Hybrid mobile applications are like any other applications you will
see on your mobile. They get easily installed on your mobile device. You
can look for these apps in the App stores. By using these apps, you can
engage your friends via social media, play games, track your health,
take photos and much more.
Hybrid mobile applications are
developed using a combination of web technologies like CSS, HTML, and JS
as same as websites on the internet. The major difference is that
hybrid applications are hosted inside a native app which further uses a
mobile platform's WebView. Here, WebView is a chromeless browser window
which is typically configured to run fullscreen.
In fact, hybrid
mobile apps enable you to access various device capabilities viz.
camera, accelerometer, contacts, and much more. However, inside mobile
browsers don't allow you to access these capabilities from it.
Furthermore, hybrid mobile applications include native UI elements in
those situations where it is necessarily required, as proved by
Basecamp's approach towards hybrid mobile application development.
It
is not easy to answer the question how a mobile app is built.
Similarly, hybrid mobile apps are no different. A well-written hybrid
application should not behave or look any different than its native
equivalent. However, users don't care about it as they only want an app
that works well. It is what actually matters to them. If you are trying
to figure out whether a mobile application is hybrid or native, it would
be like you are trying to differentiate rare grape varieties of wine.
Unless
you are the one who really cares about this, it is not terribly
important. What all matters are how your hybrid mobile application
development is going to work in the long run as no one will care about
how it was built. A hybrid mobile application is said to be good if it
performs well for its users.
How are hybrid mobile applications built?
Like
other websites are built, hybrid mobile apps follow the same manner.
Both are built with a combination of technologies like CSS, HTML, and
JS. Generally, a hybrid app targets a Web View which is hosted inside a
native container rather than targeting a mobile browser. This allows its
users to access various hardware capabilities of the mobile device.
Many
hybrid mobile apps today leverage Apache Cordova, a simple platform
that consists of a set of JavaScript APIs for accessing mobile device
capabilities through plug-ins that are built with native code. These
plug-ins include APIs in order to access the device capabilities like
contacts, accelerometer, camera, and more. In fact, a huge number of
plugins are built and maintained by mobile app developers
community-at-large which is can be found in the Apache Cordova Plugins
Registry. A group of plugins that have been properly tested, documented,
and extended can be found at the Telerik Verified Plugins Marketplace.
If
we talk about Apache Cordova, it was actually started as a project
named PhoneGap. But nowadays, PhoneGap is considered as a distribution
of Apache Cordova which includes additional tools. To know more about
its history, you can check out Cordova, PhoneGap and what's in a name?
Various
application assets like CSS, HTML, JS are packaged via tooling through
Apache Cordova for targeting platform SDKs. Once a hybrid app is built,
it can be run just like any other app on the mobile device. Apache
Cordova provides the tooling that is highly driven by a command line
interface. However, mobile app developers can still leverage IDEs such
as Visual Studio and effective solutions like the Telerik Platform to
further increase productivity.
Since mobile app developers don't
want to be getting locked into proprietary platforms, so hybrid mobile
apps give a way to mobile app developers for re-using their existing
skills in web development. This mainly includes SDKs provided by
platform vendors and the programming languages.
Hybrid mobile app
development somehow looks appealing to a company's bottom line such as
Why hire a developer for each platform when you can hire one developer
and target all of them through CSS, HTML, and JavaScript? But, the
reality is actually a bit more complicated to accept.
Obviously,
it's true that mobile app developers become able to target multiple
platforms with hybrid mobile app development. But when it comes to
WebView or web runtime, each platform comes with a set of caveats. This
is more true for Android and not consistent between OS versions.
Furthermore,
there must be some unique capabilities of platforms to which a mobile
app developer may wish to target. In such cases, a combination of
platform-specific code and plugins must be utilized which will take
advantages of those capabilities. Optionally, mobile app developers can
take advantage of 3rd party web runtimes such as Crosswalk which can be
further embedded into your hybrid applications.
When should you build a hybrid mobile application?
It
is the foremost concern of every mobile app developer who wants to
build a hybrid mobile app. The first thing you should do is to check
your mobile application's requirements. Before committing to a platform
strategy must evaluate the technical merits as well as non-technical
merits of hybrid mobile apps over the web and native mobile apps. You
should first consider the following questions before developing a hybrid
app:
- What are the technical abilities of your mobile development team?
- Which mobile app platforms do you wish to target?
