THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CROSS-PLATFORM APP DESIGN

Back in the year 2011 the mobile app platform developed greatly and became a very important tool for both the small and big businesses. The year 2012 is now experiencing the same thing with the emergence of multiple mobile platforms. Some businesses can work on just a single operating system without necessarily including others. Bigger businesses should try to work with different devices in endeavor to provide efficient and affective service delivery to their customers. Even medium sized businesses should try to work with different operating systems in their day to day operations.

 

The problem that businesses face when trying to synchronize the different operating systems is the cost and technical knowhow. There is a sub-industry that will help address the problem and that is the cross-platform mobile frameworks. Appcelerator Titanium, Rhodes, and PhoneGap are designed to help reduce the work that a developer has to put into creating apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and many others.

 

Any development strategy comes with its ups and downs and so this platform independent mobile applications framework strategy also has it fare share of pros and cons.

 

You take a look at PhoneGap for instance with it you can take advantage of HTML5 and also CSS3, you can also use JavaScript to write your code, have access to native features, and also deploy your apps to multiple platforms.

 

Most cross-platform frameworks are built to limit the development time (this is the main idea that most of these frameworks are made). With these frameworks users can write their code in one language making it easy to be compiled to numerous platforms. You may prefer to seek professional help from platform independent apps development companies if you do here is our recommendation.

 

Most of these frameworks work by allowing users to write apps in dynamic programming language with JavaScript being the most commonly used language although several frameworks also use Ruby or Python.

 

The advantages of cross-platform framework

• They have a code that is reusable- with them you will not have to write the specific action or sequence for every platform rather a developer will simply write the code once. When need arises again in later projects or other platforms the bits can be reused.
• Offer easy access to plugins- major frameworks such as Appcelerator and PhoneGap easily offer access to plugins and modules that easily connect to other services or tools.
• They make the work for developers easy- web developers can easily work with them due to fact that they are dynamic and have easy scripting languages. Most frameworks also support HTML5 and CSS3.
• Feature reduced development costs- this is the major advantage of these frameworks because businesses can set them up at reduced costs.
• They got support for enterprise and cloud services- besides plugins and modules for specific functions you will that most frameworks have the option to directly integrate with cloud services which include Salesforce.com, AWS, Box.net? etc.
• They are easily developed and deployed- compilation and deployment of apps in cross-platforms is faster.

Disadvantages of cross-platform frameworks

• There are instances where the cross-platform framework may not support every feature on an operating system or device e.g. if for instance Google, Apple or iPhone adds a new feature on their systems then you will need to update the framework you are using with the additions for it to be able to support the newly added features.
• It is difficult for you to use your own tools- most frameworks are made in such a way that users will have to use the tools they provide them.
• There are instances where the code does not run fast
• 3D support and high-end graphics in some cases are limited
• Vendor lock-in- majority of cross-platform frameworks have been built using their own subsets of JavaScript. This means that switching to another platform will prompt so much work on your part if you will need to reuse the code.