This is kind of a dumb question but I've aware of classic style JDE development for Blackberry but I've never tried using WebWorks. BB website says that it's possible to build applications for both smartphones (OS 6.0+) and tablets - sounds fantastic, but what's the price?
Is here anyone using WebWorks on a daily basis and capable of describing pros and cons?
Thanks in advance
I would suggest using it if you build webOS applications before hand. It make porting to the blackberry a breeze.
Use WebWorks if you know html5, Css3 and javascript over Java and C++.
I haven't ran into any issues with the webWorks, ported two applications without running into any issues. Its your standard html5, css3 and javascript you love with blackberry APIs
WebWorks is a good development choice, particularly as it allows easy migration from earlier BB OSes to BB10. It's mostly standard web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, etc.) and the team seems focused on making it perform well (e.g. hardware accelerated WebGL graphics) while at the same time providing BlackBerry-specific APIs to make WebWork apps capable and with good UX (e.g. you can make it look like a native app).
For native apps, you should look into Cascades. This is a modern development environment with good tooling, accelerated graphics, and APIs for building snazzy apps. It's the one that will most be a "BlackBerry app".
AIR remains an option, but I would recommend WebWorks over AIR, as even Adobe is migrating from Flash to web technologies. Likewise, you can develop Android apps on BB10, but unless you are keen on Java programming, you will get more cross-platform support from WebWorks (or even AIR) so there's no particular reason to go the Android route.
WebWorks API is limited, for example it does not have socket, so you cannot port a VNC (UltaVNC, tightVNC ..) to it but you can do it with JDE.
For UI, WebWorks allowed me to write UI of acceptable quality quickly and easily, a thing that I have never succeeded with JDE.
Still on the UI side, I can make use of multi-touch (PlayBook), I don't think this one is possible with JDE.
So depending on your needs you should go either WebWorks or Native, having heard that Java may not be supported in BB10, and Air may not be future proof (Adobe favors HTML5 instead of Flash). Android appli has some lag on start up when it is run on PlayBook, some customers are sensitive to the initial even just one time slow response time.
I'm a huge proponent of Webworks. Ever since I've started using it, it quickly became the default option for my apps going forward. Especially for someone like me who is just writing a few apps on the side, I don't have the time to do it in c++.
The apps I'm writing revolve around home automation. They are client/server based from the get go.
Here's why I like it:
First and foremost, native API support. I can very easily create my own active frames, import invocation from other apps (think camera, stuff like that). I can export portions of my webworks app as an invocation card! Which means I can write say 3 unique apps (in this case home automation, lights, thermostat, security cameras). And I can very easily pull features from each app into the other. Maybe I want to turn my lights on in the living room, I can also import the camera card from my IPcam app and view the results, without having to add that code into my lights app and maintain two separate code lines.
Rapid design. Since I've been dabbling in html since I was a kid, it's now very easy for me to whip up an appealing UI in little time. Because web engines these days offer good performance in terms of graphics capability, I also can make apps that behave very fluid.
Considering the time to make something beautiful, it's hard for me to leave webworks and go for something in c++. Also the big plus is often these apps I'm making are intended for multiple devices, namely an app on my phone and being hosted on my personal website. By maintaining two slightly different css files, most of the time I need no code changes, just load a different css depending on if it's a phone or a pc. (Exactly what you'd do if you were developing a regular old website).
For that matter, I actually don't put my code on the device, I host all of my html and javascript, images etc on my server. The webworks app is just the config.xml pointing it's source to my server, and an icon. A glorified website bookmark on the homescreen, only difference is I can use native API and there's no browser bar in the app.
Also, this way I can still continue to edit the same single codeline on my server, and instantly apply changes to the in-browser app and the on-device app.
This is especially cool if you're designing an app where all of it's data is out in the "cloud", say you work for a publication and you want to write a magazine app which pulls content from your servers on the net.
Related
I am new to mobile programming, and I want to build a mobile app to fill few forms, offline, and then sync them later, when internet access is available, with a database on an online server through a VPN connection.
At first, I thought about learning Windows8 Phone App development, but then I heard/read about Phonegap and Jquery Mobile! and I am a bit confused which one would be better to use, considering two things:
1- Which one you think would be good for my app's functionality
2- Which tool would be more beneficial on the long run (in the mobile programming world).
Any advice would be very much appreciated.
