Is there a way to automate conversion of web app to iphone or android native app?

Question

I came across this link: http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596805784/ which seems to suggest web app can be converted to native iphone without writing a single line of objective-c code. But the book mentioned there is outdated now and things may have changed a lot. Are there open source software that will allow me to automatically convert my web application to native iphone ( or android) application? By the way my web application is html5 canvas based animation application with lot of html and css as well.

Answer 1

PhoneGap doesn't generate native code for you: it creates an application consisting of a WebView and throws your HTML code on it. From personal exerience I can add that the performance is quite slow, on both iPhone and Android, compared to a native app. jqTouch creates a nice way to access your web application, but the application remains a web application residing on your site, plus you have to use some jquery for styling. Apparently the only one that actually does generate native code is Appcelerator Titanium. On RhoMobile I never managed to get to the point to actually write some Ruby code because you have to know all the Ruby in he word just to install it on your Mac. So the verdict was to sit down and develop the app in objective-c.

Answer 2

Have you looked at PhoneGap?