Web developers, are you eager to make some nice mobile applications but afraid to learn various kinds of development languages and SDKs? Nowadays, making mobile application is a popular and exciting experience. But, considering there are so many different devices, even making application for mainstream mobile platforms is not an easy job. You have to support Apple, which is programmed with Objective-C. You have to support Android, which is programmed with Java. You have to support Windows Phone, which is Microsoft’s private property … Oh, Jesus, how many languages do I need to learn? How much time do I need to spend? Seems quite formidable!
But take it easy, here comes the solution. By using Rhomobile Rhodes framework, you don’t need to learn any new knowledge and you can your web skills to write native apps once and build for all smartphones. Quite amazing! Rhodes uses the full knowledge of Ruby on Rails so ruby web developers will feel quite comfortable to use. Developing with Ruby, building for various platforms including Apple, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian …. Like dreaming? One another big and important advantage is you can use almost all device capabilities: most of them at least if not all. You are encouraged to check its website for more details: http://www.rhomobile.com/.
You are a web developer but not using Ruby? Ok, there are also other similar frameworks. PhoneGap is another good choice. Other possible solutions include Titanium, Native App etc.
Is Rhomobile Rhodes perfect? Honestly, no. First it has some performance penalty compare to real native apps which seems unavoidable. There is no free lunch. Second, you will meet with some annoying problems (very rarely). You can solve by compiling into intermediate native languages (Objective-c for Apple, Java for Android …) codes then making a fix on. The last but maybe the most important, we do make native apps but it is still not as good as real native ones. If you need a very complicated UI or don’t want it looks like a web app, Rhodes is not a good choice. In all, Rhomobile Rhodes provides a way, a good way, for web developers to mobile development. But it is not a panacea, please consider it carefully before you use it.
