cross-platform development

Mobile Apps cross-platform development challenge: PhoneGap vs. Titanium vs. Rhodes

Mauro Dalu

Rhodes-PhoneGap-Titanium-cross-platform-mobile-frameworksWhat is the best cross-platform mobile framework out there?
Let’s take a look at the main three competitors.

First of all, cross-platform compatibility is all about compromising on the native look, feel and features of devices. Therefore, if you’re looking into creating a 3D game or an interactive, multimedia, animated app, you’re looking in the wrong direction.

PhoneGap, Titanium and Rhodes are all based on web technologies and are aimed at web developers that want to leverage their current skills set to the mobile apps world.

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Rhodes 1.4: Your java bin folder does not appear to be on your path.

rhomobile-rhodesYou might encounter the following error message when working with 1-4-unstable branch of Rhodes:

Your java bin folder does not appear to be on your path.
This is required to use rhodes.

Here is the fix…

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Rhom vs. ActiveRecord, ID of Rhodes objects

rhodes-framework-mobile-developmentThe ID of an object (record in a table) is an important piece of information. In most of the situations when we need an object from the database, we search for it using its ID. Moreover, the ID is usually part of the URL of a page.

Given its importance it is worh mentioning a big difference between Rhom (the object mapper in Rhodes) and ActiveRecord (in Rails): in Rhom, the object ID is enclosed in brackets {}. A typical Rhom object ID looks like this: {32034644033132}.

Why is it such a big number?

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How-to: AJAX DateTime picker in Rhodes (Rhomobile)

ajax-datetime-picker-rhodesEver desired a method to handle a DateTime picker in Rhodes without reloading the page? The ideal solution would be to tap the datetime input field to popup the DateTime picker, choose a date and/or time and tap ‘Done’. This would automatically display the selection into the input field.

We were able to achieve this using 2 AJAX calls. Read on and get the full code to do this!

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jQTouch to make Rhodes Apps feel more iPhone-ish

rhodes-framework-mobile-developmentEven though the iPhone specific CSS is not perfect in Rhodes, it can be easily customized to improve the look of the app and make it similar to a native one. But there’s another important aspect for the look & feel of a native iPhone app: animations (transitions between views) and this is missing in Rhodes.

We tried to fix this by using jQTouch, a jQuery plugin for mobile web development. It provides all kind of animations that you would expect from a native iPhone app: horizontal and vertical slide, flip, pop, fade. You can even create your own animations. It also features swipe detection.

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Native iPhone look in rhomobile

Brad Midgley

Getting to Railsconf 2009-81

Rhomobile provides great instant gratification in building applications. See my last article for a starter.

There are some elements you’ll miss as you start to work on the iPhone target. The back button is one and the custom tab bar is another.

The main bar can currently be customized by building rhodes from source (the way I did in the previous post). Open platform/iphone/rhorunner.xcodeproj in Xcode and

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Rhomobile 1.2 for iPhone, android, blackberry, win mobile

Brad Midgley

We’ve been evaluating the Rhodes platform, aka Rhomobile, as a way to deliver multiplatform applications to our customers. Version 1.2.1 was recently released.

One thing that is clear right away is the development platform problem. Develop on OSX if you need to work on iPhone and Android ports. Use Windows if you plan to release for Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. For most multiplatform deployment combinations you’ll need to switch back and forth, use windows in a vm, etc.

Back on OSX,

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PhoneGap: cross-platform mobile framework based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Mauro Dalu

PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript. If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, you need to check out PhoneGap.

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