Chapter 10

Getting Started with Appcelerator Titanium

What’s in this Chapter?
• Appcelerator Titanium was released in December 2008, and has been
steadily growing in functionality since its release.
• Starting with its Titanium Developer product, Appcelerator provided a
single-point interface to run applications.
• As features were added to the Native iOS SDK, Titanium released a
new, major revision, and each minor version included bug fixes and
code to bring parity between Android and iOS.
Why Use Titanium?
• The primary development languages for Titanium are HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript.
• The compile process generates iOS and Android source code, as well
as a distributable binary, respective to each platform.
• By leveraging the Titanium framework developers are provided a
single way to create all of their UI, transparent to the native
codebase.
Who is Using Titanium?
• NBC, GetGlue,
• Appcelerator keeps track of its user base through the login contained within
the IDE
• When creating projects in Titanium Studio, your login name is registered with
your project's App Id, so Appcelerator understands how many apps you are
developing
• Appcelerator makes sure to let all the developers know when new features
and versions are being released
• Every quarter, Appcelerator, along with IDC (an IT market analysis and
research firm), release their mobile developer analytics report from
information gathered from developer surveys
Getting the Tools You Need
• Installing Titanium Studio
• Downloading the Kitchen Sink
• Development
• Project Structure
• Titanium Basics
• Creating User interfaces
• Basic UI Elements in Titanium
• Basic UI View Elements in Titanium
Getting the Tools You Need
• Basic UI Data/Layout Elements in Titanium
• Debugging
• Connecting Titanium to the Markets
• Versioning Your App
Building the Derby App in Titanium
• Tables
• Pickers
• Navigation (Back Stack) and Tab Groups
• Modal Forms
• Alerts
• Offline Storage
• SQLite
• Isolated Storage
Building the Derby App in Titanium
• Preferences and Settings
• Web Service
• JSON Is Your Friend
• GPS
• Accelerometer
Summary
• Titanium is not a magic bullet. It is a solid framework for developing a single codebase
to deploy to multiple platforms.
• Titanium allows developers to use a language they are more familiar with to create
apps in a domain outside of their knowledge.
• Titanium is not an exact match to native languages. Not all features of the mobile
platforms are exposed (or can necessarily be exposed) in its API.
• With the addition of Titanium Studio, developing in the framework has grown by leaps
and bounds.
• The team at Appcelerator works to pack as much functionality into their framework as
possible.
• Titanium is an excellent tool to learn mobile device programming, and for many
projects can provide the necessary functionality to deliver a finished product.