Many businesses in many industries have adopted mobile apps as a core feature. These apps must run smoothly on all platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows. These solutions can be created quickly and economically by leveraging the cross-platform mobile developer approach.
What is Cross-Platform Development?
Cross-platform mobile app design or hybrid mobile app development is a term that speaks for itself. It allows developers to create a mobile solution that can be used on multiple operating systems and platforms (Android iOS Windows).
Hybrid apps have a native appearance and feel because they combine native code with independent code that is compatible with multiple platforms. It is possible to quickly release a product by having developers write only one line of code.
The pros and cons of cross-platform mobile development
Developers are increasingly attracted to multiplatform mobile app development because of emerging technologies.
Benefits
A hybrid app uses one shareable, which is cheaper than creating separate native apps for each platform.
Because only one programmer is needed to create and maintain an application, costs are lower. Basic knowledge of standard languages will suffice -- the rest will be done by development tools.
Cross-platform apps can have a native appearance and feel which is great for the user experience.
Companies that want to appeal to users on multiple mobile devices, and bring their product to market faster at a lower price, should consider hybrid development.
There are however some problems you might face.
Challenges
Hybrid solutions are more complex because they combine native and non-native elements, which can affect performance.
Cross-platform apps don't support native-only features and functions of mobile devices like advanced graphics or animation, and cross-platform apps are not able to do so. This leads to reduced functionality and a poorer design.
Native solutions can use new features that Google and Apple bring to the Android and iOS platforms. Hybrid apps must wait for these updates to be adjusted to the cross-platform framework. There will always be an update delay.
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Top Five Frameworks for Hybrid Mobile App Development
The process and deliverables for software development will vary depending on which tool you choose. It is essential to choose the right framework in order to create native-like applications. Here's a list of five top frameworks for cross-platform mobile application development. These are the most popular.
1. Xamarin
Xamarin is a free and open-source platform that allows you to build hybrid mobile apps. Xamarin solutions can be used on any mobile platform. They provide the same user experience and performance as native apps.
The popular Microsoft cross-platform mobile application framework is built on the C# programming language, which is complemented by .NET Framework. It's available under the MIT license as part of Visual Studio. The following components make up the development toolset:
Xamarin Studio/Visual Studio, its own IDE
Xamarin SDKs
Xamarin Test Cloud
Xamarin.Mac is used to creating native Mac apps
2. React Native
React Native is a top-rated cross-platform mobile framework. It's built on React, a best-in-class JavaScript library to create user interfaces.
React Native's greatest feature is the ability to use both a universal JavaScript and Swift language -- native platform-specific languages for building cross-platform solutions. This framework converts source code into native elements and contributes to a native user experience.
3. Ionic
Ionic is a great hybrid app framework because it bridges all the desirable properties: It's open-source and easily maintainable, scalable, and simple to read. Ionic is a library that contains HTML, CSS, and JS components designed for mobile application development. It helps you build interactive apps.
Ionic offers a wide range of tools and features, including native-style mobile UI elements, layouts, and out-of-the-box support for material design. Customers also get regular updates from the community.
4. Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap, which is supported by Adobe, is a distribution version of the Cordova framework. This open-source framework for mobile application development is often regarded as the best and most popular tool to create hybrid solutions.
This tool allows you to create apps in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The tool provides native plugins for every mobile platform, which allow developers to add more functionality and access device functionality such as cameras, microphones, accelerometers, compasses, file systems, and so on. Apps are created and run in a WebView browser within a native container for the relevant platform.
5. Sencha
Sencha is the market leader in enterprise-grade app development. This platform allows teams to focus on building applications and not on creating a framework. This tool uses modern web technologies such as ES6, HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS to allow developers to build data-intensive cross-platform web and mobile apps.
Originally called Sencha Touch, this service has been discontinued and merged with Ext JS in order to become Sencha Ext JS. It includes a variety of themes and tools that improve productivity, enable optimization, deployment, design, and themes, and allow for debugging.
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