Native Apps vs. HTML5 Web Apps: Battle Royale… or is it?

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August 9, 2012 — anuragkhode

Mobile app devel­op­ers are com­monly asked to cre­ate apps which stream videos, dis­play fluid ani­ma­tions, play music, inte­grate with social media out­lets like Twit­ter and Face­book, and inte­grate with device-specific capa­bil­i­ties. They’re also tasked with cre­at­ing apps that oper­ate prop­erly regard­less of which device, OS or plat­form it’s run­ning on. In many cases, if the devel­oper wants to achieve all these require­ments, they have to lever­age a num­ber of dif­fer­ent devel­op­ment tech­nolo­gies and envi­ron­ments in addi­tion to obtain­ing mul­ti­ple SDKs and learn­ing new script­ing lan­guages for indi­vid­ual OSs, caus­ing delays in deploy­ment and increased resource expenditures.

In comes HTML5 which devel­op­ers are pro­gres­sively accept­ing as a rem­edy for devel­op­ment headaches and a way to suc­cess­fully nav­i­gate through the extremely frag­mented mobile ecosys­tem. HTML is a pro­gram­ming lan­guage used to present inter­net con­tent in a man­ner that is usable by mul­ti­ple devices. The most recent ver­sion of the stan­dard, HTML5, enables cross-device com­pat­i­bil­ity by allow­ing access to mobile con­tent and web apps through any internet-connected device.

What does this mean for mobile devel­op­ers? They can now cre­ate one code that is cross-device, cross-platform, cross-OS and cross-browser com­pat­i­ble. This “write once, run any­where” advan­tage makes it so that devel­op­ers can mit­i­gate the need to write indi­vid­ual codes for iOS, and another spe­cific to Android (and all its var­i­ous OS ver­sions), and another tai­lored for Black­berry, and another for… you get the point. This greatly reduces the costs of devel­op­ing, test­ing and rolling out new web­sites and apps.

Mobile devel­op­ers are begin­ning to favor HTML5 as a devel­op­ment plat­form of choice for many rea­sons. Some use it because it allows seam­less inte­gra­tion and inter­ac­tiv­ity with mobile devices and its native fea­tures, pro­vid­ing end-users with a richer, more com­plex user envi­ron­ment. For exam­ple, devel­op­ers are able to exploit device-specific func­tion­al­i­ties such as the cam­era, speaker, micro­phone, accelerom­e­ter and the LBS tech­nol­ogy. Oth­ers like it because it allows them to bypass the app store approval process. Once devel­op­ers cre­ate, test and final­ize their web apps, they can deploy it sim­ply through a URL. After deploy­ment, they’re able to quickly update the web apps with fea­ture enhance­ments and resolve issues with­out hav­ing to go through an app store re-approval process which results in delays and large expenses – and end-users can still access the updated web app through the same URL. Instant deploy­ment and not requir­ing users to down­load and install the app helps to speed up time-to-market and more impor­tantly, ROI.

There is a great debate about devel­op­ing native apps vs. HTML5 web apps. For enter­prises, the ben­e­fits of HTML5 web apps far out­weigh the lim­i­ta­tions. Imag­ine this scenario:
An enter­prise orga­ni­za­tion devel­ops a native iPhone app for a CRM appli­ca­tion. After months of solid devel­op­ment and test­ing efforts, they sub­mit it to the App Store for approval. After an addi­tional sev­eral months of cor­re­spon­dence and con­tin­u­ous updates to com­ply with Apple’s guide­lines, the app is finally approved. Then, Apple updates their SDK which cre­ated mul­ti­ple bugs, fur­ther delay­ing the CRM app release. Con­cur­rently, the orga­ni­za­tion real­izes that the code which enables the iPhone to inter­face with their core data had lim­i­ta­tions which would take major effort and resources to over­come, maybe even requir­ing a rebuild of the entire app. And, every time the enter­prise wanted to add new enhance­ments and func­tion­al­i­ties, it becomes costly and time-consuming since they would essen­tially have to begin the devel­op­ment and rig­or­ous test­ing efforts from scratch. Finally, the app is approved, launched, avail­able and is a big hit in stream­lin­ing busi­ness processes so now, employ­ees and cus­tomers alike are request­ing Android and Black­berry ver­sions of the CRM app, requir­ing more time and resources.

Enter HTML5. Devel­op­ing the same app in this envi­ron­ment would have pro­duced a “one-size-fits-all” web app which would work on the iPhone, iPad, Android, Black­berry, among other devices regard­less of OS – achiev­ing the look and feel of a native app across all plat­forms. With HTML5, orga­ni­za­tions can quickly and eas­ily develop and release fea­ture enhance­ments and resolve bug issues while enabling cus­tomers to access the CRM app as usual – through a URL. Gone are the days of app store approvals, delays, large expenses and resource com­mit­ments each time the orga­ni­za­tion wanted to roll out a new or enhanced fea­ture or resolve issues.

As enter­prise orga­ni­za­tions evolve to sup­port more than one device plat­form com­pounded by the grow­ing BYOD trend, along with cost and resource con­sid­er­a­tions, devel­op­ing employee– and customer-facing HTML5 web apps seems to be the less pro­hib­i­tive option in the native app vs. HTML5 web app debate, doesn’t it?

Nguồn: http://www.mobileqazone.com