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Ask HN: Can you write high quality mobile apps in HTML5 yet?

8 points by CJefferson ↗ HN
I wrote a not-particularly successful, but well reviewed, iPhone game.

I am considering writing a sequel, for iOS, Android and the web, and the obvious way to do this would be via HTML5.

I have heard the odd horror story about HTML5 apps doing very badly, and having to be rewritten, but such apps are often GUI-intensive, whereas my game it much simpler (think chess).

Has anyone released any successful HTML5 games, on Android and iOS? Any advice?

2 comments

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gbelote
One thing to watch out for is JavaScript performance on the iPhone, it's abysmal. This makes it hard to do physics games, but not necessarily a show-stopper. For instance, you could probably make a good Scrabble-like game in HTML5.
detour
I'm dabbling in this a bit, currently designing a game as a hobby project. There's a number of frameworks available that can ease development though none are perfect.

LimeJs (http://www.limejs.com/) - seems the most mature. Its built upon Google's Closure library. I personally found it a bit cumbersome, though certainly powerful. Optimal performance is obtained by using the Closure compiler.

CraftyJs (http://craftyjs.com/) - was the easiest to get something up and running quickly. If you've ever played around with Unity3D, it basically follows the GameObject model wrapped in a jQuery like syntax; which feels very natural. Performance was decent but I've run into bugs as the project is fairly new.

Cocos2D Js (http://cocos2d-javascript.org/) and EaselJs (http://www.easeljs.com/) - are probably good options but I preferred the other two.

There's also a few vaporware projects that would be amazing if they would ever release, namely RocketPack (http://rocketpack.fi/) and GameClosure (http://gameclosure.com/)