Saturday, August 16, 2014

Jump start your Cross-Platform App Development skills with Intel's XDK

In my previous post some of the cross-platform app development tools/programs were described in a general way.  In this post I describe the Intel XDK tool which does not require skills except HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript.

From here you can jumpstart your App development skills after downloading the Intel XDK. You can write once and deploy to several platforms.


It is generally argued that while HTML5/CSS3/Javascript is a good option to create cross-platform apps it is only suitable for some simple, inexpensive apps. In order to buld more complex apps you need a single language to access the 'native apis'. Hardware specific apis are accessed
by a variety of languages like Java, .NET, Objective-C etc. There does not exist a single language to access the machine specific information for all platforms.

However, a large number of Apps fall into the 'inexpensive/simple apps' that integrate many of the social media applications and in these cases the Html5/CSS/Javascript is more than adequate. Apps based on HTML5 can also contribute to the number of apps in a store to improve the perceived lack of apps for Windows for example. Well at the end of the day quality and not quantity of apps that matters

What is Intel XDK?

Open Source PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/) technology was instrumental in getting AppMobi (http://www.appmobi.com/) to use HTML5 for App development. Intel came along and acquired AppMobi and it was renamed XDK. Perhaps it then went rounds of revisions and tweaks to become Intel XDK. Right now in preview but will be a full fledged tool one day soon.


This video explains the Open Source PhoneGap.




BTW PhoneGap is free and you can download from the PhoneGap Site.
Here is a screen shot of Intel XDK homepage:



Intel XDK is free and can be downloaded from here,

http://xdk-software.intel.com/

for Windows 7, Windows 8, Apple OSX and Ubuntu Linux.

The installer Intel's Software Install Assistant installs xdk_web_win_master_0876 (~90MB); file version 1.0.9.38
Just double click the installer.


After extraction is completed the Welcome page is displayed.


In the Welcome Page click Next. Here you choose the destination. Default was chosen here.


Click Next to get to the installation summary page.


Click Install.
Installation begins..



Pretty soon it is completed. Very uneventful installaiton.


Click Finish and you are done.
The first time you use it you will have to login into Intel XDK.
Then provide the required information


That's it. Now you are ready to develop.
Watch future Intel XDK posts on
http://hodentek.blogspot.com and/or
http://hodentekMobile.blogspot.com

 

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