Thursday, October 17, 2013

Appcelerator Titanium Studio 3.x - Cross-Platform Mobile Development

Appcelerator Titanium Studio 3.x - Cross-Platform Mobile Development

Here are few notes on my first look at this product.

The FB Group for TechMasters TwinCities brought up cross-platform mobile development and the Appcelerator product.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/25823523812/

The product page wasn't immediately very intuitive to me however it looks like the Titanium Studio product is a free solo development path.
http://www.appcelerator.com/plans-pricing/

After registering and an email confirmation the download and install was a reasonably small footprint.

Although had the 64-bit JDK installed on my Windows 8 laptop Titanium Studio 3.x would not proceed.

You will need the 32-bit JDK
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

Which is noted here.
http://docs.appcelerator.com/titanium/latest/#!/guide/Prerequisites

After installing the side-by-side install of the 32-bit JDK there was no further setup necessary for Java which was a question for me as the error led me to believe I may need to add Java to my path! This link was helpful, so I didn't add Java to the Path, although I have a JAVA_HOME which I believe was for Eclipse?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10943763/using-64bit-and-32-bit-jdk

Node.JS was installed on my machine. Github was configured into the IDE.

http://docs.appcelerator.com/titanium/latest/#!/guide/Quick_Start-section-29004949_QuickStart-YourFirstMobileApp

Configure Native SDK
Android, Blackberry and Tizen are listed.

(What IS Tizen? - No Windows or Apple?)

A surprisingly nice dynamic validation occurred upon entering the path to the Android SDK that exists under the ADT Bundle with Android Eclipse.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Now to update Android SDK, requirements are for level 10 which surprised me, Nook is on 15....

>>>Android configuration details.

One or more pieces are missing from the Android SDK. It may be that the Android SDK is already installed and Titanium Studio cannot locate the directory, or it may be that some additional components need to be installed.
Items required:
  • An Android SDK is missing. Titanium requires Android platform 2.3.*
  • Add-On addon.+google.+apis.+10
<<<

IOS looks available when following a number of steps, free to code against if not testing on a physical mac device.

Question now is if not persuing the iOS SDK here, what does Titanium studio potentially offer the Android developer?

Moving from the "Get Started" to the "Develop" tab I see that a Nook example is available.

Selecting a project, calling it "MyFirstTitaniumApp"
Running, using Android emulator, launching.
All very quick and easy so far.

So where is my app?
The quick start instructions suggest I should see a white screen with the words "Welcome to Titanium!", which I don't. Can I find this app on the phone?

On the emulator, trying menu, and a bunch of stuff, clicking menu again, and now I see it. I did run again if that made a difference?

While I barely know what I am doing in both of these environments, Titanium Studio does seem easier and faster than Android SDK, ADT Bundle. Will TS bring me a more advanced framework to build upon and one that makes it easy to publish iOS as well? Will it have the emulator capabilities that the ADT bundle has???