Intel has made important improvements to its second generation XDK HTML development tool, including multi-page support in its App Designer.

Intel's XDKs let you develop mobile apps using HTML5 together with the collection of standards and APIs that are intended to take the Web from being just static web pages documents to dynamic applications.

The original version of XDK, also known as the appMobi XDK was released in April 2013 following Intel’s acquisition of AppMobil and in June followed up with a new version featuring a drag-and-drop interface to make it easier to create new apps and prototypes.

Less than three month later came Intel XDK NEW, a rebuilt version that included a new UI builder, App Designer, and a new editor, Brackets and uses node-webkit, an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js.

Intel has now decided that having two versions of its XDK is confusing and the Release Announcement for the latest update states:

We intend to end-of-life the original Intel XDK (originally called the appMobi* XDK) by the end of February.  At that point we’ll drop the word "NEW" from the Intel XDK NEW and will have only one Intel XDK going forward.  Those of you who are still using the older, original Intel XDK, please move your apps to Intel XDK NEW by the end of February - it's an easy migration.

With this release, we are starting down the path of helping HTML5 apps be more responsive through performance improvements in the web-runtime, javascript profiling, and easier remote debugging.

The new features of the release currently have the status of technology previews but there are also updates to its existing facilities. In particular App Designer now supports multi-page apps, and includes simple JavaScript editing to quickly update event handlers.

The release also sees improved Tizen app builds allowing Tizen code-signing to submit apps to Tizen App Store. The announcement also refers to a developer incentive scheme for submitting apps to the Tizen App Store.

 You can see XDK New in action in the following video:

It is impressive and the real surprise is that Intel seems to be having little luck in getting the sort of publicity the system deserves. Partly this is due to an inability to convey what the system is or exactly what it does. Nearly all of the publicity and documentation assumes that the reader knows what XDK is all about. If this was truly the case users would be beating a path to the Intel download site and making use of it to build HTML5 web apps.