Appcelerator Titanium
Encyclopedia
Appcelerator Titanium is a platform for developing mobile, tablet and desktop applications using web technologies. Appcelerator Titanium is developed by Appcelerator Inc. and was introduced in December 2008. Support for developing iPhone- and Android-based mobile applications was added in June 2009. Support for developing iPad-based tablet apps was added in April 2010. BlackBerry support was announced on June 2010 but it is still in closed beta.
Appcelerator Titanium Mobile is one of several phone web based application framework
solutions allowing web developers to apply existing skills to create native applications for iPhone and Android. Yet, while using the familiar JavaScript syntax, developers will also have to learn the extensive Titanium API, which is quite different from familiar web frameworks such as jQuery. Still, it is simpler to learn a new API than to learn a new language (Objective C or Java) and several new APIs.
Appcelerator Titanium is frequently compared to Adobe Air
for developing desktop applications for Windows, Mac and also Linux (New releases of AIR are no longer being developed for Linux). Traditionally, proprietary tools and specialized skills are required to develop native software applications for each computing platform.
Appcelerator Titanium includes a web-based, cross-compilation tool which requires internet access and a developer account. The tool can deploy standalone applications for Mac, Windows, and Linux from any of those platforms. It does this by submitting the source files to a proprietary server-side solution which then returns the binaries. An open source command-line compiler is also available which is not subject to the same network and account requirements, but it does not cross-compile. Mobile compilation is subject to additional requirements: iPhone builds require Mac OS X and the iPhone SDK, and Android builds require the Android SDK and Mac, Windows, or Linux. The latest version of Appcelerator Titanium's cross-compiler was built using itself.
It is noteworthy however, that for Titanium Mobile, the term cross-compiler is misleading: All application source code gets deployed to the mobile device, and it is only there that it "cross-compiled", or, more accurately it is interpreted. This has several consequences. During development, errors in the source code do not occur until run-time. At run time, the loading performance is lower, as the last compilation step (i.e. interpreting the source code on the device) needs to be done every time the application runs. Thus, the term "cross-compiler" is more of a marketing term than an appropriate technical description.
Developers reports that although working with Titanium gives fast results, making Titanium well suited for prototyping, there are issues around differences in behaviour of the API cross-platform, stability and memory management, however, that makes some developers re-write their apps in native code in the end.
In June 2011, Appcelerator released Titanium Studio and Titanium Mobile 1.7. Titanium Studio is a full open standards IDE that is derived from Aptana Studio which Appcelerator acquired in January 2011. In April 2010 Appcelerator expanded the Titanium product line with the Titanium Tablet SDK. The Titanium Tablet SDK draws heavily from the existing support for iPhone but also includes native support for iPad-only user interface controls such as split views and popovers. Initially the Tablet SDK supports only Apple's iPad.
Appcelerator, Inc. also offers cloud-based services for packaging, testing and distributing software applications developed on the Titanium platform. The company expanded its product line in January 2011 by acquiring Aptana, Inc, a developer of open source tools for building web applications.
Appcelerator Titanium Mobile is one of several phone web based application framework
Multiple phone web based application framework
A multiple phone web based application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of phone applications that are written as embedded dynamic websites and may leverage native phone capabilities, like geo data or contact lists...
solutions allowing web developers to apply existing skills to create native applications for iPhone and Android. Yet, while using the familiar JavaScript syntax, developers will also have to learn the extensive Titanium API, which is quite different from familiar web frameworks such as jQuery. Still, it is simpler to learn a new API than to learn a new language (Objective C or Java) and several new APIs.
Appcelerator Titanium is frequently compared to Adobe Air
Adobe Integrated Runtime
Adobe Integrated Runtime, also known as Adobe AIR, is a cross-platform runtime environment developed by Adobe Systems for building Rich Internet Applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, and Ajax, that can be run as desktop applications or on mobile devices...
for developing desktop applications for Windows, Mac and also Linux (New releases of AIR are no longer being developed for Linux). Traditionally, proprietary tools and specialized skills are required to develop native software applications for each computing platform.
Appcelerator Titanium includes a web-based, cross-compilation tool which requires internet access and a developer account. The tool can deploy standalone applications for Mac, Windows, and Linux from any of those platforms. It does this by submitting the source files to a proprietary server-side solution which then returns the binaries. An open source command-line compiler is also available which is not subject to the same network and account requirements, but it does not cross-compile. Mobile compilation is subject to additional requirements: iPhone builds require Mac OS X and the iPhone SDK, and Android builds require the Android SDK and Mac, Windows, or Linux. The latest version of Appcelerator Titanium's cross-compiler was built using itself.
It is noteworthy however, that for Titanium Mobile, the term cross-compiler is misleading: All application source code gets deployed to the mobile device, and it is only there that it "cross-compiled", or, more accurately it is interpreted. This has several consequences. During development, errors in the source code do not occur until run-time. At run time, the loading performance is lower, as the last compilation step (i.e. interpreting the source code on the device) needs to be done every time the application runs. Thus, the term "cross-compiler" is more of a marketing term than an appropriate technical description.
Developers reports that although working with Titanium gives fast results, making Titanium well suited for prototyping, there are issues around differences in behaviour of the API cross-platform, stability and memory management, however, that makes some developers re-write their apps in native code in the end.
In June 2011, Appcelerator released Titanium Studio and Titanium Mobile 1.7. Titanium Studio is a full open standards IDE that is derived from Aptana Studio which Appcelerator acquired in January 2011. In April 2010 Appcelerator expanded the Titanium product line with the Titanium Tablet SDK. The Titanium Tablet SDK draws heavily from the existing support for iPhone but also includes native support for iPad-only user interface controls such as split views and popovers. Initially the Tablet SDK supports only Apple's iPad.
Appcelerator, Inc. also offers cloud-based services for packaging, testing and distributing software applications developed on the Titanium platform. The company expanded its product line in January 2011 by acquiring Aptana, Inc, a developer of open source tools for building web applications.
Features
The core features of Appcelerator Titanium include:- Support for standards-based web technologies: HTML, CSS and Javascript on all platforms along with PHP, Python and Ruby for desktop platforms
- Integrated support for popular JavaScript and AJAX FrameworksComparison of JavaScript frameworks- Rationale :There are many JavaScript frameworks available. The intention of this comparison is to show some examples of JavaScript frameworks with their different features.- Table of Javascript Frameworks :- External links :* * * * * * * *...
including jQueryJQueryjQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...
, YUI, MooToolsMooToolsMooTools is a lightweight, object-oriented, web-application framework for JavaScript, written in JavaScript. It is released under the free, open-source MIT License...
, Scriptaculous and others. - A platform-independent API to access native UI components including navigation bars, menus, dialog boxes and alerts, and native device functionality including the file system, sound, network and local database
- API access to native mobile functionality like geolocation, accelerometer and maps
- Extensibility through open interfaces and licensing, allowing developers to introduce support for additional scripting languages, media codecs and device-specific functionality
See also
- Multiple phone web based application frameworkMultiple phone web based application frameworkA multiple phone web based application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of phone applications that are written as embedded dynamic websites and may leverage native phone capabilities, like geo data or contact lists...
- List of rich internet application frameworks
- PhoneGapPhoneGapPhoneGap is an open-source mobile development framework developed by Nitobi Software. It enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3, instead of often less-known languages such as Objective-C...