Icenium experience and recommendations

Question

I have to develop a mobile application that is available on Android and iOS.

I do not have any experience with native development for Android or iOS, so I decided to go with some of the existing platforms like PhoneGap, Titanium or Icenium (these platforms provide me with all necessary requirements).

I saw that Icenium requires an invitation code to go through the documentation.

What I want to ask: Has someone played with Icenium? Any recommendations about this cloud-based platform? What about performance?

Answer 1

I have been working with Icenium and I can say that it is fun so far. It is really just an IDE that allows you to use Cordova (PhoneGap) to build apps. There are two IDEs -- one that is browser based and one that is a Windows desktop app. The native desktop app is more featured and has a better User Experience. There is some poetic justice there, if you are looking for it :)

So far, it is certainly young. Support for things like PhoneGap plugins is non-existent so far. I also can't seem to get the app working on a real device, but these are beta bugs and I expect them to be smoothed out.

Although the cloud-based approach is nice because I don't have to worry about using multiple IDEs, you lose a lot of freedom for how you want to develop. For instance, I like using CoffeeScript and there is no support for building, compiling, creating new CS files, etc. Possibly in the future?

Since it is really just an IDE for developing Cordova (PhoneGap) apps, it isn't a different platform from Cordova. It just makes development a bit more streamlined.