Titanium, from Appcelerator, Inc., is described by the company as an open-source platform which can be used to create desktop apps for both Windows and Mac OS X* based solely on Web technologies like Silverlight, Flash, HTML, CSS, etc. (PHP is currently unsupported but plans are underway.)
If the whole concept sounds familiar, it should. This is basically like the Adobe AIR platform with the key difference being that the Titanium platform is 100% open-source, unlike Adobe’s solution. From titaniumapp.com:
“Fundamentally both products are similar. Both Titanium and AIR are free, both are built on top of the open source WebKit engine, and both support development of desktop applications using standard Web technologies.
Our belief is that products like Titanium are ideally suited for open source because they address a large, horizontal problem. As a result, our hope is that we can attract a large open source community around Titanium, which will help it grow and mature into the leading solution for building rich desktop and mobile applications.”
One additional difference I found to be interesting: Titanium applications are currently capable of being produced as standalone applications. In other words, you can publish an application for users to download and install without having to have the Titanium framework also installed on their machine. The FAQ section goes on to state that, in future versions, publishers can choose to separate the runtime from the app much like they’re currently forced to do with Adobe AIR applications. (Speaking of, the company’s list of frequently asked questions re: the project is quite thorough.)
If you’re a Web and/or current AIR developer and Titanium sounds intriguing, check out the project’s official site: titaniumapp.com.
*Linux support is said to be arriving soon.
thanks for your coverage! Linux support is now available along with Python/Ruby. We’re hoping to add PHP very very soon and we’re working hard to really stabilize the API, add the much needed additional apis and really harden it.