Mobile Application Development: Options and New Trends
The sway that mobile devices hold over the whole industry provides a stirring opportunity for website owners and web developers. They are gnawing their applications into these gadgets while cross-platform mobile applications and website interfaces are set to fire their salvo into this vibrant sphere.
Whether it is for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android a compatible application is every website’s gateway to exposure. In creating applications a list of HTML5 frameworks for mobile development provides a starting block- Ripple helps to test and debug the application on multiple platforms like JavaScript.
An impressive built-in Geolocation module enables testing of geolocation-related applications.
LungoJS which is supplied with full features of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can implement essential features such as Geolocation, History, Device Orientation and WebSQL.This framework does not require any web server support.
Joshfire is an open source mobile development framework that supports HTML5 and JavaScript. This framework will run on iPad, iPhone, Android and even on TVs and connected objects.
Sencha fully supports HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Our applications can be equipped with HTML audio and video components, local storage element and CSS3 styling effects. They can be adapted to iOS, Blackberry and Android devices.
Jo creates applications compatible with iOS, Android, Blackberry drawing the cream of CSS technology to solve design and animation issues.
Kendo UI is a set of HTML5 controls released late last year is quite akin to though it claims non-compliance with jQuery but when we try to use it, a lot of jQuery- style codes appear enmeshed.
In developing a web-based application it is necessary to ensure that our application is compatible with browsers in use today. Much less of a problem for the mobile world because of the rampant purchase of new devices and the advancement in technology incorporated in them. But our site needs to be tested with intended user devices.
New trends have emerged in the form of writing Ruby instead of Objective C. It was released in May this year in the form of Ruby Motion to develop and test native applications for Ipad and Iphone. For those accustomed to Ruby language this is quite an amazing make-over.
Before we set foot on the development phase let us decide whether to use Android, Apple or Blackberry models. A recent Forrester survey of 4000 information workers in 17 different countries found usages were in equal measure with Blackberry taking a light jab.
Mobile Development Platform helps low-power handheld devices such as mobile phones and digital assistants handle pre-installed applications during manufacture of these gadgets. But with the proliferation of Smartphone’s, tablets and mobiles it is necessary to take a relook at preinstalled software. Needless to mention, we cannot waste precious time developing new applications for each and every device.
Cross-platform framework has now emerged as a solution to this problem. A hybrid mixture of HTML5, JavaScript along with extra libraries provides enhanced access to the device over a pure HTML5 web application. Local Storage in excess of 5 MB, photos upload, background services run are all possible.
Leading this field is the PhoneGap framework- now donated to Apache Software Foundation as an open source project and renamed Apache Cordova. It provides a platform-specific wrapper for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone, and exposes a platform-independent API to code against in JavaScript.
The final hitch is how we build the platform. For instance iOS requires Mac, Windows Phone calls for a Windows PC and the others come with a price tag. Today Mobile Development with options and new trends has come to stay and the web developers are now all over the platform scouting for an entry on the mobile bandwagon.
