Mobile technologies are tightly integrated to our everyday routine and business. They simplify lots of tasks that we used to do manually. With the range of the mobile gadgets, platforms and technologies we use today, we have come to the situation when mobile developers face difficulties of developing products that could work well on different mobile operating systems. However, there are some solutions that enable developers to build hybrid apps which can be run on different platforms without making any changes in codes.
What is a Hybrid App?
To make the picture clear let’s make a classification of existing apps.
Native apps are primary developed just for one specific mobile platform with the use of bespoke SDK, languages and tools provided by the platform developer. For example, Objective-C, Java, C#.
Mobile Web apps are apps developed with the application of any server-side technologies (e.g. PHP, ASP.NET) rendering HTML.
Hybrid apps combine the use of web and non-web technologies. These apps are run on a device and are written with the use of web tools like HTML5 and CSS.
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An ordinary user may even not notice the difference between native and hybrid mobile apps, because the hybrids are loaded from the app markets, installed on the gadgets and used just like all other applications. Nevertheless, the difference is enormous and it is mostly experienced by mobile app developers and customers who have an opportunity to save their time and money only by writing some parts of the app code in JavaScript, HTML and CSS and by reusing them on other mobile platforms instead of rewriting the same parts of code to be able to adapt the mobile app to another OS.
Main Hybrid App Features:
- It functions no matter if the device is connected or not.
- It integrates with the file system of the gadget.
- It integrates with web-based services.
- It has a build-in browser for access improvement to the dynamic content published online.
However, you know well that each coin usually has two sides. And hybrid applications and their development haven’t reached the level of functionality that native applications have. Their productivity is a bit lower; the speed of work is slower. But such applications have just started its development and I believe that it is a technology of future. Do you?
About the Author
The post was written by Katerina Merzlova from Intellectsoft LTD, an iOS development company with the best reputation in mobile world. If you are interested in finding out how we work follow us on Twitter @Intellectsoft
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