iOS Android cross platform development

Question

I ve been playing around with developing Android apps in Java for a while and am starting to get a handle on it   However if I want to on start on an iOS version I need to code everything from scratch - which is  well  undesirable   I was wondering on what cross platform solutions there are available and how well they work in practice   I ve been thinking about web applications - perhaps using jQuery Mobile or Titanium  or Adobe Flash Flex Air   I also don t yet have a Mac  which I ll probably have to invest in   So my Questions      What cross-platform development environments exist for iOS   Android  and or other devices   What has your experience been with these tools   this is what I m really keen to know

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There is also BatteryTech which we ve been using for the past 18 months and have released several games off of it   http   www batterypoweredgames com batterytech  All C    Android and iOS support  all users get full source   The new v2 includes lua bindings

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MonoTouch and MonoDroid but what will happen to that part of Attachmate now is anybody s guess   Of course even with the mono solutions you re still creating non cross platform views but the idea being the reuse of business logic   Keep an eye on http   www xamarin com  it will be interesting to see what they come up with

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Disclaimer  I work for a company  Particle Code  that makes a cross-platform framework  There are a ton of companies in this space  New ones seem to spring up every week  Good news for you  you have a lot of choices  These frameworks take different approaches  and many of them are fundamentally designed to solve different problems  Some are focused on games  some are focused on apps  I would ask the following questions  What do you want to write  Enterprise application  personal productivity application  puzzle game  first-person shooter  What kind of development environment do you prefer  IDE or plain ol  text editor  Do you have strong feelings about programming languages  Of the frameworks I m familiar with  you can choose from ActionScript  C    C   Java  Lua  and Ruby  My company is more in the game space  so I haven t played as much with the JavaScript CSS frameworks like Titanium  PhoneGap  and Sencha  But I can tell you a bit about some of the games-oriented frameworks  Games and rich internet applications are an area where cross-platform frameworks can shine  because these applications tend to place more importance of being visually unique and less on blending in with native UIs  Here are a few frameworks to look for   Unity www unity3d com is a 3D games engine  It s really unlike any other development environment I ve worked in  You build scenes with 3D models  and define behavior by attaching scripts to objects  You can script in JavaScript  C   or Boo  If you want to write a 3D physics-based game that will run on iOS  Android  Windows  OS X  or consoles  this is probably the tool for you  You can also write 2D games using 3D assets--a fine example of this is indie game Max and the Magic Marker  a 2D physics-based side-scroller written in Unity  If you don t know it  I recommend checking it out  especially if there are any kids in your household   Max is available for PC  Wii  iOS and Windows Phone 7  although the latter version is a port  since Unity doesn t support WinPhone   Unity comes with some sample games complete with 3D assets and textures  which really helps getting up to speed with what can be a pretty complicated environment   Corona www anscamobile com corona is a 2D games engine that uses the Lua scripting language and supports iOS and Android  The selling point of Corona is the ability to write physics-based games very quickly in few lines of code  and the large number of Corona-based games in the iOS app store is a testament to its success  The environment is very lean  which will appeal to some people  It comes with a simulator and debugger  You add your text editor of choice  and you have a development environment  The base SDK doesn t include any UI components  like buttons or list boxes  but a CoronaUI add-on is available to subscribers   The Particle SDK www particlecode com is a slightly more general cross-platform solution with a background in games  You can write in either Java or ActionScript  using a MVC application model  It includes an Eclipse-based IDE with a WYSIWYG UI editor  We currently support building for Android  iOS  webOS  and Windows Phone 7 devices  You can also output Flash or HTML5 for the web  The framework was originally developed for online multiplayer social games  such as poker and backgammon  and it suits 2D games and apps with complex logic  The framework supports 2D graphics and includes a 2D physics engine    NB    Today we announced that Particle Code has been acquired by Appcelerator  makers of the Titanium cross-platform framework        As of January 1  2012   Particle Code  will no longer officially support the  Particle SDK  platform    Source  The Airplay SDK www madewithmarmalade com is a C   framework that lets you develop in either Visual Studio or Xcode  It supports both 2D and 3D graphics  Airplay targets iOS  Android  Bada  Symbian  webOS  and Windows Mobile 6  They also have an add-on to build AirPlay apps for PSP  My C   being very rusty  I haven t played with it much  but it looks cool   In terms of learning curve  I d say that Unity had the steepest learning curve  for me   Corona was the simplest  and Particle and Airplay are somewhere in between  Another interesting point is how the frameworks handle different form factors  Corona supports dynamic scaling  which will be familiar to Flash developers  This is very easy to use but means that you end up wasting screen space when going from a 4 3 screen like the iPhone to a 16 9 like the new qHD Android devices  The Particle SDK s UI editor lets you design flexible layouts that scale  but also lets you adjust the layouts for individual screen sizes  This takes a little more time but lets you make the app look custom made for each screen  Of course  what works for you depends on your individual taste and work style as well as your goals -- so I recommend downloading a couple of these tools and giving them a shot  All of these tools are free to try  Also  if I could just put in a public service announcement -- most of these tools are in really active development  If you find a framework you like  by all means send feedback and let them know what you like  what you don t like  and features you d like to see  You have a real opportunity to influence what goes into the next versions of these tools  Hope this helps

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My experience with making something very simple in PhoneGap jQuery Mobile was fine  I was able to do it quickly for iOS  However  it didn t work on my Android phones without making some changes  The project was a very simple app to take pictures and post them to a web site  And at the end of the day it felt  clunky  compared to a true native app   I don t believe there will ever be easy cross platform development  I think the browser is as close as you will get  By choosing something like PhoneGap I think you are just trading one set of pain points for a different set of pain points

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In case you do not want to use a full-fledged framework for cross-platform development  take a look at C   as an option  iOS fully supports using C   for your application logic via Objective-C    I don t know how well Android s support for C   via the NDK is suited for doing your business logic in C   rather than just some performance-critical code snippets  but in case that use case is well supported  you could give it a try   This approach of course only makes sense if your application logic constitutes the greatest part of your project  as the user interfaces will have to be written individually for each platform   As a matter of fact  C   is the single most widely supported programming language  with the exception of C   and is therefore the core language of most large cross-platform applications

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There s also MoSync Mobile SDK  GPL and commercial licensing  There s a good overview of their approach here

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Cappuccino or PhoneGap   Sometimes though trying to find a shortcut does not save you time or give you a comparable end product

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Although I ve just begun looking at this area of development  I think it comes down to this basic difference  some tools retain the original code  and some port to native     for instance  PhoneGap just keeps the HTML CSS JS code that you write  and wraps it in sufficient iOS code to qualify as an app  whereas Appcelerator delivers you an XCode project   so if you re not familiar with iOS  then that wouldn t really provide any benefit to you over PhoneGap  but if you DO know a bit  that might give you just a bit more ability to tweak the native versions after your larger coding effort   I haven t used appcelerator myself  but worked on a project a couple weeks ago where one of our team members made an entire iPad app in about 24 hours using it    And yes  to actually submit to apple  you ll have to get a mac  but if that s not your primary work platform you can go cheap

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If you ve ever used LUA  you might try Corona SDK can create apps that run on IOS and Android  https   coronalabs com   I ve downloaded it and messed around some  I find LUA a very easy to learn scripting language without the usual scripting language hassles limitations

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