Is Titanium's HTML5 (and JS) really native?

I'm a little confused about this. Titanium is bragging about being able to style with CSS, program with javascript and create with H开发者_如何学CTML5, whilst making the final product native to the platform. How is this possible? If I'm writing in JS/HTML/CSS then won't they be run within the browser? Making them non-native?

See jhaynie's explanation of how the Titanium Mobile SDK is used to compile to native code. In essence, the Titanium Mobile SDK creates a mapping between their APIs in javascript and the native APIs of the target platform.

Titanium code are written in core JavaScript and code is then converted into native code(i.e. objective c or java) But when you use HTML and CSS into titanium you need to render them into "WebView" a browser without address bar. So in that sense titanium is completely native.

You code a Titanium Mobile app in js using their API that 'bridges' your code to the native API. You don't use html/css at all unless you want to include a webview with local content.

It's possible you are looking at old documentation. Titanium used to use HTML/CSS/JavaScript for creating applications which did not use native UIs but as of 0.9 is more of a JavaScript abstraction of a generic mobile device. This means you won't be using HTML or CSS to build your app and the process bears little resemblance to building a web app. Other tools like PhoneGap use the web app model in place of a native UI.

That said, you can create a web view (in-app web browser) in Titanium which you can use to show HTML5 content if you so desire. Also, as of Titanium 1.5, you can also use a CSS-style language called JSS to separate your JavaScript application model from your content.

Apple iOS has a "WebView" which is basically a browser window under control of the program. They take your code, plop it in to a WebView and wrap some infrastructure around it, and compile and ship it as a "native" program.