There are
many things that occupy our mind when we develop
an app for our business. Be it Android
or iOS, mobile web or mobile browser, we think along the same lines:
flexibility, responsive design, security, speed, and performance. But, what
plays an overarching role in the success or failure of an app beyond all this
is the app’s Cross Browser Capability. This article looks at the benefits of
developing apps with Cross-platform-capability and its implications for the
end-user.
1) Huge target audience
When you target multiple platforms, it becomes easier to reach more users. Cross
platform mobile development strategy can also target mobile platforms
on their individual market share. Therefore a company can decide the mobile
platforms it wants to target depending on its user demography.
2) Reduced cost of building the app
Cross-platform development allows you to maintain an app and deploy changes
easily, as the app runs on multiple operating systems. If the app is updated,
the updated version will get synced across the different platforms. Thus, cross
platform mobile development reduces the cost of creating and updating the
application.
3) Maintain Uniform Look And Feel
Developers often write additional code to maintain the design and feel of the
app across different operating systems and devices. While you develop a single
app for multiple platforms, a single code runs on those platforms. So, there is
no need to deploy multiple teams to maintain the overall design and feel of the
app across those platforms.
4) Option to use popular technologies
Technologies like HTML5 has made it easier for developers to build cross
platform mobile apps. They can also use specialized tools like Appcelerator to
code in HTML5, and then convert the code for other mobile platforms. It becomes
easier therefore, for an organization to hire the right programmers for the
cross platform mobile application development project.
5) Easy to market the app
When an app does not cater to any particular set of people, no niche message
needs to be created. It can be promoted by simply creating generalized messages
to target users irrespective of the choice of their mobile platform or device.
The
developers, however, must consider some important factors when developing cross
platform mobile applications.
Apart from choosing the right cross platform mobile framework and tools, they
also need to take advantage of the flexibility provided by each mobile
platform.
At a time
when mobile apps have begun to take
the lead over other forms of engagement, we pause to ask the critical question.
Do native mobile apps really score over responsive ones? Choosing one of the
two depends on what your requirements are and which market you are targeting.
To pick one from the two, we believe you should ask yourself the following
questions first.
1. Will your native mobile app take advantage of Smartphone
functionality?
Do you need
to use the GPS, camera, scan feature, or other phone functions? If you intend
to provide unique content or functionality not available on the mobile web,
then an app is likely the way to go. First round: Advantage mobile app.
2. Is Personalization Important?
One of the
great features in a mobile app is the ability to craft personalized experiences
for the device with fewer limitations. As a native
mobile app is always tied directly to a user’s device, it creates more
opportunities to target user experience.
3. Do you have a complex design and UI?
At a certain
level of complexity, HTML5 (responsive web) may not help you meet your goals.
While HTML5 can indeed deliver customized user experiences, it is native apps
that tend to provide the most tailored UX.
4. Do you have a limited budget?
Generally
speaking, responsive design is less costly since it’s quicker to develop and
deploy than native applications and typically requires fewer dedicated ideas to
bring an idea to the market. It only needs one code base to ensure it works
across all devices. So here, it’s advantage responsive design.
5. Are you trying to monetize content and encourage
purchasing?
If you have
a product that has potential for ongoing micro-purchases, then a native
application is preferable. A shopping cart on your website can help, but the
in-app purchasing system is so simple and is tied into all the rest of a user’s
purchases on the platform.
6. Is SEO an important consideration?
If part of
your strategy is to increase visibility among search engines and drive traffic
to your site, then stick to responsive mobile. Since apps are closed
environments, they can’t be crawled by search engines and won’t impact your
organic search ranking. Responsive design scores here.
7. Do you plan to make frequent updates?
Native
applications could make frequent updates rather difficult. First, application
updates need to go through the same lengthy approval process in the App store.
If you expect to have frequent design updates, a responsive design may be the
best and simplest way to ensure your users access the most recent version.
The growing
momentum of HTML5 with mobile developers and the rapid growth of HTML5 enabled
mobile browsers and support across the industry (good examples being CoreMob
and Ringmark) have immensely helped the growth of HTML5. It is predicted that
80% of all mobile apps will use HTML5 by 2015. With thousands of web HTML
developers wanting to go mobile, HTML5 is expected to play a very important
role in the efforts of mobile
developers to scale to the next level of performance.
What HTML5 offers Developers?
Developers
can now directly influence the direction that mobile web is taking and the
capabilities of browsers. By coding with HTML5, developers can work more
efficiently, hand projects off more easily and reach a broader range of
platforms including the rapidly growing mobile segment.
