I have to create a mobile application which will work on diffrent mobile platforms: ios, android, windows, symbian and others
The application will use google maps a lot and some dialogs with user: several chechboxes e.t.c. No complex graphic
I see two ways:
1)Flash: write application on actionscript. However it additionaly needs AIR libraries on client mobile phone. I have no exact information how these applications works on ios. Some sources of information says that now AIR permit flash apps to work fine on ios.
2)HTML5: maybe hasn’t so many possibilities as Flash, but as I think, html5+javascript can do all I need. If I choose this option, I’m going to create a very simple shell for each mobile platform which will open html5 page.
So I’m interesting in your opinion in this question: maybe I missed some details, nuances. What is more perspective, better for application with described functionality?
Or maybe you have anouther, third option?
Since AIR can’t support all the platforms you target and it has some other issues like file size (especially an issue on android) and performance I would select HTML5.
Please note that full HTML5 support for Windows Mobile is announced in the form of IE9 for somewhen this year, meaning it’s not supported yet.
As for wrapping your HTML5 app, I would suggest you checking out PhoneGap which allows you access to the underlying OS. There’s an inofficial PhoneGap package for WM7 but I yet have to use it, so can’t give you any details on the restrictions it has.
Check out http://www.phonegap.com/about/features for a list of features supported on different platforms. Phonegap can be extended with plugins and self written native code in case you miss a feature.
Check http://savagelook.com/blog/portfolio/appcelerator-vs-phonegap-vs-adobe-air for a comparisson of AIR, PhoneGap and Appcelerator.