[pavlov]

Cross-platform native code generation: Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android. The tool itself works only on Mac - it still needs Xcode for building and deploying to the App Store, so a Windows version wouldn't be useful.

The big difference from Xcode is that Neonto Studio is completely visual. It's for designers. It's not an IDE; there's no code editor, no property bindings, or any of those things that make Xcode / Interface Builder so intimidating.

The generated code is therefore basically the view / view-controller side of an app. A programmer can easily integrate it into a project, and it saves a lot of time compared to doing the same work in code.

There's also a whole class of content-centric apps that can be done completely within this tool: books, video apps, music albums... Anything that's self-contained, doesn't need a server and doesn't have complex business logic.

[tomasien]

Got it, that's what I was assuming it was. That's very cool. Will it handle screen sizes, scroll views, tablet vs. phone, etc? If not, I can't give my design team this tool then code from their views, it just won't work. My Storyboards look nothing like what comes out, because I have to do so much manipulation of the views to fit all the screens I need and to do Scroll View bullshit.

If you solve that, I'd use it and I'm a coder not a designer. Regardless, that is a REALLY exciting idea. It's one of those things where an 80% solution won't cut it which always worries me (that's what WYSIWYG web design tools rarely catch on) but a 100% solution doesn't seem impossible.

[pavlov]

Yeah, support for various tablet and phone screen sizes is a core feature. I'm trying to keep it as close to a traditional desktop publishing workflow as possible while still respecting the interactive nature of the medium.

Personally I don't like the built-in autolayout solutions on iOS and Android at all. The latter is too limited, while the constraint system on iOS is over-engineered and difficult to reason about. Since neither platform provides a designer-friendly solution, I feel there's a good opportunity for a third party here.

[tomasien]

I find iOS autolayout to be horrible, so I agree. Even dealing with iPhone4 vs. iPhone 5 is ridiculously hard for no reason.