Comparison between Phonegap and Trigger.io

Question

I'm new to mobile development and am looking for a hybrid framework for a few reasons:

• Faster development: I don't need learn Objective-c/java or install XCode/Eclipse
• Easier to iterate: We're a startup, and need to do a lot of A/B testing as well as iterate quickly. We want to be able to update the app without having to wait for app store approval and for the user to update the app.

Trigger.io solves the latter point - https://trigger.io/reload/ (which is a big plus)

Aside from that, what are the main diffrence between them in terms of (a) learning curve, (2) native UI feel, (3) performance

Answer 1

I work for Trigger so I'm going to represent our side of things.

Trigger is particularly focussed on making a good experience for people who don't want to see the native code and just want to write HTML/JS (we do also support native modules, but we hope that the majority of users won't need to write their own).

In terms of learning curve I highly recommend just giving Trigger a try, we have a free trial and you can be running an app in a simulator or on your device in under an hour.

For native UI Trigger has several modules which add native UI components. For example: https://trigger.io/modules/topbar/current/ and https://trigger.io/modules/tabbar/current/. I'm not sure exactly what is available in Phonegap so I can't make a direct comparison. On both platforms however with modern devices its possible to create very nice UIs with just HTML5/CSS.

As for performance both platforms are similar, depending on your app you may run into some limitations with HTML. For example, graphically intensive games are unlikely to work very well. Normal applications, however, are generally not a problem. See https://trigger.io/examples/ for some examples of what can be achieved.

Answer 2

I originally asked the questions - gonna share my experience so far.

I started with PhonaGap and then switched to Trigger.io. Not necessarily saying that trigger.io is better - my main 2 reasons for switching were:

1. Trigger.io compiles much faster (seconds vs minutes). When I was using phonegap, I was testing my changes using Ripple stimulator - compiling the code after every small change was simply too time consuming. Making sure that your code runs on Ripple is a headache, and when thing didn't work on the device it took forever to debug. With trigger.io I can easily test every single change on the device.
2. Trigger.io allows pushing new changes to your release/app store app (instead of waiting for the users to update your app). To me it is one of the key advantages of HTML5 over native.

Some other notes:

• Trigger.io provides only mediocre customer support (I have a paid account). Not sure about phonegap
• Phonegap has much better opensource support and and way more plugins. With trigger.io if the functionality is not provided by one of their modules, or if you have a bug, you're on your own.