Appcelerator Titanium - what it is and how it is there
This article focuses on Appcelerator Titanium , a platform for creating mobile and desktop cross-platform JavaScript applications (HTML + CSS to boot). Platform development, features, use cases, personal experience
Appcelerator Titanium - a startup in Silicon Valley, with an active developer base, approaching 50,000 (as they say). What is encouraging, the vast majority of platform components are available under the Apache 2 license, the source code is available on github. The guys are open enough, they write and read Twitter, and, judging by the commits, they plow seven days a week.
The developers' slogan: “Build native mobile and desktop apps with web technologies”, I think it is clear without translation, a sort of bike for web developers for an easy start on a new platform. Not the first attempt to solve this problem with the specified tools.
How it all works: WebKit, extended with additional JavaScript objects is packaged into an executable application for Windows, Linux, MacOSX.
I think the question “Why do we need the second Adobe AIR?” The developers answered more than once or twice. I think the whole thing in his Lunapark. If the main idea of ​​Adobe AIR is “Run everything, every application in its sandbox, to the detriment of capabilities”, then Titanium is a much richer API, but also the absence of any control over the application. What is available: everything that Adobe AIR can provide plus processes (creation, input / output), HTTP server, ready queue for asynchronous events, integration with growl and analogs.
To be honest with developers, I’ll say that JavaScript is not the only available language, you can also choose Python, Ruby, PHP and keep in mind that the virtual machine will be added to the distribution, whereas JavaScript is original.
Titanium is not only an SDK, but also a cloud platform for building and distributing applications. In Obin click, the new build is spreading across clients, which is very cool (I tried it myself). For denyuzhku can equip the application analytics (a kind of Google Analytics for the desktop)
Product history is a bit dramatic. Deciding that the money was not on the desktop but on the mobile phone, the team began to rivet the mobile version of the framework. We took a WebView, stuffed JavaScript objects there to access the accelerometer, GPS, DB and the first version is ready. Here you have CSS, HTML, jQuery - write. By the way, one of the competitors, rhomobile.com works just like that. We looked at all the brakes, and decided to write it all over again. Now we’ve taken SpiderMonkey for iPhone, Rhino for Android, and wrapped all the native UI elements in JavaScript. And some developers who have already started writing in HTML + CSS have thrown a little, still on the site there are questions like “Eeee, and where are you doing all this?” Feel. Android and iPhone are now available, in the summer there will be Blackberry support
I am writing for my own pleasure, my last hand-made article has desktop and mobile versions and I chose Titanium for both. Frankly speaking, Ti Desktop and Ti Mobile have nothing in common except the namespace and templates (the designers are not in honor, Factory is used everywhere). But a single language for two projects allows you to use one code for business logic, which saved a lot of time. Bugs - there are plenty of them. I understand the developers, they want to cover as large a niche as possible today, here you’ll have both an iPad, an iPhone 4 and a Blackberry, and only then do it so that it works fine. Therefore, I try to open as many bugs in the tracker as possible, I, like them, need a working version. Is it possible to write a truly cross-platform application? Not yet. The sets of UI components of the iPhone OS and Android of course intersect, but not completely, and this is not possible until you have to write quite often if (isIPhone) {} if (isAndroid) {}. But I like the mood of the developers, I think they can do it.
Web site: appcelerator.com
Developer portal: developer.appcelerator.com
KitchenSink: github.com/appcelerator/KitchenSink - demonstration of the main features of the mobile platform
Generally
Appcelerator Titanium - a startup in Silicon Valley, with an active developer base, approaching 50,000 (as they say). What is encouraging, the vast majority of platform components are available under the Apache 2 license, the source code is available on github. The guys are open enough, they write and read Twitter, and, judging by the commits, they plow seven days a week.
The developers' slogan: “Build native mobile and desktop apps with web technologies”, I think it is clear without translation, a sort of bike for web developers for an easy start on a new platform. Not the first attempt to solve this problem with the specified tools.
Titanium Desktop
How it all works: WebKit, extended with additional JavaScript objects is packaged into an executable application for Windows, Linux, MacOSX.
I think the question “Why do we need the second Adobe AIR?” The developers answered more than once or twice. I think the whole thing in his Lunapark. If the main idea of ​​Adobe AIR is “Run everything, every application in its sandbox, to the detriment of capabilities”, then Titanium is a much richer API, but also the absence of any control over the application. What is available: everything that Adobe AIR can provide plus processes (creation, input / output), HTTP server, ready queue for asynchronous events, integration with growl and analogs.
To be honest with developers, I’ll say that JavaScript is not the only available language, you can also choose Python, Ruby, PHP and keep in mind that the virtual machine will be added to the distribution, whereas JavaScript is original.
Titanium is not only an SDK, but also a cloud platform for building and distributing applications. In Obin click, the new build is spreading across clients, which is very cool (I tried it myself). For denyuzhku can equip the application analytics (a kind of Google Analytics for the desktop)
Titanium mobile
Product history is a bit dramatic. Deciding that the money was not on the desktop but on the mobile phone, the team began to rivet the mobile version of the framework. We took a WebView, stuffed JavaScript objects there to access the accelerometer, GPS, DB and the first version is ready. Here you have CSS, HTML, jQuery - write. By the way, one of the competitors, rhomobile.com works just like that. We looked at all the brakes, and decided to write it all over again. Now we’ve taken SpiderMonkey for iPhone, Rhino for Android, and wrapped all the native UI elements in JavaScript. And some developers who have already started writing in HTML + CSS have thrown a little, still on the site there are questions like “Eeee, and where are you doing all this?” Feel. Android and iPhone are now available, in the summer there will be Blackberry support
Personal impressions
I am writing for my own pleasure, my last hand-made article has desktop and mobile versions and I chose Titanium for both. Frankly speaking, Ti Desktop and Ti Mobile have nothing in common except the namespace and templates (the designers are not in honor, Factory is used everywhere). But a single language for two projects allows you to use one code for business logic, which saved a lot of time. Bugs - there are plenty of them. I understand the developers, they want to cover as large a niche as possible today, here you’ll have both an iPad, an iPhone 4 and a Blackberry, and only then do it so that it works fine. Therefore, I try to open as many bugs in the tracker as possible, I, like them, need a working version. Is it possible to write a truly cross-platform application? Not yet. The sets of UI components of the iPhone OS and Android of course intersect, but not completely, and this is not possible until you have to write quite often if (isIPhone) {} if (isAndroid) {}. But I like the mood of the developers, I think they can do it.
What's next?
Web site: appcelerator.com
Developer portal: developer.appcelerator.com
KitchenSink: github.com/appcelerator/KitchenSink - demonstration of the main features of the mobile platform
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/95010/
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