On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 6:07 PM, Jonathan Cline <jcline@ieee.org> wrote:
Web apps are never as good as native apps by definition, whether locally served or remote. Installing a local web server to act with a browser as an interface is a common avoidance technique instead of learning the platform-specific GUI development software. It's better to write the native GUI app and then allow exporting the data to a data cloud somewhere.
I disagree. :-)
Standards are important, and there are no standards for app development.
What you build on the Android won't work on a PC, a Mac, or an iPad, unless you use standards that work on all platforms.
Those standards are HTML5 and Javascript, and there are good tools for making apps for the Android and IOS platforms from HTML5 and Javascript. You will not be able to tell the difference between an app done this way and one done the hard way.
All of the devices compile the Javascript into native code. Javascript has access to all of the sensors and effectors on the phone, tablet, etc., just like any other native app on the device. And it is much easier to write the app, and much faster. If you don't like Javascript, there are platforms that allow you to program in Java, Ruby, or C# using the same techniques.
If you think that you have to have a local web server on the tablet and have the Javascript talk to that in order to get things done, you have not seen the direct Javascript APIs for talking to the device. Check out PhoneGap, Apache Cordova, Xamarin Studio, Appcelerator Titanium, B4X, Ionic Framework, Kurogo Mobile Platform, eMobc, Codename One, RhoMobile, MoSync, Intel XDK, RubyMotion, Infinite Monkeys, appMobi, Convertigo, App.js, WebDGap, Trigger.IO, MobileSmith, Zuznow, or appdeck.
They run just as fast as any other native app, and they have as much polish as you want. But unlike raw Android or IOS, they use standards, and work on all platforms. Most of them will build for all of the mobile platforms (Android, IOS, Windows, Blackberry, etc.) with one click.
And disconnecting the user interface from the hardware does not mean that you are forced to use your personal device in a corporate lab. That same $30 tablet will now just work on all of the devices in the lab, instead of each device having to have its own $30 tablet glued on. But more importantly, the computer you use in the lab to write the papers, collect the data, draw the graphs, etc., can also control the lab equipment, or just monitor the experiment.
Even if you do glue the $30 tablet to each device, make sure it is connected to the Internet, so you can get alarms on your phone when you are at lunch and the temperature goes out of bounds because the janitor reset the building thermostat. Being able to check on things from home, and make adjustments in the middle of the night without driving to work, is a good thing.
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAA0yOM79j6v%3DseEDtG1OSYD5oQtKTZG74eWC0Sxd7BZQVNYMEQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment