On Aug 22, 2008, at 12:15 PM, davidroe wrote: > > in addition to Sean's remarks, I can think of one other way to write > in Java for the iPhone. > > GWT - Google Web Toolkit - http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/ > > This allows you to write and debug your client in Java, which is then > cross-compiled to HTML, Javascript and CSS, which you run inside > Mobile Safari. >
I like GWT overall. I quit using it for the project I'm currently working on because development time was killing me. It takes longer to develop an app using GWT than with traditional Ajax techniques. There's no way around that. You just have to build it into your development plans. The generated JavaScript seems to work okay in iPhone, but it is not at all optimized for iPhone like it is for other browsers. It uses the Safari optimizations, which aren't optimal for the iPhone (there's no support for CSS3 transitions or anything, which could be built into GWT using generators specific to the iPhone). It seemed I was also writing quite a lot of native methods because GWT didn't quite attack the problems I was facing in a way that made sense on the iPhone (handling iPhone 2 events being one). For larger teams that are keenly interested in the debugging ability (which wasn't adding much value to my own development process...I don't use debuggers much at all, so I couldn't really get into using them for GWT) and in the static typing of Java, it could work out well for you. I get the impression that to really make using GWT worthwhile (for any platform, let alone the iPhone), there has to be a critical mass of developers that can benefit from the longer development time and the overhead with the hosted mode browser (soon to be replaced by browser plugins) Java/JavaScript whatever-you-call-it (is it a VM or a transcoder?). Developing in GWT for the iPhone also suffers from not having a hosted mode. So far as I can tell, it's basically impossible to do such a thing on the iPhone. Testing in the Safari hosted mode wasn't sufficient for most things for obvious reasons (no touch events, etc...), requiring a long save/compile cycle. It was just getting too painful for me when I could make progress so much quicker other ways. I just wasn't personally convinced that, for the iPhone, GWT is quite yet the way to go. Once iPhone-specific optimizations are included as one of the GWT permutations it generates, that could very well change. Thanks! Jon Brisbin http://jbrisbin.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iPhoneWebDev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
