(Help) Need your advice ...

[zombiegorilla]

@angrypenguin

It’s a shame there’s no Unity-equivalent for cross-platform GUI-driven applications.

HTML

[angrypenguin]

@zombiegorilla

HTML

Except it’s only a part of the story. Sure it can be used to define the GUI, but a GUI-driven application is more than just a GUI. HTML only describes information. You need to combine that with a whole bunch of other stuff to get actual functionality, which is what Titanium et. al. do. On that note…

@Tanel

Could you elaborate?

You can basically do the same things as with native development but with one codebase (of course there’s things different platforms handle differently, so you also have to handle them, that’s sometimes the case with Unity too, though).

I guess I don’t really get what you mean by general purpose here.

You can do the same things, sure, but when we used it it was nowhere near native performance or presentation quality for moderately complex applications, and it also still didn’t provide a consistent experience between iOS and Android for either the developer or the user, even for some relatively simple things.

Admittedly we were using it in really early days, but still in comparison to Unity… we’re honestly super spoiled over here when it comes to cross-platform.

[angrypenguin]

@KingTooTall

Please change the title to the post? its too broad and one of those “HELP, read my post because it says…HELP”

Good advice.

[zombiegorilla]

@angrypenguin

Except it’s only a part of the story. Sure it can be used to define the GUI, but a GUI-driven application is more than just a GUI. HTML only describes information. You need to combine that with a whole bunch of other stuff to get actual functionality, which is what Titanium et. al. do. On that note…

Sorry, let me rephrase: HTML+JS.

[Tanel]

@angrypenguin

Except it’s only a part of the story. Sure it can be used to define the GUI, but a GUI-driven application is more than just a GUI. HTML only describes information. You need to combine that with a whole bunch of other stuff to get actual functionality, which is what Titanium et. al. do. On that note…

It’s not exactly what it does though. Sure, you have the option of using a WebView and going the HTML/JS route but you can also use native views and controls and the like.

[angrypenguin]

@zombiegorilla

Sorry, let me rephrase: HTML+JS.

HTML + JS + a whole bunch of libraries to give you native functionality (eg: what Titanium et. al. provide), and then it still comes with the downsides I mentioned earlier.

Or is there some other approach you’re thinking of? This isn’t my area of expertise, so if there’s a better way please tell me.

[zombiegorilla]

@angrypenguin

HTML + JS + a whole bunch of libraries to give you native functionality (eg: what Titanium et. al. provide), and then it still comes with the downsides I mentioned earlier.

Or is there some other approach you’re thinking of? This isn’t my area of expertise, so if there’s a better way please tell me.

Well, I guess “applications” is a pretty wide category. I am thinking of apps that push/pull/present content to a user, or have self-contained functionality. Anything like that can easily be done and deployed to pretty much any device and is light weight. We have an HTML engine that produces a fair amount of our apps, including several games. Then you just use a thin wrapper that sticks it in webkit/chrome, which is already on the devices. Early versions of the FB app were done just that way, and some of our big portal product brands are done using html (ESPN/etc).

I can see where something like Titanium would be useful if need access to hardware type things, rather than as you pointed out, wrapping up all the libraries yourself. (though Titanium is made by Appcelerator… so… um. yea.)