I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement Sproutcore into my webpage for the simple task of being able to scroll DIV's on an iPhone or iPad with one finger instead of two.
Or is there an easier way?
Thank you in advance!
Pulling in SproutCore for just this purpose would be unwise, especially for a mobile app, as it would include far too much weight for very little added functionality for your app.
If you just want to have an iOS scroll view, there are other much lighter libraries for just this. A quick search (for "iOS html scroll view javascript") reveals:
http://code.google.com/mobile/articles/webapp_fixed_ui.html (how google does it)
SproutCore is a complete web application framework; incorporating it into an existing design for the purpose of getting touch scrolling functionality is probably more tool than you need. I'd look at JS libraries which are just interaction libraries, not application frameworks.
Related
I am looking for tools that I can attach to the app that would allow me to test the user interface. I was thinking about something like a click map to see where users are touching in the application, or any other visual tools that help improving the touch and feel of the app. I am not referring to analytics like Flurry or Localytics. I am looking for something more like crazyegg.com but for iphone apps.
I am using heatma.ps in my apps. It lets you test where people touch in you application, which buttons are used more then other. It's pretty good about showing you what gestures users make on your application screen, like if they are trying to scroll down.
You would be surprised how people use your interface. I know I was shocked the first time I found that people don't see the help button that I spend hours to implement with help snippets. Oh well, people are different :-)
I wanted to make my own WebApp for testing so I will know what to do when I've got some serious stuff to do. I found some info about using HTML, CSS and Javascript to make the web app look like real iOS but one thing that bugs my mind is hot to make the textfield look like the one iOS uses or at least similar to that and how to make it across the whole screen (width) but with some margins on the left and right... well so it looks nice and naturally.
I appreciate every single answer.
One option you could try is checking out Appcelerator Titanium which let's you develop iPhone/iPad/Android (and even Mac/PC) applications using just HTML/CSS/JavaScript. It allows you to utilize the native UI elements, including forms, lists, buttons, etc...
If you're thinking of developing mobile apps, this is a pretty cool tool to use (especially if you're not a Object-C wizz).
One example of a tool that uses Titanium is WunderList to-do application.
I'd use jquerymobile or sencha touch... depending on whether you're familiar with ExtJS or not. That way you can focus on adding in your content, not messing around with CSS forever to try and simulate something you'll replace with iOS eventually anyway.
http://jquerymobile.com/
http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/touch/examples/kitchensink/
You can do so using the -webkit-border-image CSS property. Even if you're using some kind of framework that does all that stuff for you, it's always nice to know how it's achieved under the hood, as it's always re-applicable somewhere else.
Ref: http://css-infos.net/property/-webkit-border-image
I want to start developing IPhone application.
I need to understand something about it - I am working with a graphic designer.
If she supplies the GUI in HTML - will it be easy for me to develop with it?
How does it work? like regular web development?
Apple uses Objective C and Cocoa for iPhone applications. Neither uses HTML; you'll instead be using interactive controls like you'd find in a desktop application. Whether it's easy for you to develop using an HTML mockup will depend entirely on your skills with Cocoa. (In the same way I encourage designers to give me mockups in Photoshop knowing that I can easily build HTML versions of them.)
You might want to start with some of Apple's documentation on iPhone development: http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action
For GUI development of your own apps you have several options:
Code: UIKit framework in Objective-C
Interface Builder: Tool to click
your GUI together, but the logic
will be coded like in 1 in C, Obj-C
or C++
You can build a HTML gui and
present it in a web view, but for
native apps, this will only bring
you so far.
Oh, and no native Flash on iOS. :-)
You could write an app that uses HTML for its UI - in essence you'd simply be wrapping a webkit widget and driving your app from events generated by that UI. However, that's not going to give you a UI that really takes advantage of the phone.
For that, you need to get down and dirty with Objective C and the Cocoa Touch API for iOS. Another option is using Flash CS5, which is ActionScript based.
Strictly speaking, the answer is no, your HTML skills are not transferrable.
That said, there are two projects that deserve looking into, both of which are about producing native (or "native-ish") apps from HTML and JavaScript. The first is PhoneGap, and the second (which I think is more robust and promising) is called Appcellerator.
Neither of them give you really-and-truly full access to to the iPhone API, but they do allow a significant flattening of the learning curve for people who already have well developed web app skillz.
