Fun with NS-BASIC

Over the past few weeks I've been boring my associates with my troubles regarding app development with Titanium. Whilst there is no denying that Titanium is a very powerful and capable platform for creating professional apps, and whilst there is no denying that the native apps it produces are themselves extremely powerful and capable, there is also no denying that using it for Android is just .. frustrating.

So a breath of fresh air has been playing with NS-BASIC. Unlike Titanium this is a webkit based tool, so it lacks some of the high end features that can be built into a Titanium app. But, that said, it makes use of the PhoneGap APIs to extend it and developers can use the excellent new PhoneGap packaging service, currently in beta (and therefore currently free) to build native style packages for Android, iPhone and Blackberry. It also comes with a simple IDE (one that offers a form painter, unlike Titanium) and a reasonable handbook. There is no free version, but at $99 it's a snap and a lot cheaper than a Titanium subscription. And there are other savings to be made.. because it's webkit based, now that PhoneGap is avialable as an online service you don't need to buy a Mac to develop cross platform apps - something that you need to do with Titanium.

Other nice things are the fact that you do not need to mess around with the ugly Android emulators - you can simply run and debug your apps using a local copy of Chrome, which is very much quicker and easier, and developing is responsive. It feels a bit rough and ready in places - there is clearly a long way to go - but it makes the whole job of app development feel more appealing.

In fact, the only thing wrong with NS-BASIC is the name. On the face of it - yes, you are programming in a style of Basic, and one that is not too far removed from the old Visual Basic, which makes it look friendly and approachable. That is then converted in JavaScript behind the scenes, which is where the really useful part of NS-BASIC comes in - you can, if you wish, totally bypass this Basic generation and code your app directly in JavaScript. Given the extensive JavaScript libraries that are out there this opens up a world of possibilities. In fact the places where the language struggles is in the differences between JavaScript and Basic, and so coding in JavaScript makes more sense if you are used to the foibles of both.

And you still have access to the SQLite databases for local data storage, and to calling web services for access to live data. So I should be able to fetch data from an mvScript page from NS-BASIC as I can from Titanium. I'll let you know how I get on.