This week Tiggzi app platform upgraded to use PhoneGap 2.0. This means that every existing and new app will now use the PhoneGap version 2.0.
Not only can you use PhoneGap API when building an app, but you can also use Tiggzi to build Android and iOS apps with a single click:
This article was originally published in Software Developer’s Journal.
In the past year or so, we have witnessed a major shift from client-server to client-cloud. This shift is primarily
fueled by two factors: mobile devices exceeding desktop computers and the thousands of different APIs available on the Internet today. What started in early 2000 on eBay and Amazon has become a real revolution in 2012 with thousands of companies, from Twitter and Facebook to AT&T, offering cloud-based services.
In the client-server approach an organization builds applications that consume its own internal content and
resources. However, even large IT organizations such as AT&T, Verizon and Amazon have come to realize that
they are no match for the social consumer and social enterprise developers out there. By making APIs publicly
available, these organizations hope that developers and “citizen developers” will come and build applications
and mobile apps on top of their services.
One of the best-known API success stories comes from Amazon: Its cloud service APIs let outsiders access
the company’s massive data centers. Twitter, with its deceptively simple 140-character message model, exploded thanks to its API. In fact, you probably read and write tweets via a Twitter application or mobile app rather
than going directly to Twitter’s Web site. Facebook’s Graph API has spawned a whole industry of apps to support its hundreds of millions of users.
Just looking at popular ProgrammableWeb site that lists close to 5,500 APIs (at the time of writing this) and 6,500 mashups or apps created that consume the various APIs. The city of San Francisco, already a mecca for startups, technology, and innovation, has made a big push into attracting developers by making city data and other date from its data.SFgov.org Web site available via API. For example, the city’s MUNI (city bus service) API is available for developers to build apps with using information about bus stations, schedules, and arrivals. Even the United States government jumped on the API bandwagon by making available data.gov, which provides public access to high-value machine-readable data sets generated by the U.S government.
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You can now build jQuery Mobile apps in Tiggzi and export the app for Windows Phone (with PhoneGap).
VS Project is a Windows Phone PhoneGap project. We will be adding binary build as well. To get a binary, you have two options: 1) build it yourself; 2) take it to PhoneGap Build.
Yesterday we attended mobile hackathon sponsored by Microsoft and PhoneGap. The goal was to build a PhoneGap app and install in on Windows Phone. We used Tiggzi App Builder, PhoneGap Build and very quickly installed an app on Windows Phone. Thanks to @jccim for inviting us and giving us a brand new Windows Phone for testing.
Build an HTML5/jQuery Mobile app in Tiggzi Mobile App Builder:
Export the app as HTML/JavaScript/CSS:
We will be adding Windows Phone support to Tiggzi in May (first source code export, followed by binary build).
Upload the app to PhoneGap Build, download the Windows Phone version:
You are done!
We just published a new hands-on tutorial on creating HTML5/jQuery Mobile app (can also be exported as PhoneGap app) using StackMob backend in Tiggzi app builder.
Sign up for Tiggzi Free plan today and build this mobile app.
The final app is shown below. On the first page we get a list messages we retrieved from StackMob back-end. You can also add a new message:
Click on a message takes you to second page where a message can be deleted:
This is how the first page looks in Tiggzi:
ReadWriteWeb published SAP Plans to Dominate Enterprise Mobile Apps with HTML5 and New Partnerships article a few days ago. SAP acquired a mobile development firm Syclo and also announced important partnerships with Appcelertaor, Adobe (PhoneGap) and Sencha to become “…most powerful enterprise mobile developers in the world”.
Dan Rowinksi makes a number of very good points.
Enterprise mobile development is different from its consumer counterparts. The objectives of enterprise apps often have less to do with mobile device performance and more to do with functionality. Consumer app development often centers on games and location, testing how well an app can perform within the bounds of a mobile device’s hardware. While location is an increasingly important feature for many enterprises, communication, data management and collaboration are the real drivers in enterprise mobility.
Most enterprise or business apps are content or data-driven. More and more enterprise expose their data, content and resources via REST API services and these apps consume that data. This is the next evolution of client/server architecture or more precise, the new mobile-cloud shift. Basicially, you got a mobile app talking connected to cloud-based REST API resources. HTML5 or hybrid (PhoneGap) mobile apps are the perfect fit here.