If you go the native route, bear this in mind: it took me about a month to go from being a web developer to being a slightly competent iOS developer, and six months or so to feel solid and reliable and productive with iOS.
We have a push based web-application. Recently, we planned to make an iPhone app for it. Much like Facebook has it's iPhone application as well as web presence. We are looking for a UI framework that can get us going quickly. I've leafed through PhoneGap and couple other JS based UI frameworks mentioned here. I am bit unsure what can suit us the best. So, I am looking for your suggestions.
Our constraints are as follows:
The framework should be JS based. We all are web-devs and want to avoid learning Objective C.
Framework should support iPhone's capabiilities as smoothly as a native app does. If not, we will prefer a JS framework which is the smoothest of all JS frameworks. So, this is the most important constraint.
It should support smooth swipe through screens, support rotation. Nice, if it can capture shake as well. But shake does not take preference over a better framework without shake support.
Nice to have -- with little or no modification in code, if the framework is supported on other touchscreen phones as well. Android and Symbian would be suffice. But again, we are focused on iPhone for now.
I am a bit curious to know what can be the best choice to start development with. I will be thankful if you share your experience with pros-and-cons of the framework that you have used.
Thanks
Nishant
I have been playing with following frameworks.
Jo
Sencha Touch
jQuery Mobile
These are for serving Web based mobile sites, they can then in turn be made into Apps for Android or iOS using PhoneGap
Of the 3, Sencha is the more mature project and has the most things out of the box. Jo looks very promising and would probably directly compete with Sencha. jQuery mobile is very interesting but just far to early to do any production code with it, too rough around the edges. jQuery mobile takes a different approach to the others as it is html based and it interperates the attributes on tags to turn things into tableviews or menus.
jQuery mobile is quicker to hack together and get your head around, where the other two take a little bit more thinking. But once you figure them out its easy enough.
If you don't want to serve the site via a url at all and want to just build an app then Appcelerator is the way to go. You write code in JS and it makes native Android or iOS apps for you. You will get access to pretty much the full Android/iOS api.
I have coded with appcelerator, however I am no longer going to use it and use one of the above frameworks, probably Sencha for just now. I can get access to the device native apis via PhoneGap and for simpler apps give a great experience cross device via a url.
In about 6 months, or sooner, I think jQuery mobile will be the daddy...
Does anybody know where I could find WinForms controls that mimic those on the iPhone? I am interested in doing some iPhone prototyping using Visual Studio and it would be handy if I could make the controls look like the native iPhone controls.
I know that I could just use Interface Builder on a Mac, but I do not want to do this. I just want to play around with various ideas and I will be much faster in Visual Studio.
Balsamiq Mockups has some iPhone-like controls, and you get a mock up done faster than in Visual Studio.
I've had a look around for windows forms iPhone controls for mocking and positioning items and couldn't find any. However it's quite easy to do yourself with a few screenshots from the iPhone Simulator. Below is what I've done - I'll update with a download link to the project a bit later.
As mentioned Apple probably won't like, nor let you release a product using their UI style. However for mocking there is nothing to stop you doing it in Visual Studio - they still get their $99 and appstore cut.
I use Visual Studio as I do XIB-less Monotouch development in it, and want to avoid switching back and forth. For XIB-less apps, designing with interface Builder isn't much faster in my view - but that's a Monotouch-centric viewpoint.
As I pointed out here, an alternative to doing this in WinForms might be to mock up your interface using the Briefs framework. Briefs lets you use images of any kind to represent screens of your application, and assign interaction behaviors to areas of the images. You can generate a fully functional iPhone application from this for quick testing of your user interface.
There are a number of iPhone UI wireframe elements for Photoshop and other illustration applications out there, so it's pretty easy to draw up your prototype interfaces.
Since the iPhone's UIKit controls are very likely highly protected by Apple's trademark and copyrights, I wouldn't expect to find alternative implementations. Since any iPhone development will eventually require using Interface Builder, it's worth repeating what many others have said: use the right tool for the job. Learn Interface Builder (it won't take long) and quit trying to shoehorn iPhone development into the Windows tooling.
If you are interested in doing iPhone apps in C#/VB.NET, MonoTouch is the way to go
http://monotouch.net/
To me it is weird to emulate iPhone UI in WinForms as they are two worlds apart.
You can take help of this new tool Xamarin, which helps you to create the native application by using c#.