Industry’s first HTML5-mobile application development framework spurs switch to mobile web as the preferred development and deployment platform.
San Francisco (Sencha Conference 2010), November 15, 2010: Sencha — the leader in JavaScript application frameworks — has shipped Sencha Touch(tm), the industry’s first HTML5-based mobile application development framework. Available immediately as a free download, Sencha Touch equips developers to create web apps for modern touch-screen mobile devices, including those powered by Apple iOS and Google Android. Built specifically to provide a consistent application experience across a diversity of devices, Sencha Touch uses advanced HTML5 features to deliver standards-based audio and video, as well as offline data storage.
In June, Sencha Touch was made available as a public beta. Since then, it has been downloaded more than 160,000 times, enabling developers around the world to create a range of mobile web apps including business, education, productivity, social networking, medical, and entertainment.
“Developers are facing enormous pressure to deliver mobile apps that people can access anytime and everywhere, including offline,” said Abraham Elias, CEO of Sencha. “The only common run-time platform across the increasing diversity of modern mobile devices is HTML5. With Sencha Touch, web developers get a polished HTML5 development framework that allows them to write one app, and deploy to any device that can connect to the web. We think developers will also like our new, low price — free.”
The fastest way to build cross-platform web apps for mobile devices
Sencha delivers application frameworks that enable developers to create rich applications for web browsers and mobile devices using web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. Sencha Animator follows on the release of Sencha Touch, an SDK for mobile developers. Together, Sencha Animator and Sencha Touch deliver a powerful mobile application and animation environment for developers and creative designers.
Sencha Touch is built from the ground up to leverage the latest HTML5 family technologies. It has a flexible theming system that can change an application appearance with just a few lines of code. Sencha Touch also incorporates resolution-independence technology, allowing consistent display on devices with different pixel densities. In addition, Sencha Touch incorporates powerful data management classes and a comprehensive touch event system that allows developers to focus on their application, not on the eccentricities of mobile platforms.
KivaTouch is one of the first apps created with Sencha Touch. It leverages the ubiquity of web apps and Kiva’s comprehensive API. Already, it has received tens of thousands of visits by donors eager to make micro-loans to people around the world. ?A core goal of our API project is to expand the global community of people connected through lending,? said Premal Shah, president, Kiva.org. “The KivaTouch web app instantly makes micro-lending broadly available, can be maintained and updated in an instant, and is accessible without the need for an app store. Best of all, it delivers a great user experience.”
“Sencha Touch really solves the rich app problem. The framework does the hard work to make our HTML5 apps work across multiple platforms,” said Giles Goodwin, co-founder & CTO of Widgetbox. “Using Sencha Touch, we can easily handle complex transitions and UI, and take advantage of support for offline, proxies, and data sources. We’ve been able to move two members of staff off framework issues and onto our core product development, so we can focus on building compelling products for our customers.”
“Sencha Touch saves months of development time, allowing us to quickly build and deliver one application for multiple mobile devices. Our applications look and feel just like native apps with fast, smooth performance,” said Craig Walker, CTO of Xero. “Having one code base to maintain is a huge time and cost savings; it frees us to focus on designing new features and building great apps that make our customers more productive on the road.”
What is Sencha Touch?
Sencha Touch gives mobile application developers easy access to the family of powerful HTML5 technologies, including geolocation, localStorage and CSS3, supported by today’s most popular mobile devices. Built on the proven foundation of Ext JS, JavaScript technology that is already in use by more than 1 million developers worldwide, Sencha Touch enables developers to build web apps that deliver user experiences comparable to native applications.
Using Sencha Touch to create web apps means:
- Companies can meet the expectations of customers who want high-quality application experiences on their mobile devices
- Developers can rapidly create rich applications for mobile devices, cutting development time to a fraction of its current duration
- Development groups can reduce costs — no need for separate teams with in-depth knowledge of Objective-C, Java and web technologies
- Mobile phone users can experience an application that looks and feels like a native application, with no need to download application updates
- Sencha Touch pricing and availability
- Sencha Touch 1.0 is available now, free of charge from www.sencha.com.
