cross-platform phone development environment

I'm working on guidance for development of mobile applications in a -mainly- .Net shop.

How d开发者_开发知识库o you tackle the different platforms when developing mobile applications from the perspective of a .Net developer? What are advantages and disadvantages of these approaches?

Probably the simplest approach is to just stick to web-based development (HTML5, jquery mobile, etc). But I can imagine this won't be enough for any and all applications.

I have looked at Titanium, which claims to be a platform where you develop in JavaScript, which is then "translated" to the native platform (android/iPhone). The lack of a 'declarative' (read xml-based) UI development experience seems like a disadvantage.

Another option could be the mono-based stack (monotouch, monodroid), where you don't really have a full cross-platform, develop once, deploy everywhere experience, but you can share your business logic and develop reusing part of your .Net skills and tooling. An additional advantage is that the same approach can be used to target Windows Phone 7.

Are there other options? Is it worthwile to even try this? What's your experience?

I am the head of mobile development for a government contractor that develops various systems for large government organizations, including Budget Management, Time Tracking, Radiological Monitoring and Assessment, and other much more intensive systems. We've been using jQuery Mobile with great success. Our clients have been universally satisfied with both the UI and UX afforded by JQM. We use ASP.NET's Razor engine for inline coding within the pages that drive JQM. Though not every possible feature is implemented in JQM by default, it's not that difficult to extend. I haven't yet run into any roadblocks I wasn't able to easily overcome.

As far as cross-platforming goes, we've found that the best option is combining JQM and PhoneGap. Titanium is seriously hindered by the lack of a XML UI engine as you said, and MonoTouch just isn't robust enough to do everything we need.