Appcelerator Titanium: Up and Running

Chapter 3. Titanium Studio

In this chapter we start to see what makes Titanium so useful and popular. When your app is created in Titanium, a native project is created for the platforms you want to target, and then your JavaScript is baked into the binary. Although many JavaScript commands invoke a native component, some code functions remain in JavaScript and are run by native JavaScript engines on each platform.

Titanium Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), offering a single interface with which to manage your Titanium projects. Every Titanium developer uses Titanium Studio to some extent, as you need it to run your apps in a simulator or on a device, and to send your apps to Apple’s App Store and Android Marketplace.

Features of Titanium Studio

After you install Titanium and start it up, you’ll see a screen like Figure 3-1.

We’re not going to get into all the details of Titanium Studio right now, but I’ll just give you a quick tour of some of the features that you’ll need to use to get your first project off the ground.

Figure 3-1. Titanium Studio after starting up

Automatic Syntax Checking

Syntax errors are usually the most common type. It’s all too easy to forget a required comma or semicolon. When I first started using Titanium, it was sometimes a tedious process to uncover these errors and work through them one at a time when running the app.

The Titanium Studio editor’s ...