Imagine being able to develop your JavaScript Canvas project in the browser, then drag it into XCode, hit 'play', and have it run on the iOS device in fast native code. We get the speedy prototyping of a JavaScript stack, with the sturdy performance of a native Objective-C app.

Ejecta is a Fast, Open Source JavaScript, Canvas and Audio Implementation for iOS. JavaScript code is executed directly by a JavaScript VM (JavaScriptCore), the HTML5 Canvas API is implemented in native code with OpenGL, Audio is implemented with OpenAL. Several other APIs (touch, accelerometer, localStorage) behave like those in a real browser.

Ejecta was intended to work seamlessly with the ImpactJS game library, both developed by Dominic Szablewski from Phobos Labs. Dominic was gracious enough to open-source Ejecta, allowing other JavaScript libraries to take advantage of his great work.

In this workshop we'll spend the afternoon getting Ejecta up and running in your XCode

Prerequisites

Please have XCode 4.6 or later installed on your computer. You'll need an Apple Developers account if you'd like to see things running on your iPhone/iPad (otherwise you'll only be testing on the OSX simulator). A basic familiarity with JavaScript and particularly Canvas is highly recomended.