In this type of environment, strict native applications are not always the most cost-efficient solution.
Natively supporting iOS, Android, and at least another platform Windows Phone or BlackBerry is simply a challenge and very expensive for most organizations. It’s not uncommon for a company first to release the iOS app, then after some time followed by Android, followed by mobile web and maybe Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Maintaining and updating these apps is a challenge and different versions usually have different features, with iOS version having the most features.
While it is nice to have a mobile development guru on staff that can create an app for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, those types of people are hard to find and may not be attracted to enterprise development work.
We (Exadel) have a large number of enterprise customers, and that’s exactly the problem they are facing today. Finding qualified mobile developers for different platforms is difficult.
SAP wants to be the mobile powerhouse by partnering with Sencha, PhoneGap (Adobe) and Appcelerator.
Sencha is the “…leading HTML5 development frameworks and can create hybrid apps for both iOS and Android. PhoneGap (Adobe) is hybrid mobile framework that makes it very easy to packaqe mobile apps as native (hybrid) apps and also gives you access to native device features. Appcelerator’s, Titanium SDK leverages JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS to create native apps with Web-based software. Note: I’m not aware of any Web-based development tools provided by Appcelerator.
But, you don’t have to be SAP to be a mobile powerhouse, there are cloud tools that make it very simple and easy to build HTML5 and hybrid (PhoneGap) apps connected to REST API services.
Tiggzi is a cloud-based mobile app builder. Because it’s running in the cloud there is nothing to install or download (as opposed to Appcelerator tools which are more traditional tools and need to be installed and configured). It’s very easy to get started. It comes with a visual, drag-and-drop builder for building the UI, with jQuery Mobile and HTML5 components.
Because the builder is running the cloud, trying or testing the app is super easy. With a single click, you can open the app in browser (desktop) or on the actual device.
Tiggzi also uses the simple and powerful PhoneGap framework to create hybrid apps. First, any HTML5 mobile app can be exported as PhoneGap app (iOS, Android). This this allow you to put the app into the app market. Second, in addition to just putting the app inside a native wrapper you can also invoke any of the PhoneGap’s native API. Lastly, Tiggzi comes with Android and iOS binary build (similar to PhoneGap Build). Can’t get any simpler. Build the app in Tiggzi, get iOS or Android app in seconds.
Enterprises have vast amount of resources exposed as REST API. Mobile apps created in Tiggzi can quickly and easily connect and consume any cloud-based REST API’s. Tiggzi comes with a powerful REST services editor where the service can be defined, tested (similar to apigee.com test console) and even its JSON response structure created automatically. Once the service is created, it is mapped to mobile UI using a visual mapper:
If you need to create your own mobile back-end services, there are powerful and easy easy to use cloud-services such as StackMob and Parse. Anything you create in these services is instantly exposed as REST services which in turn can be consumed inside a mobile app (built in Tiggzi).
As you can see, you can easily have your own mobile powerhouse, in the cloud with Tiggzi app builder, HTML5, jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap, REST API’s and mobile back-end services.
AT&T Developer Program offers a rich set of API’s, one of them being able to send SMS messages. I created a tutorial that shows how to build an HTML5, jQuery Mobile app connected to AT&T SMS API in Tiggzi Mobile App Builder.
Try the AT&T SMS API tutorial or any other hands-one tutorials.
We got some cool stuff planned in our April release for Tiggzi Mobile App Builder:
You can always check the roadmap here: http://help.tiggzi.com/roadmap
In case you missed it, here is what we released in March.
We just published a new, step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to build an HTML5 mobile app in Tiggzi Mobile App Builder connected to OpenShift REST API. It’s based on this example.
The app has two pages, and two services. One service gets the current list of users. The second services creates a new user. Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions! If you are new to Tiggzi, the cloud-based HTML5 and PhoneGap mobile app builder – simply sign up for a Free plan.
We are going to be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 27 – March 1, 2012. Stop by our stand and learn how incredibly easy it is to build HTML5, jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap, and REST mobile apps using Tiggzi, the cloud-based mobile app builder. If you want, BYOR (Bring Your Own REST) and we will build a mobile app using your REST service.
