Newbie - can Titanium deliver?
Hi
We're new to mobile apps and are currently deciding on a dev platform. Many thanks for your advice so far.
Our apps will share much of the UI concepts/charting found in the Apple "Stocks" app. We will be building identical apps for iPhone and Android.
My questions:
Could the Apple "Stocks" app be written completely in Titanium and have exactly the same UI experience?
If the Stocks app was written in Titanium, initially for an Iphone build, roughly how much extra work would then be inolved in rebuilding the same app for Android.
(Leading question) Is the codebase truly "common", or are there so many tweaks and resource files needed for each platform that sometimes you think "it would just be easier going native"
Any advice appreciated. I can't seem to access the showcase apps from the UK app store, so it's hard to get a feel for the true potental of Titanium.
Many thanks
2 Answers
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Hi Mel,
I'm pretty confident that you could replicate the "Stocks" app with Titanium. The only tricky bit I see would be the charts, but you could probably create those fairly easily with a WebView and an HTML5/Canvas charting library.
I haven't attempted a cross-platform Titanium app yet (getting ready to submit our first iPhone app), so I can't really answer questions 2 and 3. From what I know of the API and browsing the KitchenSink source, though, I'd say whatever productivity lost from tweaks you'd have to make to target multiple platforms would be more than made up for by having the ability to write a cross platform app using a single language/API. Hopefully someone with more cross-platform experience can chime in.
HTH
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Hello Mel,
I have personally used Titanium Developer to create an iPhone app (USFBulls) and am currently finishing a cross-platform version of it for Android. I am fully confident that you could replicate the iPhone "Stocks" application with Titanium Developer. You can achieve anything with Titanium Developer that you can with x-code and object-C.
####Cross-Platform Build
Speaking from experience you will not have to totally rebuild the same application for Android. Titanium Developer does a lot of the leg work for you by utilizing the same code used for the iPhone build, its just within a different folder hierarchy."YourApp"/build/android/bin/assets/ResourcesOnce you complete the necessary steps "downloading the android sdk, eclipse, libraries etc." (Use these references: http://developer.appcelerator.com/get_started#video2, http://developer.appcelerator.com/doc/mobile/android/module_sdk).
Once you run your application in the Android emulator, you will soon find out that you may need to tweak the appearance of your application slightly. For instance, if you are using a tabGroup for navigation in your iPhone app; Android renders their menu (tabGroup) at the top and will need to be addressed. Additionally, dimensions of some objects may also need to be tweaked because of cross-platform differences.###
The heart of your application (its function) won't need much tweaking, just how it is rendered (visually). Speaking in terms of hours — It won't take anywhere near the amount of time (maybe 1/3) to build a cross-platform version as it did building from scratch on the iPhone version. Just anticipate some visual differences between the two that may need to be addressed; after-all they are completely different platforms.I hope this was helpful.