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Is it possible to develop iPhone application using C#?

Can I build a native-looking iPhone web app using Ruby on Rails?

  • I would like to rapidly develop a prototype of my iPhone application. Many people tout the rapid-nature and simplicity of learning Ruby to create great web applications. Can I develop a mobile web application using Ruby development skills? (Note: I have no programming experience, and my goal is to create a working prototype of my already designed iPhone application).

  • Answer:

    Yes. Looking like an iOS native app is simple, it's really just CSS (which you can do via Rails, of course). Check out Sencha (http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/touch/examples/kitchensink/), they have a lot of good CSS you can learn from. Behaving like a native app is harder - JavaScript will get you a long way there, but some swipe and multi-touch actions won't match quite right. And worse, DOM manipulation is pretty slow on mobile, so expect performance issues. If you app only needs tapping and a limited swiping you'll be fine. My co-founder and I have prototyped several mobile apps using Rails, a couple of which needed to look native. It can definitely be done. That said, it's not easy. Since you have no experience in Rails or HTML/CSS/JavaScript, it may take a long time to make the app you have in your head. If at all possible, start simple, with clickable wire frames.

Tom O'Neill at Quora Visit the source

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There are a number of wrappers including: Phone Gap : http://phonegap.com/ Titanium Mobile : http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile-application-development/ JQuery Mobile : http://jquerymobile.com/ There are a number of other options out there. Essentially it allows you to wrap your web application to create a native or near native application. They can be useful to quickly create a prototype. As a word of caution, your final app will be much clumsier than a native application since these wrappers "fake" a lot of native actions, and often experience lag. If you are simply wanting to gain feedback about your idea, and having no programming experience, I'd suggest pen & paper and show it to people. Look up "paper prototyping" for lots of examples of how to do it well. If people want the real thing, hire a firm or a developer to build it.

Owen Mead-Robins

I have developed using rubymotion (http://www.rubymotion.com/ ).  Ruby motion has similar classes that exist in native ios programming languages (like COCOA). It can be completely native if you build with rubymotion.

Raghu Sangars

Yes, Now you can. You have to use Rubymotion. http://www.rubymotion.com/. Check out the discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3924657

Arkid Mitra

I do believe it can be done by utilising Rhomobile. Check it out at - http://rhomobile.com/

Andy Nico

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