Being
non-native and built into browsers is another added advantage since it makes
HTML5 more adaptable. This also does away with the need to incorporate third
party plugins as they have been included in the build itself.
With HTML5,
the developer is faster and more responsive, with only one team and one code
base whereas the same work would take at least 3 more teams consuming more
resources and more time in the process.
CoreMob
The goal of
the core mobile web platform community group is to accelerate the adoption of
the mobile web as a compelling platform for the development of modern mobile
web applications. CoreMob defines feature sets for each mobile browser level. CoreMob
includes W3C, FaceBook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Samsung, Netflix,
Verizon, Vodafone, AT&T, ZTE and SONY.
Ringmark
Ringmark is
a web based test suite that measures how well a mobile browser supports the
capabilities that modern mobile web apps require. Ringmark tests are based on FaceBook’s
best understanding of latest mobile browser feature levels. As Coremob’s
recommendations solidify, these will be reflected in Ringmarks’s testing suite.
Mobile app development is one of the
booming fields that has an extensive growth and promises a great future for the
companies. But most of the mobile app development company has to keep itself
updated with the changing technologies to win this race and the most recent
adoption is Responsive Design. Buckle up and get ready to know more.
HTML5 was
created to make the coding process easier and more logical. The unique and
impressive features of HTML5 are in the multimedia department. It also makes it
easy to adapt the look and layout of a webpage to a mobile device's screen.
Besides, many of these features have been created with the consideration that
users should be able to run heavy content on low-powered devices.
With respect to videos: Using HTML5, designers can now
build web pages without having to resort to third-party proprietary plug-in
software like Flash. Needless to say, built-in video controls make the
feature more attractive and easy to use. Did you know? Now, YouTube is using
HTML 5 to display video.
With respect to Application cache: Do you find the
lines of Outlook difficult to follow up client’s requirements? You can now store web apps much like emails
locally. Did you know? Google has already adapted HTML 5 by replacing its
Google Gears mail client.
With respect to Image Canvas: The canvas
element that comes with HTML 5 lets you manipulate graphics and photos enabling
easy rendering of images and save development time and effort. Say adieu to intermediate
technologies like jQuery.
With respect to location barrier: As name
indicates, the HTML5 Geo-location feature
locates a place using various geo location technologies IP address, GPS (Global
Positioning system), RFID (Radio frequency ID), GSM/CDMA cell Ids and many more
With respect to Web workers: This enables
a web application to execute complex tasks without interfering with the
performance of a webpage in real-time.
Openwave
Computing LLC, HTML5 app developers are highly skilled in all areas of mobile app development. They create efficient
and user-friendly mobile apps and websites that function seamlessly across all
device platforms. If you are looking to revamp your WebPages, get started today
by contacting Openwave Solutions. Let the experienced and talented team satisfy
your organization needs.
In the so
called technology world, everything has become responsive now. So, let’s focus
on emerging techniques for site layouts that can be easily changed based on screen
size. And this article talks about some essential yet common practices for
creating Responsive Web Design and experiences. Below are some effective ways
through which you can get to know how your website looks on different devices
resolutions.
Site layout: One of the most important
factors of Web site design is its Grid-based layout. Inspite of various websites
that are easily visualized as a series of rectangles for page factors like site
navigation, website content, headers, footers, sidebars, etc, the use of HTML5
for responsive site can make the grid layout agnostic according to the user’s
screen size. This means, it is enough to concentrate on managing content and
layout for scaling to as much screen size is available rather than giving 2-3
fixed-width layouts. Isn’t that cool!
Enhanced Touch Screen Experience: For any Mobile App Development, it is
must for every developer to minimize interactions, especially for touch users. Also,
you must be aware of lot of text inputs available. With HTML5 Development, the type attribute for the input tags
are also extended to add semantic meaning to a textbox. -
Auto-fill Performance: Last but not least, if you are
check at the latest browsers, it is very clear that these analyse optimization
and attributes the layout of the touch-screen keyboard consequently. Take for e.g.
When a user taps the browser’s touch keyboard to dial a number, it importantly
show a numpad that will auto filter the “@ key” and “.com key” to ease our job
as we tap on the email address field. It may look simple but this simple trick
can easily enhance overall form-filling performance of mobile site that
especially created for touch-screen phones and tablets.
As end
notes, HTML5 is very supportive for mobile apps development for different
browsers as well as platform including iOS and Android. Openwave Computing LLC,
a professional web/app development company located in New York, NY deploys the
capabilities of HTML5 at the maximum to present high-standard web solutions. Be
it games or business application, we follow calculative techniques to solve newly
arising dares in the responsive design space. A better way to handle the
changing world of devices!
1) Huge target audience
