Titanium SDK is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

framework that allows the creation of native

mobile applications A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

on platforms

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

from a single

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code system files; thu ...

. It is presently developed by non-profit software foundation TiDev, Inc. In February 2013, ''

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

'' estimated that 10% of all smartphones worldwide ran Titanium-built apps. , Titanium had amassed over 950,000 developer registrations. The core component of the Titanium software ecosystem is the

Apache-licensed The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software u ...

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

, Titanium SDK. Alloy, a Titanium-based

model–view–controller Model–view–controller (MVC) is a software architectural pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divides the related program logic into three interconnected elements. These elements are: * the model, the internal representat ...

framework, is a related project presently maintained and developed by TiDev, Inc for use with the Titanium SDK. Titanium SDK was originally developed and maintained by Appcelerator, Inc, then later by Axway, Inc after Axway purchased Appcelerator in 2016. Today the Titanium SDK and related projects are developer-maintained under direction of non-profit Alabama corporation TiDev, Inc. based in

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History

When it was introduced in December 2008, Titanium was intended for developing cross-platform desktop applications and was sometimes compared to

Adobe Air Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile application ...

. However, it added support for developing iPhone and Android mobile applications in June 2009, and in 2012, Titanium Desktop was spun off into a separate, community-driven project named TideSDK. Support for developing iPad-based tablet apps was added in April 2010. BlackBerry support was announced in June 2010, and has been in beta since April 2013. Tizen support was also added in April 2013 with the 3.1.0 Titanium Studio and SDK releases. The latest addition to the platform in 2016 has been Hyperloop, a technology to access native API's on iOS, Android and Windows with JavaScript. In April 2010, Appcelerator expanded the Titanium product line with the Titanium Tablet SDK. The Titanium Tablet SDK draws heavily from the existing support for iPhone, but it also includes native support for iPad-only user interface controls such as split views and popovers. Initially the mobile SDK only supported development for iPad, but support now includes Android-based tablets as well. In June 2011, Appcelerator released Studio and Titanium Mobile 1.7. Studio is a full open standards IDE that is derived from Aptana Studio which Appcelerator acquired in January 2011. In June 2013, Jeff Haynie, Appcelerator's CEO, announced that the company had begun Ti.Next, a project to rewrite the Titanium SDK in Javascript for improved performance and to bring Titanium's end users, who write in Javascript, closer to the internal code. In January 2016, Appcelerator was acquired by Axway, a global software company with more than 11,000 public- and private-sector customers in 100 countries. Since then, the Indie plans have been made free again, including native API access with Hyperloop.

Architecture

The core features of Titanium SDK include: * A cross-platform API for accessing native UI components such as navigation bars, menus, and dialog boxes and native device functionality including the file system, network,

geolocation Geopositioning is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object or a person. Geopositioning yields a set of Geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinates (such as latitude and longitude) in a given map datum ...

, accelerometer, and maps. * Transparent access to native functionality covered by Hyperloop and native modules. * MVC-based framework Alloy All application source code gets deployed to the mobile device where it is interpreted using a

JavaScript engine The first engines for JavaScript were mere interpreters of the source code, but all relevant modern engines use just-in-time compilation for improved performance. JavaScript engines are typically developed by web browser vendors, and every maj ...

; Mozilla's

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is used on Android, BlackBerry, and Apple's

JavascriptCore WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon ...

is used on iOS. In 2011 it was announced that a port to Google's

V8 JavaScript engine V8 is a JavaScript and WebAssembly engine developed by Google for its Chrome browser. V8 is free and open-source software that is part of the Chromium project and also used separately in non-browser contexts, notably the Node.js runtime syst ...

is in development which, when complete, will significantly improve performance. Program loading takes longer than it does for programs developed with the native SDKs, as the interpreter and all required libraries must be loaded before interpreting the source code on the device can begin. Titanium provides APIs for: * Use of hardware-specific features, such as the Android menu button * Use of OS-specific controls, such as the Cocoa UI controls on iOS * Participation in the

platform ecosystem Many markets are structured as platform ecosystems, they can be open or closed platforms, where a stable core (such as a smartphone operating system or a music streaming service) mediates the relationship between a wide range of complements (like ap ...

, for example using platform-appropriate notification mechanisms

Versions

12.4.0.GA with all minor updates and release candidates.

Notable features

*Since April 2018 it is possible to use Angular 6 in combination with Titanium to create mobile apps. *Titanium can be used with

Vue.js Vue.js (commonly referred to as Vue; pronounced "view") is an open-source model–view–viewmodel front end JavaScript framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. It was created by Evan You and is maintained by him an ...

as a framework to develop apps since May 2018. *Titanium supports ES6 features since SDK 6.1.0 like Classes, fat arrow functions and more. *Hyperloop allows the user to access native code (Java, Objective-C, Swift, C#) within JavaScript and use 3rd party libraries. *With Appcelerator Titanium it is possible to create native apps using JavaScript. The compiled apps use native UI components with a connection layer that is able to connect those native UI elements with your JavaScript code. The benefit is that the user will have the best user-experience on every platform since it uses the correct/native UI elements instead of creating custom elements. *One goal of Titanium is to reuse as much code for both platforms as possible. There is a high parity level of components and using the Alloy MVC framework makes it possible to share up to 90% of your code on both platforms.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links