In the last few weeks, I've been working on a mobile application as a side project. I used IBM Worklight Studio (get the free for developers version here) to design and package the application. Today I used the Android SDK to deploy that application to my Motorola Photon (Android) Smart Phone.
Not really a performance oriented post, but I wanted to quickly talk about how easy this was. I was able to, without any knowledge of Android programming specifics, get this application written and deployed.
Worklight allows you to use open and portable HTML5/JavaScript and popular AJAX widget libraries (jQuery/DOJO) to implement applications that look to be native on each device you target all the while allowing you to access device specific features. So far, I've only deployed to my personal Android (note I'm not a Apple fan). If my wife lets me, I might deploy to her iPhone (she unfortunately is an Apple fan). The cool thing about Worklight is I should be able to take the same HTML5/JS codebase and re-target to iPhone. My guess is now that I have one version done, moving to iPhone shouldn't take more than a few hours.
With HTML5/JavaScript/JavaScript Mobile Widgets and embedded browsers becoming ubiquitous, it really does seem like this environment is becoming what Java is to servers. Write "once", run "everywhere". I did run into small issues (like Date formatting), so its not perfect yet, but its getting darn close. Tends to feel like Applets on the client years and years ago. I wonder if this development paradigm will, over time, make the mobile development experience as easy and open as Java has to writing server applications.
