Howdy all, Been in the industry a long time but to-date any mobile experience has admittedly been in the mobile-web space. And to be honest, these solutions have been exactly what was required. A lot of people in the industry still don't know the difference and still have the misconception that they MUST have a mobile app. I do however realize that some solutions DO require and would benefit more from a mobile application so I was completely thrilled to have stumbled-upon BuzzTouch. To date I've toyed with Appcelerator, self-teaching for iOS SDK and Android SDK and have fallen asleep at night trying to get through the iOS spec document. This looks like a great spring-board to getting on the road to mobile app development and more importantly to get some of my ideas rattling around in my noggin out into the world. My only concern at this point (and maybe premature) is that the prebuilt plugins may be too restrictive in their functionality, extendibility or customizability; but it's best to get started and deal with the road blocks as they come (or if they come) and I'm sure the community will have already been through a lot of the pitfalls. Hoping also to provide some meaningful contributions. Nic

Hi @285Soluions, Welcome! We are excited to have you! Don't hesitate to post any questions if you encounter any. LA

@285Solutions, welcome! A powerful feature of buzztouch is that because it's native code, if a plugin is too restrictive or doesn't quite do what you want, you can modify it in your iOS or Android dev environment.

@raveyd, cool brother - I figured as much. And, at the very least, I think it will accelerate my learning by seeing the code generated for the functionality provisioned in the developed application.

For sure, I would think every person on here has learned more about app development, and far more quickly, than trying to build an app from scratch or working through example projects.

Also, the plugins just released this week are already significantly enhancing the design and function of BT apps. Apparently there are more to come. Make sure to look at some of the apps that others have made (on their profile pages) and you'll see that most of them have added more than what can be accomplished purely with BT. Ryan

Hi Nic, Welcome to buzztouch! Lots of great comments above about code. I think, in the end, you'll find there's nothing you can't do with buzztouch with the right amount of info to help! Don't hesitate to shout if you need some help! Mark

I have seen folks do wonderful things with BuzzTouch by using HTML pages to get functionality that is not provided by a BT Plugin. For example, take a look at Villa Grove Football app. That is mostly HTML content. After a while of making HTML-based solutions with BuzzTouch, you may come around to "doing it for real" via your own custom plugin. My whole point is that BuzzTouch allows you to find your own comfort-level via existing plugins, HTML-screens and extensibility with custom plugins. Keep us up to date on your progress with BuzzTouch! -- Niraj

Ok, so I've been racking my brains about how in BT you are able to change content of the app, and NOT have to re-download, re-compile and re-submit the app to the app-store(s). And in thinking about how I would develop such a feature one solution came to mind; which brings me to ask this question: Are the apps generated by BT simple wrappers for a mobile-web implementation? I've done similar things in the past with J2E/Tomcat where it became cumbersome during development cycles to create a new .war file, undeploy the old and redeploy the new. So I would make the change runtime to the respective file(s) in their deployment locations on the web server.

Hi @285Solutions, All buzztouch apps are written in native Objective C or Java code. They are not wrappers for mobile-web implementations at all. Screen configurations are controlled by JSON information in the BT_Config.txt file, but the views are created by native code. You can provide some screens, webViews, that can be updated online without having to update the entire app. But, when it comes down to it, these are native iOS and Android apps. Mark

Appreciate the clarification Mark.

The BuzzTouch Control Panel is a Configuration and a Content Management System -- all in one server system. Your screens and their connectivity is configured via the Control Panel. The content in the screens is also controlled by the Control Panel. JSON is the data interchange format between the mobile device and the Control Panel. -- Niraj