, and momentum based scrolling that you will have to implement yourself numerous times... Oh boy. Basically, things that come out of the box on native will have to be manually implemented by yourself, and none of these solutions will even come close to native experiences. Add this to the fact that phonegap documentation is all over the place, and all you will get are senseless headaches. Save yourself the frustration of hacking the web into a mobile device and go native all the way. You will thank your self later.

gagege 12y ago
Just spending 5 minutes with PhoneGap was enough to convince me that it isn't ready for professional app development, performance wise. That was 2 years ago and I'd hoped it had improved quite a bit since then.
- nicholasreed 12y ago
  PhoneGap can only do so much, it is mostly just wrapping your HTML/JS/CSS. Finally those languages are starting to get close to what a native app can do (with significantly less development time, perfect for prototyping).
  - rimantas 12y ago
    Native is not about the languages, it is about the frameworks. HTML/JS/CSS are so far away from what native SDKs offer it is not even funny.
- thebokehwokeh2 12y ago
  The thing is, the web will never ever catch up to native. The web is too fragmented, has too many libraries, differing philosophies and paradigms, and is too far removed from the hardware to even compete. You think you'll ever see something like Flipboard built on Phonegap? Pretty unlikely.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    Actually, a pure content app like Flipboard I could easily see being developed on Famous/PhoneGap.
    - argonaut 12y ago
      There's a big argument against doing something like that in PhoneGap. Phonegap/JS does not have (low-overhead, easy to use) multithreading. I can guarantee you that something like Flipboard is loading/marshalling all the content and data in a background queue of some sort. Maybe even doing some background rendering. It bears noting that running background tasks in iOS is extremely easy for developers.
      - nicholasreed 12y ago
        I bet a Flipboard-clone wouldn't be too difficult for a few engineers to bang out in Famo.us. But then again, the value of Flipboard isn't in being a beacon of iOS beauty and functionality, but instead lies in the apps wonderfully-curated content.
        argonaut 12y ago
        If Flipboard had any regular, perceptible lag, no one would use it.
      - pbreit 12y ago
        You don't think that's possible on JavaScript/PhoneGap?
- fenomas 12y ago
  Keep in mind that the performance here is that of mobile WebView components, not PhoneGap particularly. Mainly PG just creates a shell app that creates a WebView and then runs your content in it. So whether your content would perform better today than two years ago is a matter of whether iOS and Android have improved their WebViews[0]. PhoneGap, for its part, has added more platforms and gotten a much improved extension system in the last two years, but nothing I know of that would seriously affect performance. [0] Android WebViews seem to improve steadily, while always lagging a bit behind the real browser. iOS WebViews were crappy for a long time, particularly because Apple kept Nitro for themselves while third-party hybrid apps used a way slower JS engine. But iOS 8 apparently made massive strides here, and WebViews are right on par with mobile Safari (Nitro, WebGL, etc). Or so they say; I haven't tried it out yet.
nicholasreed 12y ago
I'm supposing you didn't look at what Famo.us offers, in terms of gestures and scrolling. I used to have your opinion, then I actually tried famo.us, and realized how simple it made everything. I'm arguing that if myself, as a no-design-talent, been using PG since 0.8 guy can recognize the benefits of switching my workflow to this, it is at least worth a look.
- welder 12y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to write and open-source this!
pbreit 12y ago
It sounds like you are referring specifically to PhoneGap. Have you looked at Famous? It aims to handle the things you mention.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
elwell 12y ago
You haven't tried Sencha Touch 2, eh? At least, I've been pretty happy with it (packaged in PhoneGap afterwards of course).
mooreds 12y ago
The company I used to work for had some success building a phone gap app as a proof of concept (where internal team members could iterate quickly) getting some traction and uptake, and then having it rewritten in native code by a fairly inexpensive offshore team. More here: http://geekestateblog.com/rewriting-internal-hybrid-mobile-app-native-app/ http://geekestateblog.com/rewriting-internal-hybrid-mobile-a...
- nicholasreed 12y ago
  This is the perfect approach to take! While I think the future of Famo.us + Phonegap is super bright, at the moment you're definitely better served using something like this to prototype (while still looking good) and validate, and then potentially go Java/Objc if you need every last drop of performance.