With these functionality I don't thing you don't need many mobile dependent features rather you need more web features. For your first question, answer could be that technology in which you are more comfortable. But it also depends how you want to sync your data. In background or when the app is open. If you want to sync data in background that means app is closed, you have some data to send in server, and internet access is there, then you'll need some native windows phone code. In that case if you use phonegap ultimately you will need some native code to deal with it, may be you'll need to write a plugin to communicate between phonegap and native code. And if you don't need background process, if you want to send data to server only when your app is opened,phonegap can work like a charm. It'll be easy to communicate between 2 web technology.
For your second question, ofcourse phonegap is great technology to learn to deal with cross platform. If you need to make apps not only for WP rather for all platforms then phonegap is great. Having said that it's necessary to mention phonegap has it's quirks too. Native code always has it's benefit. Phonegap can't completely overcome native code. But if you are willing to compromise a bit, then it's easy to learn phonegap,a familiar tech than all those platform dependent techs like objective-c, android etc.
(N.B. I'm not an expert, it's just my experience so far)
Is there a framework that will allow to create web apps for iOS that will run as smoothly as native app?
I've checked demos of Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch on my iPad there's visible delay for touch events and for how precisely they are recognized. The feeling isn't the same as for native apps.
Is there other frameworks or technics that will allow to provide same experience as native apps?
It depends on your app. If your app is a hard-core heavy-duty 3D game, then no. If your app is primarily displaying static content ... like a web page or collection of photos, you might get close enough.
Think about what experience you want to achieve first. If you want a cross platform application and you want to avoid the stores (App Store, Google Play, BB App World), then by all means, consider a web app.
Other things to consider, how much data do you estimate the user will need store locally (HTML apps are more limited in this respect); how much functionality is lost when there is no network connection, and does this loss of functionality make the app unusable.
Like the answer by #RichardTurner, if you need the kind of performance you find in the higher end games (Infinity Blade or Modern Combat 3), then native is the way to go.
Figure what you want, then you will have better idea of what technology to use.
NO. Native apps will perform better every single time over web apps. If you want a smooth experience, go native. Also consider that some people have older model iOS devices and performance will be even more difficult to achieve on those devices in web apps.
Here are a few things to consider with a Sencha app vs a native application.
You were browsing a Sencha Touch application online and chances are it wasn't a "packaged" version so you would have to download each source file individually.
With Sencha, you can utilize Sencha CMD to package an application which essentially builds a single minified js file containing only the required components from the Sencha library and your application (smaller DOM). You can also look into a production version which takes advantage of appcache. You'll see some performance increases here.
A packaged native Touch application will contain the actual JS, CSS, etc. files as part of the applications source, so their is no downloading from external resources.
You have to consider that any HTML5 application is going to have a ~300ms touch delay, more on that here: http://updates.html5rocks.com/2013/12/300ms-tap-delay-gone-away
What i wanted to know is if i develop a single metro style app using html5 and javascript can d same app be used for iphone and ipad as well?
Can anybody help me out with this?
I believe you can create an app with pure JavaScript+HTML5+CSS3 which should work cross-platforms (to the degree of web standards support in browsers). You would need to package the app differently for different platforms or just host it like a website, but it should work. The problem is - usually when you develop Metro style apps for Windows 8 - you use WinJS APIs or general WinRT APIs to interface with the OS, which would not work cross-plaforms, so it really depends on how complicated your app is, how much effort you want to put in the development and is it really the right choice to have it look the same on all platforms. A Metro-style app could look a bit out of place on iOS or Android devices and vice-versa (although you could argue Metro style looks great everywhere and should be the easiest to port), while if you try to create something that works everywhere - you might end up with something as ugly as desktop Java apps were historically. Doing a shared cross-platform design might be counterproductive and countereffective.
I have been hearing of the advent of html5 for iOS development. I know nothing about web dev technologies and am wondering, can this really be used for iOS game development? Just hearing html makes me think this will be used for web related apps, not things like graphically dynamic 2d games, but being unfamiliar, I'm hoping to get some insight from the experts here. Is html5 going to be useful at all for games, or should I basically expect to be sticking with the likes of cocos2d for iphone?
The short answer is "Yes, you can develop full speed, interactive games with HTML5". Check out "Private Joe", "Biolab Disaster" and "FUBAR" in the Apple app store. All were created with HTML5, Javascript, and a few javascript libraries (ImpactJS and Box2D).
One thing you'll see as you explore this is the repeated caveat that "web games aren't fast enough", also "Web games can't use the device's goodies - like GPS, vibration, etc."
