Cross Platform Technologies to Deal with Multi-Platform Reality

Mobility devices such as smartphones and tablets are occupying a large space in our life and mobile applications are the driving force affecting this. No doubt, Apple’s iOS and Google’ Android remain the leaders in the market, however, Microsoft Windows Phone, BlackBerry and other, smaller platforms cannot be overlooked either.

While many developers prefer sticking to the big two for launching their app, many find it lucrative to cover the entire base with cross-platform applications.

The Cross-platform Edge

At its inception, iOS were very close, and developers could only develop for this platform alone using Objective C, Mac and xCode. In case of Android, over 50% of the market uses it, but the platform itself is diversity personified with varying devices, screen sizes, resolution, processor speed, memory, operating system versions.

It became the developer’s aim to create a single app that would break through these boundaries, and then entered the cross-platform app development technologies.

HTML5

The HTML5 web and hybrid applications were the most favored solution as they offered exceptional client-side experience. It comes with geolocation tagging, audio and video, offline working capabilities, brilliant graphics and much more.

For instance, the Kindle web app on iOS is an HTML5 app as they could not keep up with App Store policies and were keen on delivering a great user experience.

There are limits to how much data can be stored locally and the available APIs. To break this limitation, there is a hybrid of HTML5, JavaScript and a few extra libraries. Using the native code wrapper, a common set of APIs can be used for all platforms and enhanced to meet the device needs.

PhoneGap

the leader in this field and its open source project Apache Cordova provides platform-specific wrapper for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone.

Why Go Cross-platform?

Three points sum up the advantages of cross-platform application-

HTML5

the common language that most users know and understand. It offers interface control, and behaves exactly as expected.

One team for all development purposes as a common language means the developers need not specialize in any platform-specific, native language

Maintenance is easier and less expensive as a single app has to be developed and launched in all app stores. Also, their maintenance and support from backend technology doesn’t need specialists of a single technology.

Cross-platform apps have their advantages, but cannot be applied everywhere as graphic-intensive applications need native development platforms for functioning to their optimal potential.

We offer hybrid application development services with cross-platform app development technologies. You can speak to our experts to find out more.