Rhodes approach of NATIVE smartphone apps written with web standards validated

Recently Nitobi (the company behind PhoneGap) announced that they had been acquired.    Congratulations to Andre Charland, Brian Leroux, and the rest of the PhoneGap team.   We have always said that if you don’t need the data synchronization, Model View Controller pattern, industrial capabilities such as realtime barcode and NFC, and broadest device support that Rhodes offers – PhoneGap is a great option (effectively identical to Rhodes).   Both Rhodes and PhoneGap support writing great user interfaces using HTML (for NATIVE apps not web apps), especially combined with HTML5 styling libraries such as jQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch.   All while still providing full device capabilities and all the other advantages of a true native app.

Right now other mobile frameworks and platforms such as Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR and Appcelerator promote their own proprietary UI libraries that duplicate what HTML and those styling libraries have already standardized (in my opinion not nearly as well).  Well now Adobe has thrown in the towel and purchased PhoneGap.  It is the first of many “proprietary UI” libraries that will soon be sent to the ashcan of history.

In summary,  if you want to write a native smartphone app, use a smartphone framework like Rhodes or PhoneGap. If you want to build an informational smartphone app use one that has MVC, synced data, an ORM, and other modern development best practices.  Whatever you do, avoid frameworks that promote proprietary approaches as you may be left behind with a deadend niche technology as many Flash developers are about to experience.