One Application for all platforms — We call it Hybrid!

The smartphones connect us with the world

The smart phones have changed the entire lifestyle of modern human. We see the extensive world through the tiny screens of our smart devices. The highly performing hardware of the smart devices cannot alone bring the world to our palms. It’s the applications the run on these devices does makes the real magic.

Millions of mobile applications that run on today’s devices are either android or iOS applications. These applications are developed separately for each of the platform, with seperate developing teams and resources. These are called the Native Applications. A native app is built to work on a specific mobile operating system . A developer must use the development tools and languages for that platform. For example, an Apple iOS app is written in Xcode using Swift or Objective-C languages and only works on Apple products. An Android app is written primarily in Java and will work on devices running the Android operating system.

What are Hybrid Applications?

Then what the heck is a Hybrid Application? A hybrid app is not exclusive to a particular operating system. A hybrid app is not exclusive to a particular operating system. These applications are written using standard web technology like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. Third party tools (cordova, ionic or phonegap) are used in developing these applications. Finally the application is deployed to Android and iOS environments.

When Applications already running on Android and iOS platforms are performing well, why do we need the Hybrid Applications? The real benefit is for the developers.

• The users don’t care whether the app was developed as a native application or a hybrid application. Until they get what they want who cares how it was developed? For basic app functionality, a hybrid app provides much of the same user experience they’ve come to know and love in apps.
• While developing hybrid applications, we don’t need separate developers for each developing environment. We just code once and deploy the application in all the platforms. This will reduce the cost for developing a lot.
• We code only once. Therefore we can get the app to the market in much lesser time compared to writing the code again for other platforms.
• We can code in the simple lightweight text editors instead of using Android Studio or Xcode that require high end hardware performance.

At the end the users what an app that has all the functionalities that they need, and an app that is performing well . No once cares about the developing environment other than the developers. Are you a web developer? Then you are also a mobile developer! It’s time to develop Hybrid Applications.