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How to integrate sencha touch plus phone gap?

What are the current limitations of Sencha Touch over a native iOS app?

  • I'm creating an enterprise application to compete with a publicly traded company and I'm set on using Sencha Touch and the iPad as the backbone. Just trying to find out any discrepancies in regards to Sencha Touch vs iOS native apps.

  • Answer:

    Sencha touch API doesn't have the following capabilty: Access to camera (for iOS you could get around using http://code.google.com/p/iphone-photo-picker/. google and apple have both promised support for this feature in the browser) Access to contacts (i don't know of a workaround currently) Access to accelerometer (you could use mobile safari's DeviceOrientation API) Push notification (you could get around using one of the comet techniques like long polling or websockets) Not good for hardcore graphics and animations - graphics and animation support in iOS is superior to css3/svg/canvas. If you developing a graphics heavy game I would stick with native. As you can see, you might have to drop out of the API to find solutions to one of these problems. Another approach is to build a hybrid app with phonegap.

Numan Salati at Quora Visit the source

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There are some specific problems with Sencha Touch particularly with iPad. Of the three issues detailed below relate to orientation changes and the virtual keyboard, and the way modal dialogs are managed. 1. Relating explicitly to using Phonegap (so not a problem with sencha specifically) SenchaTouch does not notice the orientation change - but there is a work around. 2. Any floating form (think popup) cant show a modal dialog, basically you cant nest any forms or components that need a mask (think modal). These modal or floating forms interfere with the standard 'waiting' spinner (which also uses a mask) - this can also be hacked around using explicit z-index values. 3. Sencha Touch does not cope at all well with the virtual keyboard during orientation changes. There are a number of other things to  watch out for. I have blogged them here... http://www.moneytoolkit.com/2011/05/the-problem-with-sencha-touch-and-phonegap/ which links to some excellent tips here... http://www.codesta.com/blog/2011/5/23/sencha-touchphonegap-tips-and-tricks.html They should give you a good idea of some of the pitfalls.

Dan Mullineux

There are a number of limitations with Sencha Touch, especially if you are creating a consumer-facing application. We have found that Sencha's performance can be weak in comparison to native; speed, feedback, general user experience, etc. This can be attributed to a number of different variables: prevalence of memory leaks, cache issues, etc. Despite this being the case, such issues can be resolved although one should weigh the benefits of such an engineering effort - Is this the best use of your bandwidth? In Summary: While Sencha is appealing due to its cross-platform compatibility, there are trade-offs you should be aware of. For consumer-facing apps, native is the way to go.

CJ Hersh

There are a number of limitations of an app developed using the framework of Sencha:   1: The Sencha app developed usually work slow compared to an native iOS app. 2: It does not have the look and feel which a native app usually posses. 3: The Sencha app has limited access to hardware of the phone thus app appears to be less interactive. 4: The offline functionality is very restricted in the Sencha app Resource: http://www.articlesbase.com/programming-articles/tug-of-war-between-native-and-cross-platform-mobile-app-development-7051837.html

Vasundhara Bundela

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