- Are you looking to use the multiple capabilities of the mobile device?
- Do you want to distribute your apps through the app stores?
- Does the hybrid approach really live up to its promise in the coming years?
- Which mobile app platforms do you wish to target?
- Are you looking to use the multiple capabilities of the mobile device?
- Do you want to distribute your apps through the app stores?
- Does the hybrid approach really live up to its promise in the coming years?
The
above questions are needed to be answered properly before the
development of mobile apps. You may further evaluate more questions in
detail.
WHICH MOBILE APP PLATFORMS DO YOU WISH TO TARGET?
You
may have a number of choices if you want to target more than one
platform. This is because the web offers a highly interactive solution
for this purpose. However, the mobile browser is your target. HYbrid
apps lend itself to this due to its reliance upon the WebView.
On
the other hand, Native apps find a unique space among this. In fact, you
are essentially coupled to this platform if you rely upon
platform-specific programming languages and vendor SDKs. For this case,
Objective-C or Swift is used for iOS, Java is used for Android and C# is
used for Windows phone.
DO YOU WANT TO DISTRIBUTE YOUR MOBILE APP VIA APP STORES?
If
you want to distribute your app via an app store, you must build a
native or hybrid app. You can not distribute sites through app stores.
Hence, browser's address bar is provided for this. Despite this
limitation, whether you build a hybrid or native app, it is strongly
recommended that you must have a website available for your mobile app.
You need to create this because this will be the first place your app
users might expect to go in case if they stuck with any problem.
ARE YOU LOOKING TO USE THE CAPABILITIES OF THE MOBILE DEVICE?
As
compared to native and hybrid apps, websites have a limited set of
abilities. These limitations are put up by a browser that effectively
sandboxing it from mobile OS. A lot more device capabilities are exposed
through HTML5 with the help recent developments with mobile browsers
which include geolocation, camera, and others.
In spite of these
advancements, support for advanced functionality is still limited. For
an instance, streaming and media capture are still unsupported in
various mobile browsers. Due to these limitations with mobile browsers,
there are many mobile app developers who are compelled to evaluate
native and hybrid apps as alternatives. These platforms enable mobile
app developers to access device APIs. While in case of hybrid apps,
plugins support this capability.
It is often said that native app
development is best suited for apps where graphics performance is
paramount. The best example is the mobile games which completely rely on
complex visual interactions on the screen. No matter, how wonderful
game app you have developed for your users and how flawlessly it
operates from a functional perspective, you can expect this game app to
have a very low app store rating if it is lacking energy. Due to these
reasons, mobile app developers have long argued for using a hybrid
approach to build their game applications.
However, there exist a
number of solutions for hybrid mobile apps. This includes WebGL and
HTML5 Canvas that are well-suited to build game applications. In fact,
these technologies are most preferred and approachable for mobile app
developers due to the presence of libraries like EaselJS, Paper.js, and
others. This is not limited to game development only. Developers build
more traditional, line-of-business apps by using frameworks like Kendo
UI and Famo.us.
WHAT ARE THE TECHNICAL ABILITIES OF YOUR APP DEVELOPMENT TEAM?
The
team's technical abilities is another major factor when it is about to
evaluate development options for mobile. To build native applications,
you need to hire developers who are proficient and experienced with the
programming languages of every platform that you wish to target and
platform SDKs. But for building web and hybrid apps, you need to hire
developers who use web technologies like CSS, HTML, and JS. You may also
have a team that can target more than one platform with a single set of
technologies. So, this is a worth considering when you have to evaluate
your opinions.
DOES THE HYBRID APPROACH REALLY LIVE UP TO ITS PROMISE?
Lastly,
it is important to know that hybrid is not the be-all and end-all
approach for mobile app development. At the initiation of this article, I
have thrown light upon the challenges of overcoming the inconsistencies
between WebViews. While other challenges still remain. With hybrid app
development, you can target the various features of a mobile platform in
order to discover if they are inaccessible. This is because plugins
used for them can be unreliable, out-dated or missing altogether. This
takes you to the dilemma whether to remove an application feature or to
write the plug-in by yourself.
You may find hybrid app development
model restricted when you have to develop an app that requires numerous
native features or an app where performance is critically required for
the success of the app. With this situation, you may found yourself to
forcefully choose native development technologies. However, these are
considered as alternative approaches which let you build performant
native apps without having core knowledge of tools like Android Studio
and Xcode.
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