RunRev, maker of the LiveCode app development platform, announced Android support for the tool on Tuesday. LiveCode allows for the development of an application for the Web, desktop systems, iOS and, now, Android, with one codebase and one deployment, said RunRev CEO Kevin Miller.
“Developers can take their existing applications and redeploy the apps to the Android platform with this prerelease,” he said. He explained that developers do not need to know the native coding (Objective-C for iOS or Java for Android) in order to create applications for mobile devices, because LiveCode runs in real time and code can be written in “high-level language, similar to English.”
These applications can be delivered and developed very quickly because LiveCode is a compile-free program, where the application is always running even as new functionality is added.
Miller said that support for Android’s current native OS features will be included in the prerelease of LiveCode. He added that apps created for the current version of Android—Android 2.3—will continue to work as updates are added to the OS. LiveCode pricing starts at US$500 per license.
Bola Rotibi, research director at Creative Intellect Consulting, said that this is not a new direction for code developers.
“The challenge has always been trying to develop for many different platforms with a single codebase,” Rotibi said. She added that Adobe might have been the first to do this with its Flash development platform, and that as the market matures, there will be other companies trying to create programs that enable development for many different operating systems.
Rotibi said that in order for these multi-platform development applications to be successful, they must support a “rich back-end system,” that renders with the same quality, performance and usability on each device.
