# Welcome To Titanium

Titanium's unique trait among the various available cross-platform mobile solutions is that it creates truly native apps. This is in contrast to web-based solutions that deliver functionality via an enhanced web view. Titanium, not wanting to be limited by the native web view, has engaged in a much deeper integration with the underlying platforms. This gives Titanium developers the ability to leverage native UI components & services, as well as near-native performance, features you won't find in other cross-platform mobile development solution. In addition, you'll have access to other features like:

  • Platform specific APIs

  • Location-based services

  • Social sharing

  • Rich multimedia

  • Online and on-device data

  • Extensibility

  • and much more!

Titanium empowers you to create immersive, full-featured applications that go beyond the boundaries of the browser. We do the heavy-lifting on cross platform compatibility so you don’t have to. Featuring over 80%code reuse across mobile apps, Titanium provides a deep, yet highly-reusable development platform. Appcelerator licenses Titanium under the Apache 2 license and is free for both personal and commercial use.

In this chapter, you'll and learn the basics of writing cross-platform mobile apps with Titanium and become familiar with resources available to you. In addition, we'll take a brief look at the JavaScript skills you'll need to be an effective Titanium developer.

# Sections in this chapter

What is Titanium SDK?

In this section, you'll get your first look at Titanium's features and architecture.

Hello World

Next, you'll examine the Titanium version of a "Hello, World!" project. You'll learn how to create and manage a project and its file structure.

Appcelerator Resources

Here you will see the resources available to you as a Titanium developer. This section includes documentation, example code, and Appcelerator's various sources of developer support.

JavaScript Development Primer

In the last section of this chapter, you'll briefly explore programming in JavaScript, as well as the learning resources available to you.

So let's get started: What is Titanium SDK? >