Has Anyone Used the rhomobile Framework?

Question

I have a client asking about the rhomobile framework. I have been researching it a bit and wanted to see what the community at large thought about the framework and what, (if any), problems you came across in developing with it.

Thank you,

L.

Answer 1

I have used an app that uses the framework and have to say that it feels sluggish. From reading the documentation it seems like a valid choice if you want to quickly release a cross platform application.

Answer 2

Basically the strategy of RhoMobile is to leverage the browsers on each device to create a "native feel" by styling the web controls to look like "standard" controls on each device. This means you're somewhat limited in what you can do by what the web capabilities are of each OS/device. So each app is a native app, but it still essentially "runs in the browser".

I'm also unsure of how deployment works with the various platforms, like the App Store and Android Market.

Answer 3

Only the view of the application is rendered in the browser of the platform. There are bindings to access native capabilities of the device from ruby code (taking a picture, accessing GPS data...) and it is possible to extend this with own native code. Of course the view is just HTML and won't be as native as the native UI of the device, but that's the price you have to pay for cross platform development. A big strength of RhoMobile is the build-in sync-capabilities, which lets you synchronize model-data with a central backend.

Answer 4

This guy has compared It to the other available choices (phonegap,tit. appcelerator) maybe could be of some help: http://distractable.net/coding/cross-platform-mobile-mapping-challenge-results-part-1/