AngularJS + WebApp on mobile platforms

Since my last post about android dev, times have changed ;-). I've made two mainstream apps. The last one reach the place #78 of the "top new free" on the playStore, during 1 day ;-)

Native apps are "fun" to developp, except the fact that I've never used newest widgets/api, cause I was targeting a large panel of android's versions. I've played a lot with Eclipse Env, and the play store console. It's amazing, but it's definitively not my cup of tea. What a pain to write so many boilerplate lines of code to make a so simple httprequest (java pain), or to parse a json object !

So, I'm back in the web development. I found something that is really interesting (and it sweet my needs), because it can cover every (html5-)platforms ;-)

Here is a recipe :

• Take a good cloud platform, like GAE, to serve a website.
• Code your backends using httprequests/json(p), in the CRUD style
• Make your website with main html5 features : appcache, localStorage, canvas, workers, etc ...
• Use and abuse of AngularJS in your html5 pages, to make a rich client side easily.
• Code your look'n'feel with responsive design patterns (and css3), to adapt your screen to yours audiences.
• Optionally, make phonegap bootstraps, to give better experience on some devices (ex: android, to remove the navigation bar of chrome ;-) )
• Optionally, you can have access to peripherals thru phonegap/cordova.js.

So you can make (web)apps, which work offline (using localstorage) or online (using your json backends), which work on every platforms in the same manner, which are easier to re-deploy. Everything is not perfect yet, but it's definitively the way to go. Thanks to angularjs which provide a simple way (MVC) to create complex objects to interact with users (it's the perfect approach, while waiting for the webcomponents).