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JavaScript as a First-Class Citizen on iOS 7

Abstract

One of the most exciting technology improvements announced for iOS 7 was the new JavaScriptCore framework. With this new system framework, developers can write JavaScript code with full access to iOS platform APIs.

This means that native UIKit applications, games, and everything in between can now be written in JavaScript, without the addition of a third party framework or missing out on rich platform APIs. After many years in purgatory, JavaScript is now blessed and officially supported by Apple for usage in native iOS apps.

In this talk, we'll focus on what developers need to know to take advantage of JavaScriptCore bindings in iOS 7. We will also explore where this new technology fits in alongside existing JavaScript solutions for mobile development, like Appcelerator's Titanium and Apache Cordova (PhoneGap). To demonstrate how this new framework might be used, we will script a simple game using SpriteKit, the new built-in 2D game framework in iOS 7.

There are many exciting possible applications of this technology, and I hope the JavaScript community takes full advantage of them.

Awkward Third Person Biography

Kevin

Kevin Whinnery is a front-end hacker and developer evangelist for Twilio. Kevin has been researching and using JavaScript on mobile for several years, including a four year stint at Appcelerator prior to joining Twilio. Kevin is also the author and maintainer of Twilio's official node.js helper library.

Kevin lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his beautiful wife and three devious children.