Hi, is this maybe also useful for ZIM - to make ZIM readers which are working cross-platform?
As far as I understood phonegap is mainly a framework to create mobile apps based on HTML 5. At least the display of ZIM contents should be simple then as we just need a HTML widget for that. But what about libraries needed to read file contents, such as zimlib? I couldn't find out if Phonegap itself supports native file access (so we could re-implement ZIM features with that) or if it allows the use of native libraries. /Manuel Am 27.08.2011 02:44, schrieb Tomasz Finc: > Thanks for the super detailed write up Brion. I've been actively > talking with the PhoneGap guys after doing some more research on this > and it seems like a really good fit to have a consistent experience > across a whole host of devices. > > What were looking at is not necessarily a lot of depth in every single > platform but a lot of horizontal range. Phonegap platform support > beats out Titanium pretty easily there. > > We'll be working a lot closer with the PhoneGap team going forward to > quickly have something in the android store to start. > > If anyone is interested in helping then we'll have plenty of > opportunities to join in. Over the next weeks we'll be adding bugs and > sending out more calls to get involved. > > --tomasz > > > > On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Brion Vibber <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Tomasz Finc <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> I've been asking around on IRC but thought it would be good to open up >>> to a larger audience. >>> >>> Has anyone here used PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com/) for mobile >>> app development? I'm eager to get your thoughts and potentially >>> brainstorm some new ideas. >>> >> >> I haven't used PhoneGap except for some brief testing, but I have used >> Titanium Appcelerator, which is another framework in that space, in working >> on StatusNet's iPhone & Android app. >> >> Between the two I'd recommend PhoneGap for our usage as preferable over >> Titanium, but would appreciate more feedback from people who've done fuller >> PhoneGap work. >> >> A few key differences: >> >> PhoneGap models around extending a full-screen web view with additional >> JavaScript-accessible APIs to use device & OS capabilities (camera, address >> book, notifications, etc). This gives you few/no "native widgets" for your >> primary screens, but can make it relatively easy to create an HTML/JS-based >> web application that's extended with native abilities and can be shipped >> into native app stores. >> >> Titanium was originally based on a similar model, but switched to a native >> widget bridging system, where your JavaScript code instantiates and >> manipulates objects which are bridged to native UI components and such. This >> can make your widgets look & feel more native, and can make some UI bits >> faster. But it also makes behavior less consistent between platforms; many >> widgets or features simply aren't available on all platforms, and last I >> checked there was basically *no* working support other than iOS and Android. >> (An early BlackBerry demo came out, was insufficient to do anything we >> needed, and never got updated that we saw.) >> >> Since the Wikipedia app is mostly a webview and ...... maybe a menu? >> PhoneGap is probably a good choice. Titanium can also embed a webview, but >> it's a lot more work to deal with two levels of JS! PhoneGap has much >> broader device support, but be warned -- it'll use the native webview on >> each system, so JS and HTML/CSS support will still vary across platforms. >> >> >> Debugging in PhoneGap basically devolves to being able to debug a web >> application; various tools like http://phonegap.github.com/weinre/ can help >> with this (or if you code carefully you may get away debugging your app in >> your favorite desktop browser directly ;) >> >> >> Titanium was always a bear to debug things in and basically came down to >> 'watch the system log output in Android, that's the only place you'll >> actually see low-level errors'; this may be better now with their IDE >> support. >> >> Titanium also pretty aggressively pushes their support & training services >> which I find offputting; their project build tool wants you to login to >> their 'cloud' stuff to let you hook up to their remote build & analytics >> services, which we didn't ever really use. >> >> Support seemed to center on getting people to take training webinars or >> pointing people at the documentation and examples when they ask how to do >> something; I didn't find them very responsive about platform bugs or missing >> documentation except by contacting their couple of Android developers >> one-on-one in IRC to ask for merges -- which was usually a pretty good >> experience! Getting fixes for iOS merged was very difficult; I could never >> get ahold of their iOS developers directly, and they didn't seem to be any >> more responsive to low-level bugs we filed through their customer support >> system. >> >> We had to build with a patched version of the iOS and Android runtimes for >> quite some time as there were serious bugs. On the plus side, maintaining a >> patched branch in git was very easy -- a lot of 'git pull origin master' and >> occasionally tidying up conflicts. Their source is all on github and is easy >> to fork and not too awful to build, at least for the mobile runtime. >> >> >> Note that both PhoneGap and Titanium frameworks are open source & hosted on >> github, though both require a CLA to submit code upstream. (I have signed >> the Titanium CLA to submit patches to them last year; haven't done for >> PhoneGap yet.) >> >> -- brion >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Regards Manuel Schneider Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge www.wikimedia.ch _______________________________________________ dev-l mailing list [email protected] https://intern.openzim.org/mailman/listinfo/dev-l
