This is my
second attempt to tackle the formidable mobile world head on. This is in contrast from the previous post, as I now write a post exclusively
from the device ecosystem viewpoint, as opposed to the server side realm. Mobile
has manifested itself as the platform that’s taking not just the consumer world
by storm, but the intensity of internet traffic it generates towards websites and
also alongside, raking revenues that has subdued the popularity of desktop to a
significant extent. If you are not getting onto the mobile bandwagon, you are
left behind.
What does future
hold for us?
There was and
is, a spate of native applications that has
its strengths like leveraging the hardware APIs, faster graphics and responsive
UI, storing offline data locally and hence facilitating operation with no web connectivity,
application store discoverability/monetization etc. However armed with the
diversity of browsers, devices generate massive traffic towards the desktop
intended websites, which supports cross platform. Here is where dichotomy of
native and HTML5 web applications dovetailed to form a new breed called as-
“Hybrid Mobile
Apps” – which is basically the holy union between the native applications(which are typically developed using high
level language [JAVA/C#/Objective C] and run on top of the device OS kernel) and HTML5 web
applications. This is done my dropping or wrapping the HTML5 + JavaScript + CSS
code into a native container and allowed to deploy using application store into
the device, which unleashes the best of both
worlds. A popular platform that allows realizing the same is “PhoneGap/Cordova”
