Cross-Platform Mobile Development

A Cross-platform program runs and works on many mobile platforms with a single code base. There are 2 types of cross-platform apps:

• Native Cross-Platform App
• Hybrid HTML5 Cross-Platform App

Cross-platform mobile development refers to the development of mobile applications a.k.a apps that can be used on multiple mobile platforms like iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.

Some widely used Native Cross-Platform Frameworks are as follows:

• Appcelerator Titanium
• PhoneGap
• Xamarin
• QT.

 

Advantages

Some of the advantages are as follows:

Difficult to upgrade

Mobile platforms evolve at a rapid pace. The mobile operating systems are frequently updated with new and innovative features. It requires a lot of work to upgrade an app to newer version.

Operating system limitations

Different mobile operating systems have their own programming model, architecture, screen layouts etc. Each mobile platform has a unique set of features to make the native app more creative. In cross-platform apps, these functionalities and tools are not available.

Look & Feel

Designing and developing a cross-platform app that offers a good user experience on two or more platforms will be challenging. Cross-platform SDKs is not mature yet for platform-specific Look & Feel.

Disadvantages

Efficient

It is relatively easy to develop a cross-platform mobile app rather than a native app for each mobile operating system platform. We can leverage on one codebase and customize it for multiple platforms. Different Mobile platforms make native mobile app development difficult and expensive. There are many operating system platforms available for mobile phones.

Simple Frameworks

There is a number of frameworks like PhoneGap, Meteor, etc. that offers a cross-platform solution. It is easy to handle and maintain the changes using them.

Less learning

Cross-platform mobile development tools generally require less learning curve. They are based on widely used common languages for scripting, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It is possible to use existing dev talent rather than learning platform specific development language.

Easy to develop

The mobile apps can be developed and deployed quickly in a cross-platform environment. The framework tools make it easier to deploy the apps.

Plugins
Cross-platform mobile app development frameworks like PhoneGap allow developers to access a wide variety of plugins. The plugins make it easier for developers to integrate other tools and services to optimize the app’s performance.