appMobi wants to make mobile web applications more attractive by open sourcing several technologies: JavaScript Bridge API –a cross-platform API providing access to the hardware-, mobiUs Web App Browser –a browser that looks and behaves like a native application, and HTML5 Game Acceleration – a Canvas object that improves HTML5 speed for games.
appMobi has decided to open source several of their HTML5 mobile development technologies - JavaScript Bridge API, mobiUs Web App Browser, and HTML5 Game Acceleration – on this year’s Black Friday. Sam Abadir, CTO at appMobi, explained the move as a push helping transitioning from native apps to web ones: “To help advance the industry’s move from native apps to Web-based apps, we are sharing our mobile HTML5 knowledge with the global software development community.”
JavaScript Bridge API is a set of APIs making available iOS and Android native functionality to web developers, including support for accelerometer, camera, display, higher device functions such as notification, file, player, access to the DirectCanvas plugin, support for Analytics API used to track how an application is used and accessed, and others.
mobiUs Web App Browser is a mobile browser that simulates a native application, allowing access to all hardware features of the device and it runs apps with or without an Internet connection. mobiUs uses HTML5’s Canvas to render applications. It is currently supported on iOS, but an Android version is planned for January 2012.
HTML5 Game Acceleration attempts to make HTML5 fast enough for games by using a DirectCanvas object that is not impacted by the overhead of reflowing text, mapping hot spots, and creating indexes for reference links. appMobi claims a 500% performance increase in a benchmark with multiple animated entities.
appMobi provides a development XDK for iOS and Android enabling the developer to deploy the application as native code, HTML5 web app or Chrome app. Developers use their IDE of choice to edit HTML, JavaScript or CSS. The XDK, a Chrome app itself, builds the application and runs it inside an emulator, simulating an accelerometer, WiFi/3G connections, and geolocation. The app can also be deployed on an actual device for more realistic testing. The XDK and the technologies open sourced are free, appMobi making money providing additional cloud services: push messaging, in-app payments, over-the-air updates, and custom analytics.
Currently, there are about 27,000 users using appMobi and 40,000 projects under development.