I just tried the new Phonegap online service, and it’s pretty impressive. I already had a mobile html website handy, so all I had to do was upload it as a zip file. Within minutes, I was running it on my Android phone. It had also built iPhone, Android, WebOS, and Symbian apps. It would have completed one for Blackberry too but it found some compatibility errors which it kindly pointed out to me.
Here are screenshots:
The Nerdiacs report great success using Marmalade to port games to Android and iPhone. They say:
“When we started development on our first title, the first thing as usual was to find our needs and select an engine in accordance to them. After considerable debate, we knew what we really needed was a cross-platform engine for mobile phones which should have solid 3D apis and support as many platforms as possible. This hunt coupled with our naivety as it was our first title, led to us the EdgeLib Engine. Our experiences with it was scarring to say the least, but definitely a huge learning experience which we will leave at that for a post in the future. This made us hunt for a new stronger solution, that we can call our base, our motherland, and that is exactly what we found with Airplay SDK now called Marmalade.”
Marmalade’s strength is in taking iOS games to Android. They allow the use of full-featured C++ and support both Microsoft Visual C++ and Mac XCode.
Marmalade is fully owned by Ideaworks3D Limited. Learn more on their website.
During 2010 we heard a lot about HTML5 and its possibilities and capabilities. The new updated version of the web standard HTML was at the spotlight and everyone was pretty interested in learning more about its features and techniques. HTML5 has lots of new and interesting tags that allow you to easily incorporate videos, use drag and drop and do hundreds of cool effects and interactions. Here we will show a list with 20 examples of websites using HTML5 and their developers. Almost all examples are developers/designers pages, what show us that several professionals are already adepts of this new trend.
We also checked how are the websites reacting in mobile versions, we tested the iPhone and Android (G1) environment. The Android was tested via emulator, so maybe some results are not 100% accurate.
Beautiful background image and hover effects.
Designer/developer: Cameron Moll.
iPhone performance: everything looks good, the video from the header was removed at the mobile version.
Android performance: everything looking good, even the video.
Simple and elegant layout with nice hover effects.
iPhone performance: text look good and centralized but the background looks a bit out of place.
Android performance: everything ok
Super clean and beautiful layout.
Designer/developer: Jeroen Homan.
iPhone performance: main content and images are ok, footer is not loading properly.
Android performance: everything looking good.
Nice image transitions and subtle menu hover effects.
Designer/developer: Keyzo IT Solutions.
iPhone performance: works fine but could make more use of media queries instead of loading a static version to adjust the screen size.
Android performance: looks good.
Clean and minimal layout with beautiful hover effects.
Designer/developer: Rui Mollar.
iPhone performance: also looks good but loads in the static size of the screen.
Android performance: ok
Subtle shadow when hovering menus and a nice image showcase and transitions.
Designer/developer: Superhug.
iPhone performance: looks good and works fine.
Android performance: looks fine.
Nice effect on header’s menu and framed links with hover effects.
Designer/developer: Ricardo Saavedra.
iPhone performance: looks good, also adjusted to fit the screen.
Android performance: everything working.
Designer/developer: Yellowhammer Creative.
iPhone performance: perfect!
Android performance: also perfect!
Nice header and search box fade effect. Also nice text shadows.
Designer/developer: TheFella.
iPhone performance: great!
Android performance: also great!
Great colors, design, navigation, images disposition and simplicity.
Designer/developer: Cazinc Web Development.
iPhone performance: perfect!
Android performance: yeah, perfect here too!
Beautiful header background images and hover effect on menus.
Designer/developer: Planetperki.
iPhone performance: looks and works good, even the background transitions.
Android performance: also good.
Really nice and smooth image transitions and hover effects.
Designer/developer: Planetperki.
iPhone performance: looks and works good, even the background transitions.
Android performance: same here.
Nice single page layout with vertical slider navigation, cool hover effects and images disposition.
Designer/developer: Michael Acevedo.
iPhone performance: perfect!
Android performance: also perfect!
Awesome user interaction at navigation. Attention to details and beautiful interface.
Designer/developer: Nerd Communications.
iPhone performance: great!
Android performance: not working at all, probably because it’s an iPhone / iPod Touch app. 
Really nice transitions and background effects.
Designer/developer: Julien Etienne.
iPhone performance: not loading properly, broken background and text.
Android performance: apparently everything works fine.
Single page design with nice vertical slider navigation and effects. Good user interaction.
Designer/developer: Vision 18.
iPhone performance: perfect!
