There are cross-platform mobile application frameworks like Sencha Touch, which creates web apps with native look-and-feel. And frameworks like PhoneGap can pack them into an mobile application. How can I know if an application on Android or iPhone is written in a such way?
Thanks
You can decompile the bundle/APK. For iPhone, see this question. An APK is just a modified JAR/ZIP file. You should find pretty clear signs, such as the PhoneGap JS wrapper libraries, and/or HTML and JavaScript files in general.
On Android, you should find these JavaScript files, likely minified with yuicompressor.
On iPhone, it's this JavaScript.
Related
I've searched some times here but could't find an Answer to this.
Does someone know this and can explain how Ionic handles it?
Does Ionic compile the Code to Native? NO
Ionic is for developing Hybrid apps.
What are Hybrid apps?
Hybrid apps are essentially websites embedded in a mobile app through
what we call a webview. They are developed using HTML5, CSS, and
Javascript, and execute the same code regardless of the platform in
which they run. They can, with tools like PhoneGap and Cordova, use
the native features of a device, like GPS or camera.
What are Native apps?
Native apps are developed in the language required by the platform it
targets, Objective-C or Swift for iOS, Java for Android, etc. The code
written is not shared across platforms and their behavior varies. They
have direct access to all features offered by the platform without any
restriction.
Here is a nice article about it.
Cordova converts the project into a native which has only ONE Page, that is a WebView (WKV WEB View in iOS, etc). And all of the ionic code is run on that webview. Basically an ionic/cordova app is a website which looks like an app!
Can we build an iphone app and convert the application to the android application using phonegap framework?
I have been through various links.
We basically need to develop a webapp for that and that can be converted to an android app or an iphone app respectively.
I am an iphone application developer and i am not at all familiar to android.
Links or example code would be greatly appreciated.
PhoneGap will not enable you to "port" an existing iphone application to Android. However, if you develop an application within the PhoneGap framework (which means using html, css and javascript), you will be able to deploy it on multiple mobile platforms such as iPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry, etc.
The downside is that you will eventually be developing a packaged mobile website - your application consist of html pages, css styling and javascript behaviour/logic, combined whith access to phone internals such as gps, disk, database, camera, etc. It will usually not "feel" fully native on most platforms. For example, you will not be using the system's "native" ListView.
There are javascript libraries such as JQuery-mobile, JQTouch, etc, that make your application look nicer on mobile devices, but it's still not as good as the native experience.
The app you build will not be a native Android or IPhone app but a HTML Web App wrapped in the PhoneGap wrapper and packaged into a native app. So yes you can build for both platforms as long as you build a Web App
Edit -(a Web App is just a plain html/css/javascript + server-side(php, asp etc) website)
I came across this link:
http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596805784/
which seems to suggest web app can be converted to native iphone without writing a single line
of objective-c code. But the book mentioned there is outdated now and things may have changed a lot.
Are there open source software that will allow me to automatically convert my web application to native iphone ( or android) application? By the way my web application is html5 canvas based animation application with lot of html and css as well.
PhoneGap doesn't generate native code for you: it creates an application consisting of a WebView and throws your HTML code on it. From personal exerience I can add that the performance is quite slow, on both iPhone and Android, compared to a native app.
jqTouch creates a nice way to access your web application, but the application remains a web application residing on your site, plus you have to use some jquery for styling.
Apparently the only one that actually does generate native code is Appcelerator Titanium. On RhoMobile I never managed to get to the point to actually write some Ruby code because you have to know all the Ruby in he word just to install it on your Mac.
So the verdict was to sit down and develop the app in objective-c.
Have you looked at PhoneGap?
Simple steps to put your html app into iOS native container, without coding:
Download xCode
Download simple web view app from https://github.com/nomtek/iOSWebViewApp
Open simple web view app within xCode
Add your HTMLs to the project file structure
Run your app and voila :)
This approach is good if you don't need access to any phone specific features, just a standard Web View. Loading time will be short as this approach doesn't load any extra libraries.
i am new developer here, write now i am develop application
using blackberry web/widget (eclipse) and the language i used is phonegap where phonegap support .html, .css, .javascript. so i want to know how my application work? is it
depend on os version or phone model or both?
thanks.
regards,
jamaley.
You develop with phonegap.
This is a framework that let's you create mobile apps with access to phonefunctions by using web standards.
You will need to compile your app for each platform (OS). Seperatly.
Of course you will need to take in mind the different resolutions for each phone.
I recently stumbled into PhoneGap and I love the concept, but I can't get my first try at an Android application working. The documentation skips a few details and the comments are filled with people running into problems.
Does anyone out there have PhoneGap running? What did you tweak for Android?
There are about 3 different frameworks, PhoneGap, QuickConnect, and Rhomobile.
QuickConnect and Rhomobile have better documents at least for Android support.
I used PhoneGap for a little bit then switched to QuickConnect and Rhomobile.
how i setup phonegap was,
boot with Linux liveCD, go to the folder of phonegap, and run the makefile. it will generate javascript files. copy the phonegap.js to the assets, boot with windows again and include the phonegap javascript file in your main html.