[jowi]

I’m looking for a Macless way to develop an app for an iPad, and i came across your development tool. Looks great, has great potential i think. But i do have a question about the actual deployment of an app created with Mobione. I know Mobione doesn’t create actual native apps, but does this automatically mean that it can only be run in the iPad’s webbrowser? I’m assuming that the upload-to-device part and running it in the browser is only for test purposes? That final deployment will allow me to place the app on the actual desktop, and run it as if it’s an actual app? And if so, how does this work, because i can’t find anything on final deployment.

Not to be blunt, but if i can only create stuff that runs in a webbrowser, why would i use your development tools? I’m fluent in .NET, so i could create an asp.net website to browse to in jiffy… but what i want is something that looks and feels like a real iPad app…

[SonamGyato]

i’m a user…but let me take a shot at your post.

the tool creates a webapp – simply put – an html page + images +
javascript files – all cached by the browser almost as a single
entity.

so the app runs when the ipad is offline.

also, users can launch your app from the homescreen via an icon like
any native icon.

so the user is none the wiser.

a big pro for webapps, besides easier development and not having
to jump thru the apple hoop, automatic updates.

a big con if you’re writing a mass market app, no access to the apple
market.

[jowi]

Yeah i understand what a webapp is 😉 and it is clear from the start that this environment creates webapps, so you don’t have to go the whole 9 yards using Apple’s SDK + hardware to develop native apps.

But i was hoping that once the MobiOne webapp was deployed on the iPad/phone, the Apple architecture would render this on the desktop itself, that it would somehow recognize it and would use some fancy ‘active desktop’ like feature or anything to make it look like a real app, but instead it just opens Safari, and you basically are ‘just’ browsing a webpage, nothing special about that. What MobiOne adds to the experience is that it emulates the user interface and GUI elements, basically you are running MobiOne’s emulator on the device itself…

Again, this would not be an issue for me at all, if the actual deployed result would render and look and feel like a real app… but making a browser look like an ipad is just, for lack of a better word, fake… there’s alwys the browser’s menu bar on top… is there any chance this is possible, maybe even in the future? Or am i missing something here? Or even using Safari in full screen mode, so you don’t see it’s menu bar, would be sufficient, is this even possible?

[jowi]

Ah, found it, if you add the ‘app’ to the mainscreen, it WILL run fullscreen 🙂 That makes a world of difference…

[support-michael]

@jowi You raise some good questions. For the quick summary scroll to the last paragraph.

The big picture is that the simplest and most cost effective cross-platform mobile strategies are based on using HTML5 technologies. With HTML5, users have many more strategic options to choose from. For example many organizations are adopting a dual deployment strategy where they develop both an optimized cross-platform mobile website that runs on traditional webserver infrastructure such as apache and a native application versions of the site functionality that can be deployed from the respective platform-specific appstores such as Apple, Google and RIM’s appstores. Note, the native app paradigm typically involves programmatically creating an internal browser instance (no chrome) that runs a bundled version of the webapp.

Side-note: take a look at many of the business apps in the App Store and you will find that most of them must connect to the network for data to do anything interesting and sport very simple UI’s that could have been implemented in HTML5 at a fraction of their cost and complexity. Also follow the progress of the HTML5 specs and you will see how it is subsuming traditionally native-only features such as geolocation, accelerometer, media player, webapp modes that run a chromeless version of the browser.

MobiOne is systematically working to provide users the features they need to implement their mobile strategy, cheaply. The product currently (version 1.2) supports optimized webapp development. In an upcoming version it will generate native version of the webapp for AppStore deployment. The native app support will include additional api for programmatically interacting with device services and instrumentation.

MobiOne already does a great job at providing near-native look-and-feel on the iPhone and much of the iPad. When you save a MobiOne webapp to the homescreen and then launch it from the homescreen it behaves in a more native fashion. The issue you raise with the iPad addressbar (also the startup image quirks) is an annoyance that we anticipate will be improved upon by Apple in future iOS releases. And as the MobiOne native build service comes online there will be more direct control over the traditional browser chrome features.

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