Web developers have a similar feel when trying to build mobile apps — while many tech providers can build mobile web apps wrapped around a browser such as Safari for iPhone, mobile-browser-based apps can't compare with native apps developed using an Apple or Google SDK. Being wrapped around the browser kills app speed, especially when developers want to add 2D and 3D animation and user interface elements such as buttons, sliders and tabs.
The general availability release of Appcelerator's cross-platform mobile application development tool, Titanium 1.0, has been upgraded to give web developers the ability to make native apps. The company “re-architected” the product to give developers full and unfettered access to smartphone capabilities.
“In the past, it was a hybrid experience, or even worse basically building a website that's an app. Now it's coding directly for that application so that you get all the native user interface, all the native user performance as well as all the native capabilities,” said Scott Schwarzhoff, senior vice president of marketing for Appcelerator. “The three legs of that native stool are especially required by folks who have big brands looking to build applications…. These are essential for being at parity with Apple or Google's SDK.”
Last November, some of the bigger interactive agencies in Appcelerator's partner program hit a roadblock in terms of platform capabilities. Titanium and other competing platforms take a web browser and wrap it up as an app, which provides access to device features such as the camera and GPS, but agencies wanted to push the limits of what these mobile web apps could do. These couldn't be done in “a webby type of environment being used as the engine — it wasn't going to cut the mustard,” Schwarzhoff said.
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