Top 5 Tools for Cross-Platform App Development

You must be aware of Google’s latest update on mobile-friendly websites. This has got companies in a rush to ensure that their websites are tailored to mobile devices. But developing mobile-friendly websites alone would not do. It is important to ensure that your apps are cross-platform as well. What are the cross-platform applications that help you design such websites? There are many, but with each operating system having its own features and functionalities, to design an app that delivers optimum performance on all of these is indeed a tricky task. So, this article does you the favour of listing out the best cross platform mobile application out there:

1. RhoMobile – This is an open source framework that is ruby-based. It helps you build native apps that run on iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, RIM, and Symbian devices.
With RhoMobile, you need to write code just once for all major operating systems. RhoMobile makes use of all your Smartphone’s features and builds the perfect cross-platform application.

2. Appcelerator – This is used to design applications for mobiles, tablets, and desktops. To create applications with Appcelerator, simple programming languages like HTML, PHP, JavaScript and Python would do.

3. PhoneGap – This FOSS framework allows developers to create applications for the iPad, iTouch, iPhone, Android, Palm, BlackBerry, and Symbian mobile devices. Using HTML and JavaScript, PhoneGap lets you gain access to hardware features of a mobile device like camera, GPS data etc.

4. WidgetPad – WidgetPad allows you to create Smartphone applications using standard programming languages like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. It is typically used to create apps for WebOS, iOS, and android. Project management, source code editing, collaboration, distribution, debugging, and versioning become easy with WidgetPad.

5. MoSync – Another FOSS framework, MoSync uses JavaScript, PHP, Ruby and Python for cross platform mobile app development. MoSync probably supports the largest number of operating systems including Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Moblin. Support for iOS is provided through MoSync 2.4.

6. Whoop – Though Whoop cannot be featured among the top tools used for cross platform app development, it is nevertheless quite an interesting framework. Even a developer who is not trained in the app development would be able to use Whoop to publish cross platform apps. Actually, Whoop is the ‘tool for non developers'.


The Whoop Creative Studio uses the WYSIWYG editor to allow dragging & dropping of mobile app elements while designing applications for Windows Mobile, Android, BlackBerry, RIM, and iOS.

Benefits of Cross-Platform Development

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. 

Choose Your Mobile Development Path

We know consumers spend more time on their apps than on the mobile web. This is borne out by the statistic that says users on an average spend 72 minutes per day on mobile web while they spend 94 minutes a day on apps. The question confronting you the user, is, both hold intrinsic value, but which is the right development path for you? Let us now compare the three mobile development paths, mobile web, hybrid native, and pure native on each attribute one by one.

1. Affordability and Availability of developers

For a mobile web browser, there are millions of web developers out there. As for hybrid native apps, it is easy for web developers to build them.

2. Distribution (App store)

Hybrid native apps can be distributed through app stores but updated independently. Pure native apps, on the other hand, are only updated through app stores.

3. Native device API access

This of course, wouldn’t apply to web browsers. For a native container, camera, location, services, etc. are rendered using JavaScript APIs. This also includes writing native plugins to extend to other capabilities. Pure native apps can access all the device functionality using the native programming language.

4. Cross-platform capability

This is where a browser-based app scores. It will always give you the greatest portability. Native apps save time and money. You write your code once and deploy it across platforms.

5. Monetization

Browser-based apps lose out here. Hybrid native apps, in addition to advertising, allow paid downloads and in-app purchasing. For pure native apps, in-app purchases have already outpaced paid downloads.

Now, let’s look at the advantages and downsides of each of these

Mobile Web

è Low development and complexity

è Search engine discoverable

è Leverages existing web tools and workflows

D  No access to device capabilities or app store distribution

D  No push messaging

  

Hybrid Native

è Low development cost and complexity

è Access to many device capabilities and app store distribution

è Leverage existing web tools and workflows, push messaging support

è Excellent for content-centric apps

D  No access to advanced APIs like OpenGL or multi-threading

Pure Native

è Complete access to device capabilities and app store distribution

è Create graphics-intensive apps like 3D games

è Push messaging support

D  Most time-consuming and expensive

The Growth Of HTML5 – What Lies Beneath?

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.

Native Apps Vs Mobile Web

As the world becomes more and more mobile-friendly, businesses have begun to recognize the benefits of developing apps and mobile-friendly website for their customers. But there are a lot of issues that a business must consider when it decides on delivering its website to the mobile user. It may look like a majority of businesses now are opting for native apps, but you must decide if that is the right decision for your business.  

In this article, we look at the pros and consider of adopting a native and a mobile app.

First of all, native apps are apps downloaded for mobile devices with a specific platform and mind. They can be downloaded and installed directly onto devices from the App Store and Google’s Play.

Advantages of Native apps:

·         Much more popular with consumers.

·         Better User experience than any other mobile optimization solution.

·         It works with all Smartphone tools like cameras and GPS.

·         Included in app stores which make it easier for users to discover the app whether they were seeking it or not.

·         They do not require an internet connection to operate and the app stays on the mobile devices once installed.

·         It is generally faster than using mobile web.

Disadvantages

·         It takes more time and is more expensive to develop than web apps.

·         Requires app store review and approval along with every update.

·         It is open Source-specific, and cannot reuse code from one device to another.

·         Needs additional marketing strategy since it faces high competition from other apps.

·         Takes longer to download and install and requires lots of memory and storage on the device.

·         On the other hand, mobile web apps are less expensive to develop, and require lesser time as well.

So, to decide between native apps and mobile web, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1.       How important is speed and performance?

2.       Do you want to include any device-specific features?

3.       Is an internet connection required?

4.       Will you need to support multiple mobile platforms and devices? If yes, how many?

5.       What’s your budget and timeline?