Mobile Web Development

Hey, what's that squarish lump in your pocket? No, not your wallet, that other lump, the one in front. What is that thing? A pocket watch? A calculator? A day planner? A telephone? A television? A whole frickin computer? No, my friends, it is the Internet. Right. In. Your. Pocket. Always available at the tips of your fingers.

Sure, that fancy smartphone runs some cute little utilities and games they call "native apps," but the real power is the ability to tap into the incredibly vast worldwide network of data and knowledge. Besides, who really wants to create programs using fragile old languages like Objective-C or bloated monstrosities like Java? There's gotta be a better way. The web runs on HTML and Javascript. As web developers, we know these languages. We love them. They're modern, flexible, and awesome. How about we use them instead?

Hellz yeah, buddy, you're in luck. There are several solutions that will let you leverage your existing web development skills to create mobile apps. As a bonus, most of the apps you create using these tools will run on multiple smart phone platforms. You can write it once and run it (m)anywhere!

Here's what we have lined up for you:

Chris Rittersdorf (https://www.meetup.com/grwebdev/members/10955171/) (Mutually Human Software (http://mutuallyhuman.com/))

PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com/): You can write mobile apps without having to learn Objective-C?!

Jonathon Hoyt (https://www.meetup.com/grwebdev/members/3163008/) (Ordered List (http://orderedlist.com/))

Appcelerator Titanium (http://www.appcelerator.com/): Developing native apps for iOS and Android as a web developer is now within your grasp using tools like Appcelerator Titanium. Jonathon will explain how to get started, what pitfalls to look out for, and where to go to learn how to get your app into the AppStore and Android MarketPlace. He'll briefly touch on the advantages and disadvantages of an app compiler like Titanium versus an app wrapper like Phonegap.

Brandon Keepers (https://www.meetup.com/grwebdev/members/2488128/) (Ordered List (http://orderedlist.com/))

Brandon will be sharing his experiences with porting an HTML5 web application to mobile browsers. He'll share lessons he learned the hard way, touching on issues with CSS, JavaScript, general organization, and the infinite pain of supporting every variation of Android (a.k.a. death by a million webkit variants).

John Hwang (https://www.meetup.com/grwebdev/members/2169755/) (Mutually Human Software (http://mutuallyhuman.com/))

John will be presenting on the "how" of mobile-first web development. It is a continuation of Janson's talk on the "why" we should do mobile-first development. It's going to focus mostly on the HTML/CSS/JS issues of mobile-first web development and will not be covering any issues related to the issues related to the programmatic issue of mobile application development.