Android performance: also perfect!
All HTML5 game.
Designer/developer: Michiel Van den Anker.
iPhone performance: not working.
Android performance: not working.
Really nice shadow effects and image/information boxes.
Designer/developer: ZingChart.
iPhone performance: works good, the only effect missing is the shadows, everything else is ok.
Android performance: works fine.
Another HTML5 game.
Designer/developer: Kate.
iPhone performance: not working.
Android performance: not working.
Clean and elegant layout where we hover around to check browser readiness for HTML5 & CSS3 features. Really nice interaction and effects.
Designer/developer: Paul Irish and Divya Manian.
iPhone performance: not working. The site loads broken and you can’t navigate it properly.
Android performance: looks good but doesn’t have the same interaction and effects.
Want to know what’s required to build an iPhone native app? A quick and easy way to learn is to open up an existing iPhone app.
It’s actually quite easy, you don’t need any fancy developer tools or technical skills. You just follow these instructions from AppStorm.
This technique is helpful for figuring out what’s inside an app that was created through native app-building software like Appmakr or Titanium.
For example, here’s a peak inside the file directory of an Appmakr app I made:
Story via ReadWriteWeb.
Independent game developer SemisecretSoftware has just released the iOS framework that they used internally for building their hit games. It’s released under the MIT license, so it’s wide open for any developer to use.
Read the announcement here.
Here is the source code and the website for Flixel, the Flash game framework that they ported to iOS to build Canabalt.
Apple is getting into the game of mobile toolkits with their release of iAd Producer. Now, anyone creating an iAd can use common web development language of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The builder lots of tricks for building cool Apple-like interfaces including templates, CoverFlow and Carousel views, maps, image galleries, animations, movies, and SVG fonts. It even has its own javascript text editor, so you can dump TextMate or whatever else you use.
As would be expected from Apple, the software is clean and intuitive on the Mac. The question is what’s stopping Apple from releasing an app-building version of this software so that any web developer can build an iPhone or iPad app without ObjectiveC.
If you have an iOS developer account, you can download the software for free.
Sencha Touch is a mobile web frameworks to create a web-based mobile app. It’s widely used by developers who want a web app that has the same UI as a native app, but actually runs in the browser.
You can use Sencha Touch inside the PhoneGap framework to create a native app distributed through the app stores. The PhoneGap wrapper will make it appear like a native app but none of your underlying code will be changed into native code, your code will run within an embedded ‘web view’ browser within the app.
Sencha is free to use under an open source license, as long as the code you write is also available under the same license. If not, you have to buy a commercial license. Sencha also has paid packages of support available.
Pros:
Develop using web technologies.
Create a native-looking user interace.
Runs equally well in the browser or embedded in a web-view component of a native app.
Cons:
It is not a native app and can’t access native APIs. It requires another tool like PhoneGap or Titanium to become a native app.
If you want to build proprietary source code on top of Sencha, you’ll have to buy a commercial license.
Developer program using the proprietary UnrealScript programming language which is object-oriented and related to Java.
If you are a celebrity and you want to build a mobile app, we recommend MobileRoadie. We also recommend it for anyone seeking a slick but simple app that runs on iPhone and Android.
Mobile Roadie is a self service mobile app platform. With a number of celebrity clients and a focus on the music industry, Mobile Roadie has seen some big successes. They currently support iPhone and Android. While expensive with a setup fee and monthly subscription, MobileRoadie has a well-designed interface and solid list of reference apps.
Sample:
Taylor Swift (Apple Android)
Having acquired the knowledge assets and customers of three competitors (Vettro, Dexterra, and Vaultus) Antenna has established itself as key player in the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) market. Catering to large, global enterprises, Antenna will transform any business processes by extending the access to enterprise systems to high powered smartphones for service technicians and other mobile employees.
Google experts talk about the process of developing Android handsets.Watch the video.
Looking forward to seeing how this works. From their
Read moreThis is pretty neat. Use an online dashboard to create a nice looking mobile theme, and export the css.
Read moreI just tried the new Phonegap online service, and it's pretty impressive....
Read moreTop 20 HTML5 sites: http://goodscreens.com/2011/02/20-html5-sites-to-inspire-you/
Comscore released their report on the 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review. Lots of good metrics on the mobile...
Apple is getting into the game of html5-based mobile toolkits with their release of iAd Producer.
EasleJS just announced a new Javascript library for building HTML5 games or apps.
© 2011 Good Screens / TIR LLC
