Building Native iOS Apps With Titanium

Titanium from Appcelerator has been proving to be a really great framework to develop Native Mobile applications in Web's darling, Javascript. Started a few weeks back to check it out and we are now totally hooked. Comparing to developing an iOS application in Objective-C, its totally ridiculously simple. For us, it is definitely a 10x productivity boost. 

If you have an idea and if it takes weeks to develop the prototype, it is tough to keep up team's motivation. Titanium is quite magical when it comes to speed. As we can iterate our UI designs much faster with Titanium, we could refine our original idea and improve upon almost every day. And a working idea can make wonders when it comes to team's morale and confidence. 

If you haven't tried it, Give it a try. I am quite sure, you will love it.

Btw, Appcelerator guys recently opened up some of their training modules to all for Free. Check them out and they will definitely clarify a few things and gives a better head start. For instance, the videos recommend a slightly different approach of organizing code than what you see in their Kitchensink sample application.

Link to Training Videos : Build Native Mobile Apps With Titanium

I am quite sure, there is one big dilemma of approaching Titanium to build a native iOS application. Will Apple approve your apps built on Titanium ?  We haven't found any rejections by searching on the web and recently NBC released an iPad application and was approved by Apple. So, doesn't look like an issue. But we keep our fingers crossed until our application gets approved. 

Even with the possibility of a rejection, some where in the back of the mind, we are seriously considering to go ahead with Titanium and take our chances. With its almost magical productivity, we won't  be loosing much. More over, the application UI, design, use cases, application flow and most importantly the early feedback we can get is still be totally invaluable if we have to redo in Objective C later on.

Wired : The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet

Chris Anderson and Wired offer yet another riveting conclusion (sounds like a prediction for some of us) that the Web as we know is dead as we are getting more and more connected on the internet with apps and devices.

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone.

-- The Web Is Dead. Long Live Internet, Wired

I agree 100%, as it is just a fact for how I consume content on the internet. Almost (99%) everything I do on the internet is done through a custom application (mostly on iPhone and iPad) rather on the web.

Another reason, we want to go with custom apps instead of web applications is that we could probably avoid lots of distraction on the web. Particularly for students, it would matter the most to stay focused and learn better. So this has been primary motivation behind the Active Learning suite.

Active Player lets you enjoy and learn from your favorite videos and podcasts without ever visiting a single web page. If a website doesn’t offer an RSS Feed, you can create your own RSS Feed of any content available on the internet with Active Feeds and help the rest of the world updated without ever visiting the web.

Its not at all a surprise!

For me, this is not a surprise. Back in 2004-2005 the whole world was drumming about going to Web for everything and predicting that apps on desktops will be dead pretty soon (smart phones are still a luxury at that time and apps on mobile devices are not yet born).  I didn’t believe that it would happen. Instead, I believed that if we want the best, then they better be desktop apps but be connected on the net.

What we need is a smart desktop application or a browser plugin or a desktop widget that is totally integrated with an online application, its data storage and an online interface.

It would be better to create the best of both worlds when user interaction need to be essentially rich and needs ability to work offline (as neither online nor offline desktop alone can not take advantage of the situation) and also need all of that an online application offers.

--Why desktop apps will stay, 9/26/2006

With iPhone released in 2007 and App Store in 2008, apps created a thriving eco-system of its own and time for apps has just arrived, again.

And that is what happened. Rather than moving everything to the web to take advantage of the internet, we are in fact bringing everything on the internet to devices. 

When Netflix started offering streaming videos online, we may have watched them on our desktops or laptops. But now more and more people are watching those movies right on their TV sets and more recently started watching on their iPads. In fact, Netflix’s streaming service got lot more popular with their iPad application.

So, welcome back to apps. Rich, lively and intuitive. In most cases, they would be less distracting. And musical, of course. (If you haven’t realized, on the web, there are no sound effects). Be it a desktop app or an app on your Mobile phone or on a special device.

Design Sense : File Size Of (RSS Feed) Media Enclosure on iPhone

If you open a RSS Feed URL in Safari browser on the iPhone, it redirects you to a RSS Reader hosted at http://reader.mac.com that aptly displays the Feed in a nice readable format on the iPhone. If the RSS feed contains Media enclosures (like Video, podcasts etc),  the feed reader application quite conveniently displays (what appears to be) amount of time it may take to download that file on your iPhone.

Look at a sample RSS Feed item below opened on the iPhone from an RSS Feed that I have prepared, contains a video introducing ASP.NET by Scott Hanselman.

I first thought, the time mentioned is duration of the video file enclosed in the feed. But the duration of the video enclosed in this particular example is actually 00:03:54, so it must be download time. Its a valuable information to have on your mobile device as it would help you to decide whether to go ahead and watch/listen to the media file or not. 

To come up with an estimate of download time, the reader application must be enquiring about the file size in real time.  This must be done by requesting HTTP Headers for the download file and use the content-length in response.  The application must also be checking the bandwidth of your current connection. For instance, if the iPhone is connected on Wi-Fi, I observed that the time is lower than the value displayed when iPhone is on 2G network.

Nice little extra work on the server and is quite valuable on mobiles.

Similar information is not displayed if you open the feed in Safari browser on the desktop though.

Application developers, take a note. A little extra work on your side could save a day for your users.

Why We Love Apple Even More Now

How many times in your whole life have you ever seen individuals or organizations admit their mistakes point blank without giving a spin or excuse?

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.

-- Letter from Apple regarding iPhone 4

And the letter confirms that gripping iPhone 4 in a specific way could hurt its reception and thought its a design issue of iPhone. But I didn’t know that its the same way for any other mobile phone.