It’s quite difficult to recover the confidence of a user who has had a bad first experience. While time-to-market and cost constraints are of paramount importance in web application development, it’s crucial not to compromise too heavily on quality in the process. As one of my favorite sayings goes, “faster, better, cheaper… pick any two”. But, according to Hubspot, 73% of smartphone users say they use the mobile web more than native apps to do their shopping… So, in this case, you may have bet on the wrong horse.īut whatever choice you make – whether it be mobile web, native or hybrid app – be careful to adequately research and confirm your assumptions.Īnd then, of course, there are the practical considerations of time and budget. As an example, for the purposes of this mobile web app development tutorial, you may have decided to develop a native mobile app for e-commerce to sell your products.
A web-to-native abstraction layer enables access to device capabilities that are not accessible in mobile web applications, such as the accelerometer, camera, and local storage.īut whatever choice you make – whether it be a mobile web app, a native or hybrid app – be careful to adequately research and confirm your assumptions.
More specifically, hybrid apps run inside a native container, and leverage the device’s browser engine (but not the browser) to render the HTML and process the JavaScript locally. Hybrid apps, like native apps, run on the device itself (as opposed to inside a browser), but are written with web technologies (HTML5, CSS and JavaScript) and typically underpinned by a hybrid app framework. native apps question, a hybrid mobile app may be the right answer for you, depending on your requirements and resource constraints. Conversely, there may be capabilities native to the mobile device (such as the movement sensor and so on) that are essential to your app, but which are only accessible via a native app (which would therefore make the mobile web app choice a non-starter for you).Īnd beyond the old web apps vs. Generally speaking (although there are always exceptions), the mobile web app route is faster and cheaper than the native mobile app route, especially when the objective is to support a wide range of devices. Who is your target audience? Are they more likely to prefer a mobile web or a native app? What’s the difference between native and hybrid apps? What development resources do you have and which mobile technologies are they most familiar with? What is the licensing and sales model that you’re envisioning for your product? There are numerous web app best practices to consider, not all of which are technical. Hybrid AppĪs is true with most technology selections, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to the type of mobile app to develop. So if you’re not already thinking about mobile app development, you probably should be. But the increasingly omnipresent nature of mobile devices and applications strongly suggests that those who don’t need to support mobile clients today will more than likely need to do so in the not-too-distant future. Of course, not every developer today needs to worry about supporting mobile clients. And as a mobile app developer, few things can be as intensely irritating as striving to support as wide a range of mobile clients as possible, each of which has its own frustrating set of idiosyncrasies. Whether you choose to develop a mobile web, native, or hybrid app, the quest to support multiple mobile browsers, more exotic devices, and coming to grips with various platforms can be quite a gut wrenching experience indeed.Īs a mobile device user, few things are as frustrating and difficult to fat-finger-navigate as a poorly designed mobile web or native app. Indeed, mobile computing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous… and it’s awesome.Īs a mobile device user, few things are as frustrating and difficult to fat-finger-navigate as a poorly designed mobile web app, or even a native app.Īnd as a mobile app developer, few things can be as intensely irritating as striving to support as wide a range of mobile clients as possible, each of which has its own frustrating set of idiosyncrasies. Of those who use the Internet or email on their phones, more than a third go online primarily through their handheld devices.
According to a recent Pew Research Center Study, the number of users accessing the Internet on their smartphones has more than doubled in the past 5 years, as has the number of users downloading and using mobile apps. And today, an ever-growing percentage of these devices are smartphones. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet, 5.1 billion of whom own a cell phone.