15 Apr, 2010

A mini compendium for mobile website development

Posted by Bhavin Turakhia | (17) Comments

At Directi, we have been toying with some ideas around making some of our web apps mobile friendly. I spent sometime reading and reviewing various online guides on mobile website development. Here are a few of the good resources I found -

10 Dec, 2009

A detailed primer on building cross platform mobile applications

Posted by Bhavin Turakhia | (9) Comments

I finally had a few hours today morning to wrap up my study on comparison of mobile application platforms that allow developing cross-device applications easily using familiar technologies. Here is a quick braindump of all the links and resources I went through -

Rhomobile

• Google TechTalk on Rhodes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pztOky_L0
• http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/
• http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/07/cross-platform-mobile-apps-with-rhomobile/
• http://www.rhohub.com/
• Notes
  • Dual licensed. Though license is cheap – $500
  • Code is written in html and ruby (though a python interpreter would have gotten more smileys from me )
  • interesting approach – uses the native browser component of the cellphone itself to render the html and a web server to host the app – so javascript support will be random based on the phone browser support
  • sqlite support
  • Supports iphone, windows mobile, blackberry, android, Symbisn etc
  • Basically rhodes runs a mini ruby web server and an html rendering engine all in 2.3MB
  • Supports native capabilities like camera, gps, PIM data, SMS etc

Phone gap

• http://phonegap.com/
• Check the video on their site
• Notes
  • Fully open source and free
  • Code written in html+javascript
  • Supports iphone, blackberry and android

Pyxis Mobile

• http://pyxismobile.com/platform/technical-overview/
• Build one configuration and deploy to BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile all at the same time
• Skinning, scripting, localized languages, complex workflow management, push, hotkeys, mapping & LBS, camera support, signature capture, GUI calendar, disambiguation, hotkeys, and much more

Titanium Mobile

• http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile/
• This is an upcoming mobile platform by appcelerator
• I am quite familiar with the company since we already use their Titanium Desktop and have two fulltime contributors to it

Quick Connect

• http://quickconnect.sourceforge.net/

Comparison sites and articles

• http://blog.twinapex.fi/2009/09/30/cross-platform-mobile-application-development-and-payment/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_development
• http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/building-native-mobile-applications-open-source-mobile-platforms-735
• http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/iphone-development-tools-work-way-you-do-309
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10202598-94.html
• http://www.slideshare.net/inouemak/rhodes-and-phone-gap
• http://techboise.com/multi-platform-mobile-development-and-quickconnect

Some others

• http://quickconnect.pbworks.com/
• http://www.mobinex.biz/smartface-platform.html
• http://qt.nokia.com/products/qt-for-mobile-platforms
• http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/