Say Hello To Pugpig, Which Combines iOS With HTML5
June 14, 2011
A new tool for developers combines the best of iOS with the power of HTML5. Best of all, it could eventually lead to web apps that look just as impressive as those native apps we see each day in the App Store.
Before Rupert Murdoch announced and then released his company’s The Daily iPad app, another tablet project was taking form called Project Alesia. It was News Corp.’s secretive attempt at creating an aggregated pay-for tablet news service comprising its own and rivals’ content. While News Corp. killed the project last winter, it has been reborn elsewhere, according to paidContent.
Pugpig, currently in beta, is an open source framework that allows you to publish HTML5 magazines, books, and videos for iDevices. It allows publishers to use native iOS code with certain aspects of HTML and product beautiful apps. It is the brainchild of Jonny Kaldor, who served as Project Alesia’s product and technology lead.
According to paidContent:
With PugPig, Kaldor is not redeploying Alesia code, nor is the idea remotely to aggregate publishers’ content in the same way, Marks says - but founders’ learnings from their News Corp development experience carry over. In fact, Kaldor is aiming some features at some of the medium-to-large publishers the team liaised with whilst at News Corp.PugPig is offering its service to developers for free via its website. However, in the future, it expects to charge for support and sell an enterprise version. For iDevice owners, Pugpig will likely mean that native apps and web apps will increasingly look similar. This could be great news for publishers looking to get into iOS, but was unsure how to go about it. In addition, the service is expected to work with Apple’s upcoming Newsstand app, which means the finished products won't be completely out of the Apple ecosystem. Take a look: What do you think? Leave your comments below.