Rendering Web Pages in Mobile Apps: A General Case Study

Same World with Web View in Mobile Apps

Photo by Jackson Sophat on Unsplash

By offering more tools, enhancing security and deployment techniques, and other aspects of their business, corporations like Apple and Google are simplifying the lives of developers. However, have you ever been in a situation where the web team stated,

“Hey, you can launch this UI or functionality in your mobile app through web view; we already have this component developed.”?

For example, adding an auto-responding chat program to a mobile app doesn’t even require developing a lot of code; it can simply be launched in a web browser and left to operate, showing user’s transactions history, network speed, display promotion banner through web views on mobile apps , etc. These are some examples. Today, we’ll go over something that you may or may not have discussed or thought about for your app. Let’s begin… 🚴🏼‍♂️

Render web-based UI in Mobile apps through Web Views

The functionalities of traditional native apps are available in web views created using web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Regardless of the device or browser a user chooses, they are made to be quick.

Relevance of mobile applications

1. Native app-like experience: When you render web pages in your web views programmatically, it gives the same native experience to the user.
2. Up-to-date: Developers don’t need to manually update these web pages because they are web-based and always up-to-date. The main benefit over native UI development is this: For Native Technologies, for instance, you must fix and submit the application in a recursive manner in order to send it for review and get it approved. However, there is no requirement to submit UIs or web-based pages to the app store. We only need to deploy the most recent version of them, and then we’re set to go.
3. Cross-Platform Development: These are made using web technologies, which are cross-platform by nature, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and every other programming language. This suggests that web views can be used to access it using native APIs. Furthermore, even though I oppose using user interfaces or full flows made in Web View, there are some instances that I can think of, such as FAQs, user acceptance guidelines, and terms and conditions, and help section pages. These pages can be at one location, handled by one team, and then called upon by another to be displayed on a mobile device because they require the same information regardless of where they are displayed.
4. Cost-Effectiveness: Web views can be used to effectively construct complicated algorithms for processing information into data, such as chatbots, voice-activated APIs, and facial modification APIs, which require an extensive amount of work and expertise from developers. This might be cost-effective in certain ways.

Let’s see some of their disadvantages

1. Security Concerns: Giving session tokens, cookies, and other secure objects to web views and then using redirection to regain control of the native user interface could be dangerous; if any data is being lost, it would be very challenging to look into and debug.
2. Limited Native Functionality: It’s possible that they may not have access to every native app's functionality and API. This may restrict their usefulness and performance in comparison to native apps, particularly for jobs requiring intricate animations, sandbox testing, or deep integration with the device’s hardware, i.e camera, accelerometer, GPS, etc.
3. Platform Limitations: Even though they are meant to be cross-platform, there could be differences in how they work and behave across different browsers and operating systems. Enabling in-page connections or hyperlinks, sharing links, and modifying and accepting cookies are just a few examples of how it can be challenging to ensure consistent performance and behavior across platforms. Some restrictions may apply from one platform to another.
4. App Store Features: Certain features and benefits of the app store, like in-app purchases, app store optimization (ASO), and platform-specific service integration, might not be available through those pages if APIs are not provided by the respective platforms.
5. Navigation: In certain situations, such as redirections, deep linking, launching native user interfaces through navigations, or invoking other pages or apps, it could be extremely challenging. Developers may run into issues while switching between native and web views, and vice versa.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, companies are adopting, developing, and getting better over time, solving a lot of these issues (I gave a few examples or use cases above.). They can still be a strong substitute for native UIs in some use cases and situations, particularly when taking into account aspects like cross-platform compatibility, development cost, and time to market.

And that’s it. Thank you for reading my post. I really appreciate your time. If you think it’s helpful, please clap or comment. And in the following one, I see you. 🙌