In this age, mobile phones have become the new must have for any single person or organization. Most solo developers focus on a single OS and avoid all the other ones regardless of the size their user base and potential in profits.
While full teams of developers and large companies will tend to focus on all OS’s. Today, it is much more important that an app supports a plethora of devices on the market so that it may profit as much as it can.
Whether it’s a team of developers or a solo developer, the first action will you need to take is the decision of either making the app for a single OS or going cross-platform. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, since you will have to deal with different kinds of customers depending on which OS platform you choose to develop for, and that customer will have different needs from the rest.
Cross-Platform
The basic concept behind cross-platform is that you will have an app that will function seamlessly on almost any OS platform. The two types of cross-platform apps are as follows:
Native App
HTML5 Hybrid App
Native Mobile App Development
As we all know, every OS platform comes with its own SDK. These software dev kit’s allow the app developer to create software for the respective OS. When it comes to Native, the developer can use something called an API which are not originally supported by the vendor of the OS but it will allow you to create a native cross-platform app.
Once the developer has completed writing the code for their application, they can then use a unified API which will allow their code to run within several OS platforms regardless of what language was used to write the original app. The final app will then perform just as well as on other platforms as it did on the OS it was developed for and this is due to the use of Native API’s.
Hybrid HTML5 App Development
With the new HTML5 technology, developers are able to use a combination of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to create a hybrid application. These Hybrid cross-platform apps can replace most applications easily since most of them use simple GUI functionality with a web service for their business logic.
Almost all the OS platforms today have some form of web browser feature included within their SDK that will allow app developers to use standard HTML5 technology to design and create their application. Even more complex applications that need the use of the phone’s camera or geolocation for example can still be created in this fashion by using JavaScript to bridge the access to the platforms components.
Pros in Cross-Platform
The main reason cross platform apps are utilized by so many companies is because of how cost effective they can be. With cross platform, you can take advantage of one code base instead of re-creating the same application for several OS platforms and this can become extremely costly and time consuming.
If any bugs are found in your code base, you will only need to fix it once and not in the several other versions of your code since the cross-platform method will utilize your original code to create the app across all OS platforms.
Cross-platform apps also make it very simple to add new features and updates to your app without having to again change your code on the other platforms.
Cons in Cross-Platform
Everyone knows that each OS platform has its own special features. When it comes to cross-platform, it becomes really difficult for developers to build their app around these special features for each OS and this puts you at somewhat of a disadvantage when compared to other apps that will use those special features.
Each platform can come in various shapes and sizes so when designing your app, you have to make sure that it can function properly on all of these different designs.
OS platforms are ever changing. Every year, there are newer features implemented within every platform and this creates a problem for developers who have to constantly keep up with these updates.
In conclusion, cross-platform can provide you with the necessary solutions you need to have your app run on all the popular OS platforms. This is especially important when it comes to businesses that need to get their application onto the market quickly and efficiently. Both Native and HTML5 Hybrid methods can offer you the performance without the high cost of developing multiple apps in separate SDKs.
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