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Jolt Awards: Mobile Development Tools

Gaston Hillar, March 04, 2014 The best tools for the nuts-and-bolts of building mobile apps.
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Finalist: LiveCode 6.5

LiveCode is useful for novice developers who don't want to learn different mobile platforms in detail, but want to write iOS and Android apps. LiveCode is especially useful if such developers want to do so using a RAD development environment. LiveCode provides an IDE in which you to drag and drop UI elements, define their properties, and use an English-like scripting language to add logic to your app.

You won't be able to create applications with the look of native apps, but you will be able to easily target both iOS and Android from a single source and generate attractive and functional apps. In addition, LiveCode supports Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X as target desktop platforms. Because the scripting language is very easy to understand, it's simple to convert a prototype to a live app.

While working, you can use the integrated LiveCode Dictionary to browse the commands, constants, control structures, functions, keywords, messages (also known as "events" in other scripting languages), objects, and properties.

The IDE doesn't provide you with a full-blown professional environment to develop elaborate mobile apps, but it does provide you with all the necessary things you need to reduce development time and easily convert prototypes in working apps — exactly what you want from a RAD solution.


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