Presenter: James Hugman, Future Platforms
Drawing Room
Time: 14:30 – 15:30, Friday 30 September

We’ve heard a lot about Native versus Web in 2011. This talk isn’t about that.

We’ve heard a lot of packaging the web as a native app – building apps out of web technologies that look and feel like native apps.

We’re beginning to hear that this isn’t working out so well.

So where do we go from here?

Clients are still asking for native quality, but at mobile web prices. They still want to release the same app on multiple platforms, without breaking the bank.

This talk explores the space between native apps and web technologies; focusing in particular on DOM-less Javascript.

This is becoming an interesting space with products like Titanium, Game Closure, Impact for iOS. And it is still a massive space to explore.

This talk will also see the introduction of our own exploration, and a case study of building a large successful multi-platform app with it: the official Glastonbury 2011 app.

James has been coding since the age of 8. His first language was BBC BASIC, and he still gets misty-eyed reading the source code for Elite.

Since then, he has worked on software in a variety of domains, languages and idioms – in large servers, low-end mobile phones, and pretty much everything in between.

He currently works at Future Platforms, designing and building software for the extreme limits of mobile phones – underground, up mountains, and at muddy, outdoor festivals.