These statements represent "common thought" and are not really true anymore. Companies like PhoneGap and appMobi have tools that make it possible to do anything in HTML/JS that can be done in native apps. Browsers keep getting faster, and smartphone processors also keep getting faster. Qualcomm's new chipset even has GPU acceleration for future smartphones.
As an added bonus from coding your app in HTML5, you will have the choice of whether to compile it app into a native app and post to one of the app stores (using appmobi or phonegap), or to offer it yourself as a web app (saving the Apple censorship and 30% tax).
Viva HTML5!
The real benefit to using HTML 5 for game development is that it's a write once, deploy everywhere strategy, meaning you can write the same code and have it work on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc, as long as it has a browser.
The HTML5 canvas element supports both 2d and 3d (on some platforms), so you can use it for complex games as well.
This will, however, run in a browser, so the only way to sell it in an app store is to wrap it in a UIWebView container or the like.
Also, there are games written in Canvas (just google it, also google 'chrome experiments' to find cool 3d stuff in HTML5).
I wrote this HTML5 Tetris implementation: http://htmltetris.com
It is designed to be equally playable on a PC and on touch devices supporting Javascript touch events.
One of the important things to get right in a mobile game is the control scheme and it took some thinking to come up with the swipe/tap control scheme used for Tetris here. But it turns out quite playable (in fact, just as playable if not more so than all of the tetris like iOS apps I have tried, and there are... quite a few of them) and is proof that it is possible to build a perfectly playable game with HTML5 technology.
Check out HTML5 Canvas. Lots of Web games are based on this tag. Here are some samples :- http://www.canvasdemos.com/type/games/
There are two great things about investing your time in learning HTML5 and its counterparts:
For one, every application that you write will theoretically be able to run on many platforms. iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc, all have HTML5 capabilities. You'll also be investing your time in a language that is still being developed, so you'll already know the ins-and-outs of it as more features are added, and you'll have mastered it when the final product finally goes mainstream.
The capabilities and power of HTML5 are only expanding, so the experience with the language should only improve with time ;)
I'd like my Blackberry devices to get and possibly set data to the server, and am a little confused by all the options:
RIM-Push/Pap-Push. Use any library that is able to compose a HTTP GET request to the MDS-CS service (not MDS-IS). This is a one way operation from the server to the device.
RIM-Push (Push a URL and or shorcut to a device for possible offline viewing)
PAP-Push (Same as above, BUT allows for message confirmation of delivery)
WebServices: Use Visual Studio 2008 to create a Web Services only project. I'm unclear if this is supported anymore, or if MDS-IS is used. This is a 2 way operation.
MDS-IS: Use Eclipse to develop the applications and Java is required, I am unsure of what client libraries are able to do (2 way operation).
Let me know if missing any option, or if I need to revise my understanding of the basics
This is actually quite a broad question - there are a lot of ways for a BlackBerry device to interact with a server, and the ideal way depends heavily on your specific application.
Generally:
MDS Studio: the Visual Studio 2008 method is no longer actively supported. It was a mostly visual forms designer, but not a great solution for a lot of reasons. Basically, don't use it.
Mobile Web: Depending on what you need to do, this might work. Everything server side. The thing to be aware of (and why this doesn't work for a lot of problems) is that prior to BlackBerry 6 the browser wasn't very capable, either in terms of HTML support or JavaScript support. You can, however, create shortcuts to mobile web sites which appear as icons on the BlackBerry homescreen. And you can use BlackBerry Web Signals: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/websignals.jsp to push changes to mobile web pages to devices
Widgets: Supported in BlackBerry OS 5 and higher. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/widgetsdk.jsp These are packaged much like 'native' BlackBerry apps, but written using HTML and JavaScript. Can be a good option for rapid development if you're ok with just targeting OS 5, and with the limitations of the BlackBerry Browser. Lots of JavaScript hooks to system functions, so they give you more functionality than pure mobile web, and you can distribute them through App World and the like.
Java Apps: Most development work, but you get potentially the best user experience, and the most functionality. Too broad a topic to cover adequately here, but there are a lot of questions related to these on SO and elsewhere. A good starting point is the BlackBerry developer zone: http://www.blackberry.com/developers RIM Push and PAP Push both fall into this category, as they interact with Java apps, though there are other methods that you can use to achieve similar results (client polling, or I've even seen SMS or email used to push info or wake up a client, though this isn't recommended by RIM).
For a deeper overview of the options I'd recommend a book by my friend John Wargo, called BlackBerry Development Fundamentals. He covers the various options pretty well.