Hybrid (Native + Web) Mobile App Development

http://engineering.gomiso.com/2011/06/10/hybrid-native-web-mobile-app-development-%E2%80%A2-part-1-the-motivation/

1.We wanted multi-platform feature releases to be iterative, fast and scalable.

The web approach touts strengths that seem to be what Miso needed. No need to submit to an app store, just deploy it on the web at any time and any mobile device with a web browser would be able to get the latest and greatest! Not to mention, you get all the Javascript/CSS goodies all for free!

We liked that. It was the opposite of the native approach. We can get away from painstakingly getting our pretty designs to work across multiple platforms, and release features and bug fixes with a push of a button almost instantly.

However, with web apps that means going anywhere in the app requires firing off a HTTP request and getting a response before you can render anything. It’s slow, clunky, and simply unsuitable for the user experience we wanted to deliver. We couldn’t leverage local caching of pages or data. Zero access to the iOS framework for nifty push notifications, gestures, or even the occasional use of native UI elements.

2. Hybrid

Miso engineers are a greedy bunch. We wanted the best of both worlds; The fast, snappy feel of a native apps coupled with the ease of styling and quick releases of web apps. So we embarked on a long journey of slowly porting native views of Miso’s iPhone app to web views.

It took us months to build a framework we are satisfied with, and we learned a ton on the way to achieving that goal. The Miso app you see now (3.0.x) has web views supporting a majority of our layouts by combining JSON responses from REST API requests with EJS templates. In this latest release (3.0.3), we’ve also introduced the leveraging of local disk caching of javascript/css and web templates to optimize performance; and added support for AJAX requests to make web views even prettier and user friendly.

At this time, we are happy with our solution as it gives us the ability to tweak the look and feel of our app without submitting a release to the app store. It also opens up the path to eventually integrating these web views into Miso apps across other mobile platforms. Ultimately allowing us to release the latest Miso features to all of our users in a timely fashion.

Best Practices: Native + Web Hybrid Mobile Apps

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP12638

Learn different ways to integrate HTML5 into native apps, what tools you can use, and when to build your own. We'll cover achieving high graphics frame rates, touch responsiveness while conserving battery life. Learn the benefits and tradeoffs of mobile graphics hardware acceleration in animation and emulating native UI in mobile web browsers. We'll also touch on Flipboard's use of HTML5.We'll cover these specific technology areas: WebKit and JavaScriptCore; native view system architecture, animated scene graphs; and hardware accelerated graphics drawing and compositing.

Flipboard：iPad 上的革命性社交新闻应用初探

http://www.ifanr.com/14816

到底是什么东西这么奇妙？ —这就是 Flipboard。

这是一个你从来没有听说过的公司，下面的视频是对该公司 CEO Mike McCue 的专访。你可能听说过 Mike。他之前把 TellMe 公司以八亿美元的价码卖给了微软。Flipboard 公司，之前已经从 Kleiner Perkins 那里得到了第一笔投资，今天又公布了新一轮的募资状况以及对于 Ellerdale 项目的收购。

那么什么是 Flipboard？它做了一件非常简单的事情：把你的 Twitter 和 Facebook 变成了一本杂志。你还可以建立一个自定义的杂志，要么选用 Flipboard 内建的版面，要么直接导入Twitter 的列表。这是一个非常强大而且使用感受十分美妙的 Twitter 阅读方式。同样的，你也可以把个人 Twitter 帐号、或者某个品牌的 Twitter 帐号转换成 Flipboard。你可以在 Twitter上 跟随 Techcrunch，然后使用这个应用把 Techcrunch 转换为漂亮的像杂志一样的界面，这样的界面比任何其他阅读器都要容易阅读。