IPfaces is a client-server framework for iPhone (and presumably other platforms soon) that enables developers to create a server-side app using their familiar tools then connect to a generic client that’s already downloadable in the App Store. It’s dual license, with a GPL Open Source version for free projects and a commercial version for for-profit apps. Unlike other frameworks that allow you to create an iPhone app using non Objective-C tools, this one gives you a real client, not just a wrapper for a web app.
If this isn’t balancing on the very edge of the definition of “interpreted code”, I don’t know what is.
Let’s see… A generic client… The UI is made of plain-text markup that is transformed at runtime…. Sure sounds interpreted to me. I guess maybe it is limited in that the logic all happens on the server. But if it’s really the case that *all* of the logic, even the display logic, happens on the server, then it sounds like a sure recipe for a dog-slow, poor user experience….
If Apple can accept this platform, which is apparently either within the bounds of the definition of “interpreted” or provides quite the crappy/slow user experience, then why the hell not Flash or Java? They are much closer to the definition of “compiled” than this thing. Grrr, I say, GRRRRRRRR!!!! I will never buy a f*!@ing iPhone.
Edited 2010-02-17 23:12 UTC
Sounds like you would really like an iPhone to me. Why not let it go.
Don’t worry … perhaps you won’t be able to:
http://www.better-trades.com/analyst-exchange/tech-comparisons/ipho…
This software-patents “IP troll” stuff is really starting to get very, very silly of late.
Edited 2010-02-20 07:02 UTC
It’s a browser, isn’t it?
It is kind of a browser, but aimed at native look&feel of platform it runs at. And despite the browser it can use specific functions of the device, which browser can not or is not allowed to, such as GPS, camera, compass etc. So it is not a browser, but a tool for developers to create native UI of mobile network applications more easily.
More client platforms are supported, such as BlackBerry and J2ME and there is Android and Win Mobile planned.
And more, iPFaces comes with server libraries too, so PHP, Java and ASP.NET programmers can leverage their knowledge and start programming robust applications for mobile platforms instantly.
A friendly advice: get rid of the “evaluator” at http://www.ipfaces.org/node/76 or at least put it on a page for pointy-haired managers.
The only way I managed to make it recommend native applications is to set everything but device-specific features and multimedia to low-priority, which is unrealistic at best :-). Even that resulted in a tie, and in other cases the percentages don’t add up to 100%. The technology itself looks legitimately interesting and could be helpful even to people who know Obj-C and CocoaTouch but would prefer a web-programming approach when it is better suited.
This sentence of the summary seems odd:
It’s dual license, with a GPL Open Source version for free projects and a commercial version for for-profit apps.
If there is a GPL version of the software one can already create for-profit apps.
A dual licence is usually used when another option is desirable for proprietary apps.
Not even speaking of this being largely server based and GPL not requiring distribution of changes one doesn’t distribute to others, which is why such things are often covered by AGPL instead
It is little simplified to fit the news format. There are actually more editions of the solution. One is free, released to community under GNU GPL and you are right, one can make profit of it and modify it freely under the terms of that license.
Besides that there are other editions which differ mainly by level of testing, stability, provided support and advanced features, targeted for commercial, non-free and proprietary use. These editions are released under separate license.