Icenium vs. the competition

[Brandon Peterson]

First, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the Icenium Mist beta and commend you on an outstanding product. The version 1.5 release has resolved the GitHub repository commit and push glitches I was experiencing and seems quite stable. Now I am at a crossroad considering moving from the current cloud-based build service for my production app (big red A) to Icenium but have a few questions about upcoming features to address scenarios that aren't currently covered in Icenium's impressive infancy.

• Cordova 2.5.0 introduced a bug that requires Kendo Mobile to be initialized differently for Android and iOS (script tag at the bottom of index.html or document.ready vs. deviceready). This bug doesn't exist in 2.4.0 (Icenium's current Cordova version) or previous versions. Will Icenium handle this for 2.5.0+ in a way that doesn't require a bunch of developer trial-and-error and conditional logic just to initialize the app properly without splash screen glitches?
• For users like myself with existing Kendo DevCraft Complete subscriptions, is there a way to target Kendo Mobile internal builds for testing with the debug build configuration or possibly an "edge testing" build configuration?
• I am currently able to set the duration of my iOS and Android splash screens, disable iOS webview bounce, enable/disable app exit-on-suspend, and display splash screen progress spinners with an xml config file. Will simple configurations like this make their way to the Icenium project properties dialogue or will they need to be set in code with Cordova APIs or scripted otherwise?
• The iOS background services are awesome–good job! What is the time line for Android background services?
• What is the timeline for Windows Phone and Blackberry distribution?

I am aware these are some low level and possibly unforseen issues but am wary about migrating entirely while several versions into my app with the current build service provider.

[Steve]

Hello Brandon,

Thank you for the kind words about the product - much appreciated!

To answer your questions directly:

• we're not aware of such a bug with Kendo UI and have not found any ticket in your history that discusses it. Have you reported this problem to the Kendo UI team and have they confirmed the issue? Is that bug (you say Cordova bug) documented somewhere and can you provide more information about it? In general we plan to upgrade to Cordova 2.7 for the subsequent release of Icenium, so if it is fixed in that version, you have nothing to worry about. You can find more information about our plans for Cordova upgrade in the following forum thread.
• Currently Icenium does not offer auto upgrade to internal builds of Kendo UI, so you would have to take care of the upgrade manually by downloading the internal build from the Kendo UI suite and replacing the Kendo UI files in your Icenium application.
• We extend the project properties with most requested features, usually from feedback from the forums and our feedback portal. With that said we cannot add every single setting as UI switch in the properties and we plan to expose the config.xml, Info.plist and AndroidManifest.xml configuration files to users for subsequent release, probably by the end of the year. This way users would have full control over the Cordova and iOS/Android specific settings.
• see the answer in the previous point.
• Windows Phone 8 is part of our Roadmap. Releasing a first version that does not include all goodies inherent to the iOS and Android platforms is realistic by the end of the year.

Thank you for your interest in our cloud offering!

Regards,
Steve
the Telerik team

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[Brandon Peterson]

Thanks, Steve. After the 30-day trial expires I'll re-evaluate the situation and put some requests in the feedback portal to see if they gain any traction in the meantime.

Here is the Cordova issue ticket I created with links to the supporting forum threads in the body: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CB-3450. As I'm sure you can imagine, sudden app script initialization timing issues due to build provider Cordova version upgrades can be frustrating when it falls on developers to find a workaround.

[Steve]

Hi Brandon,

Thank you for the additional information.
We currently do acceptance tests during each release, so we are sure, our offering works flawlessly with the Cordova version we are about to support. We would make sure everything is working correctly when upgrading to 2.7 and if there are any needed changes, we would make sure they are noted in the documentation and reflected in our demos.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Steve]

Hello Brandon,

In Icenium 1.6 we've added the ability to make configuration changes to your app by modifying the respective Info.plist and config.xml for iOS and AndroidManifest.xml and config.xml for Android directly in the Icenium code editor. For more information, see Edit Configuration Files.

Also the initialization bug you've hit in Cordova 2.5 has been resolved in Cordova 2.7 which is the version we shipped with v.1.6.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Brandon Peterson]

Instead of abstracting platform specific configuration properties you made them directly editable. This is an awesome implementation.