Comment Re:Windows only.. (Score 1, Insightful) 217
It was ported to Linux 2 years ago(right after the windows release) but it was never released.
What do they plan to do to grant pixel-level access?
You can do this today with dojox.gfx and it's completely open source. You can use simple calls that are implemented differently on different browsers. On firefox and others your drawings are rendered in SVG, in IE its VML, on others its HTML5's Canvas.
Canva's event model isn't as nicely integrated with the DOM as SVG and VML, but you can pretty much draw things cross platform.
Pure javascript, no plugins required.
It's Java + Eclipse, which is notoriously slow when compared to XCode and the iPhone Simulator
Eclipse isn't required for development, though it is extremely useful. And you don't like Java, there's a Native SDK now: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.5_r1/index.html
UI design is done in very verbose XML, as opposed to Apple's Interface Builder, which lets you easily drag things where you want them
The GUI is described in XML, but you don't have to use a text editor to build or edit it. There are in fact tools in Eclipse to drag and drop components into the GUI. Heck, there's even an applet I've seen that will do some point and clicky GUI creation and spit out XML.
Would you rather that there was only a closed source proprietary IDE that spit out binary data to build your GUI for Android?
Since Android is a platform and not tied to a single device, you have to design in "device independent pixels" which is much different than the iPhones set-in-stone 320x480 resolution
You say that like it's a bad thing. So if apple decided to put out an in-dash car PC using the iphone OS, you'd like the fact that the existing iphone apps look like shit in it? Or would you want the in-dash screen to run at an obscenely low resolution?
How about programming GUIs in way that allows them to play nicely in multiple screen resolutions?
Core Animation... 'nuff said
No, not enough. Please elaborate on why that makes iphone such a great platform to develop on.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker