Deutsche Telekom releases Unify, metaframework for mobile built on HTML5, JavaScript, and Sass
At JSConf.eu 2010, Deutsche Telekom took the wraps off of their Unify Project which aims to provide a unified API for building cross-platform mobile and desktop applications.
Unify looks to be a metaframework of sorts, wrapping other popular frameworks:
- qooxdoo is a comprehensive and innovative framework for creating rich internet applications (RIAs) using object-oriented JavaScript
- PhoneGap provides a native wrapper for web apps, providing interfaces for device features not supported with browser-based apps alone.
- Sass is a superset of CSS3 syntax and provides programmatic features for CSS such as variables, mixins, and selector nesting, covered way back in episode #1
- Adobe AIR provides a cross-platform runtime for desktop applications.
Unify currently supports iOS, Android, and WebOS devices and plans to support BlackBerry OS 6.0 soon.
API
The Unify API provides a single progamming model to features such as IO, storage, cache, geolocation, and even UI.
Here’s the ScrollView class as an example:
unify.ui.mobile.ScrollView
- Scrolling could be enabled/disabled separately for each axis.
- Indicator style is changable through an API call (per instance)
- Flips back when scrolling out of allowed ranges.
- Smooth animations for deleleration and flip back
- Page based scrolling where the content is auto-splitted into pages which are used for snapping into
Keep an eye on the Unify Roadmap for updates and real-world implementations.
Discussion
Sign in or Join to comment or subscribe