Mobile Development Platforms -- Write Once for Many Devices
Frank Powell
once, deploy to any device” will become a strong request from the
customers & employers of mobile developers.
Four companies that have claimed to support this with proprietary
development platforms are Antenna, Dexterra, Sybase and Spring
Wireless. (I should have mentioned that these are middleware
providers.)
Another member of our group also mentioned that PhoneGap also has a
platform.
The addition of middleware with backend processing can be a pain, but
should be less painful than custom development for multiple devices.
It will be interesting to see if/how feature limitations are
addressed, and whether we'll need to be aware of the "least common
denominator" for the group of devices being supported through each
specific development project.
Below are two articles that touch on this subject:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/smart_phones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216400353
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/05/03/223610/mobile-applications-get-development-boost.htm
Please post if you have experience with any such tools.
Dan Grigsby
It was one of the applications that taught me how to program for the
iPhone. In fact, as it happens, I am literally at this very moment
writing a tutorial based on connecting UIWebKit HTML UI with the
address book.
That said, in iPhone-land consumers want a native look-and-feel. I
think this limits the applications that'll succeed with this approach
to corporate/enterprise applications where it is deemed that people
will use the app, not in a place where users pick their own apps.
Mobile Orchard
Top-ranked iPhone Developer News Site and Podcast
http://www.mobileorchard.com
nickbauman
have become more important precisely because of the kind of native,
bespoke applications and APIs that Apple pioneered with the iPhone. We
probably wouldn't be in this group if that weren't true. And this is
not about "prettiness", it's about User Experience. Small, sharp tools
(a revival of "the Unix way") are loved on mobile. Compromise on the
experience, component cohesion, responsiveness or intuitiveness and I
will uninstall your app. I do it all the time. It's that simple.
(Unless, like Dan said, I'm forced to run your app because my company
says I have to.)
>
> >http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/05/03/223610/mobile-appli...
Justin Grammens
One thing though that I do find interesting is that Java has promised the write once run anywhere platform on the desktop for more than a decade and you find VERY few Java client applications. They just don't work well. Is there any reason to think that mobile devices as they mature will be any different on the desktop with the promise of write on run anywhere will fade like Java on the desktop did?
Bill Turner
IMHO, I don’t believe there will ever be a quality wora (write once run anywhere). One obvious exception is the desktop wora app Intellij IDEA. It is pretty decent. There must be others. But, I digress. The best you’ll probably get are tools that will allow you to write for a few platforms. Here, I am thinking of a language that can be compiled to more than one given target. I believe Joel of Joel On Software fame spoke of something like this. I realize, too, I am not being very articulate. Such a tool may just spit out another high level language that is used on other platforms, and then could be customized. Sure, the problem will be feature and/or behavior differences. But, it will mean that the applications can take advantage of all the native look & feel features of the given platform. Of course, a built in diff engine would be of tantamount importance. If my vision is accurate, a tool like this would likely only support two platforms, three at most. There might end up being a few competitors who build these and they would target different platform sets. So, if you developing more traditional business apps, you’d likely have RIM as the main target, with Symbian, perhaps, as a secondary target. Apps of a more animated nature might target the iPhone and Android, for example.
My two cents.
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Justin Grammens
Justin
IMHO, I don’t believe there will ever be a quality wora (write once run anywhere). One obvious exception is the desktop wora app Intellij IDEA. It is pretty decent. There must be others. But, I digress. The best you’ll probably get are tools that will allow you to write for a few platforms. Here, I am thinking of a language that can be compiled to more than one given target. I believe Joel of Joel On Software fame spoke of something like this. I realize, too, I am not being very articulate. Such a tool may just spit out another high level language that is used on other platforms, and then could be customized. Sure, the problem will be feature and/or behavior differences. But, it will mean that the applications can take advantage of all the native look & feel features of the given platform. Of course, a built in diff engine would be of tantamount importance. If my vision is accurate, a tool like this would likely only support two platforms, three at most. There might end up being a few competitors who build these and they would target different platform sets. So, if you developing more traditional business apps, you’d likely have RIM as the main target, with Symbian, perhaps, as a secondary target. Apps of a more animated nature might target the iPhone and Android, for example.
My two cents.
From: mobile-tw...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mobile-tw...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Justin Grammens
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 9:49 AM
To: mobile-tw...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Mobile Development Platforms -- Write Once for Many Devices
Good discussion around this subject of native vs web based toolkit apps. It's on the agenda to have an open debate on this very subject at the next MobileTC meeting. As most software engineers would probably agree, the idea of write once and run anywhere is very appealing. On one side you have economics and productivity of not having to deal with different languages/toolkits, etc. On the other side, you have the potential to lose some of the native feel of the application. I'm just now starting a very simple app using the rhodes framework. The functionality of the app is very basic that lends itself to this type of an app. As with all things, you have to use the tool where it fits best.
Justin Grammens
http://mobile-twin-cities.googlegroups.com/web/mobile_operating_system_debate.pdf?gda=9QVvEVQAAACaF5o6wZq-TrVn-lftb_m02pp5jH_ls9IAvWMF7QexEbaj5rRxPjQgn9cmqfazlO16SVfhyGuAmTRJE0YAGMFrVervUohE3YNENn3wMh1Pnc3OAWZC50hVl-fZ6-QcRqg
Justin
Bill Turner
Not mentioning Windows Mobile was oversight and exposes my biases (though I run Windows on all my computers, being unconvinced of the wisdom of moving to Apple, though Android is a maybe). Yes, my main point is that the phone producers themselves will likely target either one of two sectors and that OSes will align accordingly. The one that I am most interested in watching is the Android. Being open, it may just find easily cut across all sectors.
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