Re: How many folks are developing apps for "smart phones"?

Phonegap and HTML5 for Android and iPhone. I did some prototyping with some simple HTML to start with and kind of been feeling my way since then. Rails3 has some improvements that lend themselves to mobile development so I have recently done a small prototype with a Rails3 mobile application.

Phonegap is probably the most mature open source cross platform development environment for mobile apps at the moment. By May of next year there could be a whole set of new tools so I am keeping my ear to the ground so the spring Common session (if accepted) will reflect the bleeding edge (which most of this is anyway).

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.valadd.com
www.opensource4i.com


On 9/21/2010 2:09 PM, Richard Schoen wrote:

Hey Pete,

I saw your open source mobile development proposal for Common. Sounds
interesting.

Can you share some of what you're using for toolsets ?

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
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message: 2
date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:18:40 -0600
from: Pete Helgren< >
subject: Re: How many folks are developing apps for "smart phones"?

The challenge in web app vs phone app is managing the data volume.
Most web applications these days don't concern themselves with bandwidth
restrictions because most folks have some sort of broadband connection
and they aren't charged by the MB. Phones have bandwidth issues and you
are charged by data volume (most plans do). So if you have a 1mb page
and you page in and out of it a few times depending on the phone (some
phones don't use caching because of local storage limitations) you can
end up moving a lot of data.

A phone app, on the other hand, can request just the data needed to be
displayed but then you have issues of managing the application on the
local phone.

I was surprised at how it easy was to get an application built for a
mobile device and then challenged by how hard it is to do it right. You
have to change your thinking about how to deliver the content. I
enjoyed the challenge though and it is a lot of fun once you master the
basics.

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.valadd.com
www.opensource4i.com