gagege 12y ago

Just spending 5 minutes with PhoneGap was enough to convince me that it isn't ready for professional app development, performance wise. That was 2 years ago and I'd hoped it had improved quite a bit since then.

nicholasreed 12y ago
PhoneGap can only do so much, it is mostly just wrapping your HTML/JS/CSS. Finally those languages are starting to get close to what a native app can do (with significantly less development time, perfect for prototyping).
- rimantas 12y ago
  Native is not about the languages, it is about the frameworks. HTML/JS/CSS are so far away from what native SDKs offer it is not even funny.
thebokehwokeh2 12y ago
The thing is, the web will never ever catch up to native. The web is too fragmented, has too many libraries, differing philosophies and paradigms, and is too far removed from the hardware to even compete. You think you'll ever see something like Flipboard built on Phonegap? Pretty unlikely.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Actually, a pure content app like Flipboard I could easily see being developed on Famous/PhoneGap.
  - argonaut 12y ago
    There's a big argument against doing something like that in PhoneGap. Phonegap/JS does not have (low-overhead, easy to use) multithreading. I can guarantee you that something like Flipboard is loading/marshalling all the content and data in a background queue of some sort. Maybe even doing some background rendering. It bears noting that running background tasks in iOS is extremely easy for developers.
    - nicholasreed 12y ago
      I bet a Flipboard-clone wouldn't be too difficult for a few engineers to bang out in Famo.us. But then again, the value of Flipboard isn't in being a beacon of iOS beauty and functionality, but instead lies in the apps wonderfully-curated content.
      - argonaut 12y ago
        If Flipboard had any regular, perceptible lag, no one would use it.
    - pbreit 12y ago
      You don't think that's possible on JavaScript/PhoneGap?
fenomas 12y ago
Keep in mind that the performance here is that of mobile WebView components, not PhoneGap particularly. Mainly PG just creates a shell app that creates a WebView and then runs your content in it. So whether your content would perform better today than two years ago is a matter of whether iOS and Android have improved their WebViews[0]. PhoneGap, for its part, has added more platforms and gotten a much improved extension system in the last two years, but nothing I know of that would seriously affect performance. [0] Android WebViews seem to improve steadily, while always lagging a bit behind the real browser. iOS WebViews were crappy for a long time, particularly because Apple kept Nitro for themselves while third-party hybrid apps used a way slower JS engine. But iOS 8 apparently made massive strides here, and WebViews are right on par with mobile Safari (Nitro, WebGL, etc). Or so they say; I haven't tried it out yet.

nicholasreed 12y ago

I'm supposing you didn't look at what Famo.us offers, in terms of gestures and scrolling. I used to have your opinion, then I actually tried famo.us, and realized how simple it made everything. I'm arguing that if myself, as a no-design-talent, been using PG since 0.8 guy can recognize the benefits of switching my workflow to this, it is at least worth a look.

welder 12y ago
Thanks for taking the time to write and open-source this!

pbreit 12y ago

It sounds like you are referring specifically to PhoneGap. Have you looked at Famous? It aims to handle the things you mention.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

elwell 12y ago

You haven't tried Sencha Touch 2, eh? At least, I've been pretty happy with it (packaged in PhoneGap afterwards of course).

mooreds 12y ago

The company I used to work for had some success building a phone gap app as a proof of concept (where internal team members could iterate quickly) getting some traction and uptake, and then having it rewritten in native code by a fairly inexpensive offshore team. More here: http://geekestateblog.com/rewriting-internal-hybrid-mobile-app-native-app/ http://geekestateblog.com/rewriting-internal-hybrid-mobile-a...

nicholasreed 12y ago
This is the perfect approach to take! While I think the future of Famo.us + Phonegap is super bright, at the moment you're definitely better served using something like this to prototype (while still looking good) and validate, and then potentially go Java/Objc if you need every last drop of performance.