Kendo UI Mobile vs Sencha Touch vs Intel App Framework

Question

I am going to develop a mobile application. The application is going to use form elements, side panel, nav-bar, list view and some pop up gadgets. It will have dynamically created forms (which will come from the backend via jsonp).

I already have intermediate knowledge of jQuery.

I am now comparing the frameworks and am between these three

(1) Kendo UI Mobile (2) Sencha Touch (3) Intel App Framework (4) Ability and success to deploy as native applications (like phonegap, icenium etc)

because I will not have predefined forms, I suppose I will spend much effort on the javascript part by inserting form field data from the js using jsonp value from the server

When we compare these frameworks for the following criterias

• Speed
• Native Feeling
• Development Difficulty
• Documentation and Community Support

which tools would you recommend to use or not to use?

Churlish

Take a look at this link. I think it will give you a little overview about the different frameworks: javaworld.com/article/2078908/mobile-java/… – Hereld

Thank you for all comments. Just to inform you about, my final decision was Kendo Ui Mobile.. It has disadvantages and advantages compared to Sencha Touch. I think both solutions are very good. Sencha has a much better documentaton. Kendo in my case is much easier (because I have some knowledge of jquery). Both solution give a pretty good native feeling – Churlish

Have you looked at Ionic? – Wilmer

Answer 1

I would personally say that Kendo Mobile is great, I am currently using it to develop. Its fast and friendly to use. It also has native looks for all devices. It is pretty simple to use, and has loads of documentation and support. Also there are many videos. Telerik (The company that developed kendo) has always been my first choice when developing.

• Speed Fast never had an issue
• Native for all devices, even has unique look if wanted
• Medium difficulty
• Tons of documentation and videos

Calorimeter

thank you Ohjay44. Some more questions: Do they have a visual design tool? and also can the application build for Apple Store / Google Market with a tool like Phonegap? or does it have its own tool for this? One more thing is would it be difficult to generate dynamic json driven forms in Kendo? – Churlish

Actually they have a great tool that integrates with PhoneGap really well! Yes they do have visual deign, and no its not difficult to generate dynamic json driven forms. It would be very similar to the way you would do it without a framework like Kendo Mobile. I suggest looking into Kendo Mobile, and look into Telerik DevCloud, its new but it will be able to help you do everything you want, and give you emulators for all devices. – Calorimeter

What kind of visual design do they have, besides the theme customizer? Do they have one similar to the Polymer designer? – Coronado

Answer 2

I'll pitch in on behalf of Sencha Touch!

Speed So much in Sencha Touch comes down to knowledge of the framework and acknowledging you're coding an application and not a webpage. That said you can get fantastic performance in Sencha Touch. A lot is made of Sencha Touch not being open source but that's a technicality. You can see the code and it's incredibly well documented. I'm delighted with the performance of native-like components like lists and forms that I can achieve.

Native Feeling This is surely where Sencha Touch has the best edge on its competitors. It comes with themes for ios6, ios7, android, blackberry and windows phone. So your app can look native in each platform. Sure, it's still up to the dev to handle different expectations of, for instance, touch gestures, and the troublesome Android back button, but the framework gives you all the help it can. People don't know the apps I make in Sencha Touch are HTML5 - they look and feel native.

Development Difficulty Anyone can just start with Sencha Touch easily enough but you will need to be prepared to invest time in understanding how to get the best out of the library. In one sentence: "minimise DOM interactions". In particular, learning that changes to models/stores linked to the dom will automatically trigger DOM updates.

Documentation and Community Support Fantastic. Because I for one prowl stack overflow helping where I can ;-) the Sencha forums are a great place for support. The documentation is definitely the best I've ever worked with.

Hope this helps you in making a decision! Modus Create did a great series of articles on their blog comparing all the frameworks too (scroll down past first couple of posts): http://moduscreate.com/blog/

Anoa

Thank you shepsii. One more thing. I was a little bit confused about the licensing options. If I have the Commercial Software License (Free), does it mean I can develop and sell an application to companies? And also, if I have this license, am I missing having some tools that would help me developing the application like js editor, visual designer etc? – Churlish

Hey Calipso. Yes, you can sell Sencha Touch applications without paying Sencha. sencha.com/products/touch/license Propriertary = paid! You only need to pay Sencha if you plan on using the framework to develop your own mobile app framework. And if you make any changes to the framework under open source, you have to release those changes open source too. The licenses don't have any connection to the tools. You will have access to Sencha CMD for free. Architect is sold separately. You don't need it; I just use a separate IDE to develop my apps. – Anoa

Thank you again shepsii.. the information was very usefull – Churlish

Answer 3

Well, your choice was wise, because Sencha Touch is suddenly not free any more.

It is still open source, but not free any more. You cannot buy the single licenses any more; you now need to pay 4000 euros yearly...

Their community is dying and switching over to Google AngularJS and Twitter Bootstrap. Now that the community is disappearing I'm left without free support, so I need to pay Sencha for expensive support, so I'm going to switch over too...

Relativize

Thats bad.. A friend of mine made recently the same evaluation.. I think today "Angular Material - material.angularjs.org " is a good choice – Churlish