ANN] Translating your Rev stacks into web apps

[David Bovill]

OK - I was not thinking of anything detailed, but in principle I would think
that a good number of people on this list researching how to get into web
app development and leverage their Revolution experience would research
these two alternatives, both have been covered in discussions on this list.

In simple terms PhoneGap is an open source JavaScript framework which allows
you to create mobile phone app's using your basic (ish) knowledge of
standard web technologies. In particular you are able to create iPhone
applications<http://phonegap.pbworks.com/Getting-Started-with-PhoneGap-%28iPhone%29>by
using standard html markup calling the PhoneGap JavaScript library and
compiling these suing Xcode. The resulting mobile apps are designed to run
on iPhone / Android / Palm / Blackberry / Windows Mobile and Symbian
platforms. As it is open source there is no charge for the code, but for
iPhone development you would need to pay your $99 blood money to Apple. I've
not used it myself, but am looking at interfacing it with Revolution, by
creating a set of open source libraries that would translate between
Revolution widgets and PhoneGap code / widgets. In many ways this is similar
to the aims of Rodeo. I think it would be particularly strong if Rodeo used
or interfaced with the open source PhoneGap framework, as this may make the
eventual aims of supporting an iPhone app store submission service easier to
implement?

In contrast TileStack <http://tilestack.com/> is not so interesting I think
- it looks like a more or less complete clone of HyperCard written in
JavaScript - like Rodeo it is a hosted service, and like Rodeo i don't think
the JavaScript is an open source framework - it is not specifically designed
for mobile or webkit / HTML5 - so that is another difference.

If anyone has more detailed experience of either of these products I'd be
interested in their experience. I know that early versions of PhoneGap were
pretty limited - but it has been around for a while now.


On 12 July 2010 17:27, Jerry Daniels <jerry.daniels at me.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> I'm not really any kind of expert of the products you mention here. I've
> written and recorded plenty on our objectives and aims, though. It's all on
> our site.
>

I've decided to take the plunge and take up the early bird offer - looks
like a great way to leverage your Revolution knowledge and get into the
world of HTML5 and JavaScript - looking forwards to the next conference on
the 17th!