Phonegap or steroid.js?

Question

I recently started learning Phonegap when I read about appgyver and steroids.js. The latter seems to be a very simple and quick way to create applications. Now I am confused, should I jump and concentrate fully on learning the application, or is there a phone gap element that I should also study?

Answer 1

It somehow depends on which platform you are going to use.

As far as I understand, IOS support for Steroids is much better than Android, also with a higher priority for future development plans. Many important features are not supported on Android, for example, Drawer's own user interface. In addition, one of my test phones (Moto G) has broken internal user interface calls in JavaScript.

For me, the main reason we consider Steroids is because they are native UI products, but disappointing me on Android.

Even worse, Steroids now only has iOS simulator support. Therefore, for Android development, you can only use the AppGyver scanner on your Android phone.

Therefore, I suggest you conduct a further assessment if you work only for iOS or Android, but do not care about your own user interfaces. In any case, Steroids has a better workflow.

Update 10/18/2014:

I recently worked on some PhoneGap applications, and I think I might have found a few more things related to this topic.

• Today, Steroids have much better Android support, with the latest new Appgyver scanner. Many user interface components now work very well.
• Steroids has a closed source build system, i.e. you will have to use your build service every time you want to publish a new version of your applications. However, this is somehow necessary, since Steroids is famous for its native user interface components and its own transitions.
• Steroids have pretty poor support for some PhoneGap / Cordova plugins. This is also mainly due to the private build system. You cannot create your final application yourself in Eclipse / Android Studio / XCode, like what we do for many other PhoneGap / Cordova applications.
• If you want to take advantage of Steroids' own user interface transitions, your web project will be divided into several parallel parts (which work in their respective WebViews). This increases the complexity of your project, especially when you use some web frameworks.

So, if you really like your own user interfaces, native transitions and don't mind getting attached to your own platform, you can try Steroids. Otherwise, I suggest you try Ionic ( http://ionicframework.com/ ), which is a pretty clean web implementation based on PhoneGap / Cordova.

Answer 2

I would definitely go with AppGyver. Steroids adds the following on top of PhoneGap:

• Native interface for some elements and transitions
• Very well thought out and fast workflow.

I also like the way you watched PhoneGap. Then he found about Steroids and began to develop with steroids. I really like the workflow.

Answer 3

I think you should study, since Steroids.js comes with a built-in Phongap. I would think of Steroids as the top layer for Phonegap