Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

We felt that 6+ years of knowledge should not die so this is the Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

Bye bye, appcelerator!

When I started development with appcelerator in January, it was an exciting adventure and resulting apps were pretty good on iphone. However, the arrival of iOS 4.0 changed the complete outlook of appcelerator for me. There were way too many bugs and releases kept getting delayed (1.5 is still not available publicly). The support and documentation has always been bad unless you pay for premium account. Lack of IDE is another issue (was supposed to come out in fall).

So, while I still like the concept of appcelerator, the delivery of it has been a huge disappointment. I can't deal with bugs and delays with appcelerator anymore and have decided to go back to native xcode development which at least provides more control to me.

So, bye bye, appcelerator. Hope you get your house in order because currently it is falling like a pack of cards.

— asked November 5th 2010 by Gaurav Srivastva
  • appcelerator
  • bad
  • bugs
  • delays
  • recommendation
  • releases
0 Comments

11 Answers

  • I do empathise with your frustration but, personally, I feel development is beginning to reach a level playing field, where the majority of the essential features of the (mobile) product work as expected.

    Certainly the documentation is lacking, but even appcel staff regret and readily admit this. In the past week, Appcel has received new capital funds that will make a huge difference to how effectively the company runs and hopefully how it cooperates with the community. I'm sure this will be employed first to alleviate these issues.

    With regards to learning/using the product, the API docs are not all that bad, once you get used to them, but the KitchenSink is essential to understanding how the API should be used in practice. A good text search tool works well to quickly find what you need. In addition to this, there is this Q&A which is becoming more popular.

    I use eclipse as my IDE, which has javascript syntax highlighting and validation, and its file/text search is what I use to scour the KitchenSink. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's adequate for me.

    It is true that you can code directly in the native language, but even bearing in mind the challenges with Titanium (that you can often learn to overcome), do you believe that you can be more effective developing a version of your app for each platform, and then maintaining these two isolated codebases in the long term? What about for each new app thereafter? Also, don't forget that your coverage will be enhanced even further when blackberry support (eventually) arrives.

    Why not join us in the freenode IRC channel (#titanium_app) if you need a quick solution? There are always people around to discuss issues and approaches to problems, and share experience.

    If you really cannot be dissuaded, then good luck and all the best! :)

    Hal

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Paul Dowsett
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    1 Comment
    • Meh. I liked my reply better.

      ;)

      — commented November 5th 2010 by Colton Arabsky
  • IDE ??? only to put basics Object ? come on… JS is easy, I do applications in a text editor without any problem !

    For now, Appcelerator is the only real powerfull developpement system to build native desktop or mobile applications in a simple way…

    I am impressed by all the work made by appcelerator, you can now create services for android, and call intents… you're post is sadly a troll :)

    — answered December 23rd 2010 by Patrice Ferlet
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    1 Comment
    • I'm with you Partice. Who really needs an IDE, it's not that complex to actually type or copy and paste snippets you already.

      — commented December 23rd 2010 by Andrew Burgess
  • Bye bye.

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Colton Arabsky
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  • The saddest part of it all is that after today no one will ever see or find this post because of the s^*&ty way that the Appcelerator Q&A section operates!

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Caleb Solano
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    2 Comments
    • It's certainly one of the first things I'd tackle if I was looking to optimise the effort:benefit ratio.

      — commented November 5th 2010 by Paul Dowsett
    • BTW, does anyone receive emailed notifications when someone responds to your Q&A post, or when you have made a comment response on theirs?

      — commented November 5th 2010 by Paul Dowsett
  • I beginning to agree…
    While the new funding is a good news indeed delivery and is very dissapointing.

    I think core elements are not working either.
    The iphone API doesnt even support a couple of the most important things like multitouch, drag and drop, pinch zoom.
    things that should be able to work on a product that is leading in these functions at the moment.

