Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Famo.us lines up mobile-app wrapper for September release

analysis
Aug 18, 20142 mins

The wrapper service will allow Famo.us apps to be distributed in Google Play and the Apple App Store

JavaScript framework builder Famo.us has big plans for September, when the company plans to offer its Famo.us Wrapper service for mobile apps and a replacement for a popular jQuery widget.

The wrapper service, which also accommodates Famo.us’s 3D layout and physics animation engines, enables Famo.us apps to be distributed in mobile app stores, including Google Play and Apple App Store. It goes into a beta next month.

“Adobe PhoneGap has been the tool that so many people have used,” for wrapping, Famo.us CEO and co-founder Steve Newcomb said. “But it takes a long time to learn how to use it Adobe has had performance problems on Google Android.” Famo.us is partnering with Intel to wrap applications for Android and with Adobe for Apple iOS and others.

Famo.us will debut a replacement for the popular jQuery Carousel photo slider widget in September. “We’re beginning the long process of replacing jQuery widgets and re-imagining those in Famo.us,” said Newcomb. The company’s technology road map calls for rewriting Bootstrap mobile application templates in Famo.us, as well as creating WordPress and Squarespace templates.

September is also when the company plans to test an alpha version of a cloud service for AB testing for website feature apps. Famo.us is looking to the development of cloud services, including website hosting, mobile sites and mobile applications, analytics, and application compression services, as future revenue generators.

Fresh from a $25 million venture capital investment, Famo.us proponents seek to “own the front end of the Web,” Newcomb said; the company’s goal with its namesake open source framework is to make Web development as useful for building complex UIs as native development. In the three months since its debut, about 100,000 developers are now using it.

Famo.us sprung out of the company’s founders’ initial efforts to leverage HTML5, but HTML5 “kind of failed everybody,” Newcomb said. Already, Famo.us is being integrated with other JavaScript frameworks, including Google’s Angular.js as well as React, a framework driven by Facebook and Instagram.

This story, “Famo.us lines up mobile-app wrapper for September release,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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