intro, and some thoughts from the cordova/phonegap project[s]

Hello everyone, I work on Apache Cordova and its better known distribution
PhoneGap. An early goal of our work has always been obsolescence by way of
demonstrating what a browser could, and likely should, do. The journey has
been far longer than anticipated, as these things tend to be in software,
but the goal is the same. I'm stoked to share my experiences with this
list as another step on that path.

So lately ppl have been calling this thing 'hybrid apps'. I've also heard
installable web apps, packaged apps, and lately sys apps thrown around. It
is all much more of the same. While the approach has been a topic of
debate, the trend is undeniable: Firefox OS, WindowsRT, ChromeOS,
Blackberry WebWorks, Tizen, and webOS. All of this movement to web
technologies leaves me very optimistic. =)

So whats left on the TODO list for standardization? Well, its all opinion
but these are the things I'm thinking about lately:

- offline (I know this is being deeply considered but its worth
reiterating as the top priority.)
- network introspection (The trend for 'responsive design' is currently
crippled by inability to know much more than connectivity.)
- runtime performance profiling (It is difficult to get good profile data
out of mobile browsers.)
- asset loading (script, img, and link simply do not cut it for more
complex apps that require dependency resolution)

Now this said, we're in the process of re-architecting Cordova to
facilitate a better plugin model. We're still baking in the tooling, and
extracting our core apis into discreet plugins. When this work completes
our community will be able to compose their own version of PhoneGap with
only the APIs they require. We expect this to allow developers to create
more focused apps, but also will give us insight into which APIs are
important, and what from the wider community ecosystem is needed.

I'll keep the list posted on our progress.

Cheers,
Brian

Received on Saturday, 9 March 2013 22:13:48 UTC