    I have a couple of issues at the moment which aren't even anwsered yet, so now i'm even falling back to wanting to create custom modules but don't even get clarification on that either.

    I posted about 3 projects for people to download one of that has been downloaded 400+ times and only got 1 anwser for it.
    I'm all for community effort and seeing this can grow very very VERY hard with support from all of us.

    Also I know allot of bugs are being fixed but 1.5 should've been released october it is yet again delayed.
    and isntead of focussing on blackberry I would skip that (and the future google TV) and focus on android and iOS api's now make these complete, start the module marketplace, make a good custom modules doc and voila.
    Then the community will pick up most things and then they should focus on other stuff.
    Then it is the time to grow bigger in mobile targets.

    Now I will still work with Titanium Mobile cause i've come to far to stop now and I see alot of potential in it.
    I just wish they would put some things in a more priority.
    That is my vision, but it will probally be different for them in a business perspective

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Patrick van Zadel
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  • I think the guy is right, you know?

    The most annoying thing for me is that the Appcelerator team does not make the apps for me!
    Oh yes, and the fact that they don't come up with great ideas of apps that will sell great, for me of course.

    And a whisky with ice please? ( is "please" needed? )

    For free of course, because Titanium is free and if they work their a** out to provide us an easy way to develop for mobile they could make all the above for sure. But no, they simply don't wanna do it, god dammit.

    @colton - I like ur reply better , but I couldn't help myself ;)

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Dan Tamas
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  • I really find it hard to read this.This open source application has allowed me to develope my iphone app and would not have been possible otherwise. Bugs.? yes, support? community has been great.

    I will carry on supporting appcelerator and hopefully will reap the reward as many have already. I wise you well on your journey. bye bye

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Mark Pierce
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  • I have to agree to an extent - the flakiness of the API makes any serious development difficult. Cross-platform development is great but only if you can actually get it running on both devices.

    The fact that it's free is great but maybe that's what's holding it back? I'd be happy to pay a reasonable yearly subscription fee if everything worked as it should. I know there's a Pro account for extra help, but I don't want to pay for finding workarounds, I want to pay for something that works right off the bat. Look at Corona as a good example of this - obviously it targets a different type of app development but it just works.

    I hope the new investment and the integration of the mobile payments system will encourage things to improve.

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Charles Davison
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  • I sort of agree. The documentation is frustrating, but as it was said after you get used to it, its pretty easy. I wish the sections had screenshots of what the functions do, so I dont have to ask what a certain transition is, etc etc.

    The Appcelerator folks are terrible at helping though unless you're paying. I dont remember the last time I saw one of them post a solution on a recent thread. You cant develop this product and tout how great it is for development, and then be absent when people have questions and are spreading the word about your product. How do you think you got investors?

    The Q/A section is STUPIDIDLY laid out. The comments should be sorted oldest to newest, otherwise they dont make since at all.

    There are some bugs in the software, like it not seeing my certificates, but I just compile using XCode now, and it works fine.

    All in all, its a great product and I'm waiting for a response from an app I submitted, but if the staff would dedicate a few members to the Q/A and revise their API (they use it themselves, dont they?), then it would be awesome.

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Josh Lewis
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    2 Comments
    • Plus, wiki docs or at least the ability to add comments on the documentation pages would be tremendously helpful.

      — commented November 5th 2010 by Charles Davison
    • Josh, again I do see your points. One thing I must say though, is that appcel staff have often been very helpful to me, despite how heavy I know their workload to be.

      — commented November 5th 2010 by Paul Dowsett
  • Oh, and an IDE would be great. Especially if it had drag and drop elements, and not just a text editor with highlighting. I'd pay for that.

    — answered November 5th 2010 by Josh Lewis
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  • Get a mac use Textmate and install the Titanium bundle! - Jon done! I think Apcellerator is amazing! - My first app hit the store last week and I could never of done in using the over complictaed Objective C

    — answered December 23rd 2010 by Steve Clark
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