Today, cloud platform provider Appcelerator is expanding beyond mobile and Web with a new offering designed for developers looking to build cross-platform applications. Now, in addition to building for smartphones, tablets and the mobile Web, developers can use the new Titanium Studio to build, test and deploy to desktop platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux as well as build HTML5 Web applications, all in one single development environment.
The new Titanium Studio is built on Aptana Studio’s Eclipse-based IDE, acquired by Appcelerator in January. It offers a full-featured source code editor, code completion, Git integration and debugging capabilities for all the platforms it supports. The new IDE also integrates with the official SDKs from Apple, Google and RIM and offers something called “Fastdev” technology, which lets developers make changes to code in real-time while the app runs in the simulator. To be clear, although Appcelerator had provided a tool for desktop development prior to this, it was not a true IDE with source code editing, code completion and debugging, as the new Studio offering provides now.
With Titanium Studio, Appcelerator will continue to allow mobile developers to publish to the iOS (iTunes) and Android app stores but will now also provide tools for publishing to BlackBerry’s app store (in two weeks) and Apple’s Mac App Store. Later this fall, support for publishing to the Ruby on Rails cloud platform Engine Yard and RedHat’s OpenShift will be added.
As for Windows Phone support, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when,” says Appcelerator’s Scott Schwarzhoff, referring to the company’s recent developer survey which showed slightly more interest in the new Microsoft platform than RIM’s BlackBerry (29% vs. 27%)
Developers interested in Titanium Studio can test it out via a free 30-day trial, which is available as a part of either Appcelerator’s Community, Indie or Professional subscriptions here.
