I have a couple of iOS apps (Objective-C + iOS frameworks + a few web APIs). No fancy graphics, no opengl, no fancy audio processing.
I want to also support Android as well as general web users with a browser (on whatever device they might be).
I assume there is no way to port my code to android. is this correct?
On the web part, I’ve been experimenting with Cappuccino and I love it (I am quite out of date with client side web, but I converted a good chunk of my code from Objective-C to Objective-J and cappuccino and it went far better than expected.)
My question is, for someone with limited resources, do you even recommend adding Android.
My options are:
1- Keep iOS and add a webapp using cappuccino
2- Keep iOS and add Android
3- Switch all to web (make iOS and Android wrappers for the webapp)
4- …
I know it depends on the target market and all sorts of things but just from a technical + resource management point of view, what is the best approach, in your oppinion.
Using embedded webkit views in your apps makes sense for content-heavy websites, especially if you want your app to have it’s own look, rather than conform to the native look and feel. Android in particular has very good webkitview-app integration (it is a little more hacky on iOS, but still possible) – in essence, it allows the wrapper application to expose any native functionality to javascript.
One thing I would definitely stay away from is heavy JS frameworks like cappuccino, sencha and jquery mobile. In addition to being big and slow, they also try to impose their own style on your app. One thing they don’t optimize for very much at all is the slow DOM performance on Android, which makes nearly all use of these frameworks feel laggy.
My personal choice would be Zepto.js with your own lightweight custom styling. With a bit of effort, your app will look pretty, minimalistic and perform well enough not to piss off your users.