After getting into a business, the most important part is how to expand the business on a global level. You will always find this question lingering around. For a business to expand, it’s important that your brand’s presence is recognized by users and competitors, and the best way to do that is through developing a performance-oriented mobile application for both IOS and Android platforms.
Since users across the globe work on different platforms, it’s very difficult to cater to the need of every user, given that they work on different platforms. For such situations, building a cross-platform mobile app is very useful.
While different frameworks and libraries are making valuable efforts to make such app development easy, there are still a number of problems surrounding it. In order to make a perfect app, great efforts have to be made by the developer.
The question: Why to choose a complex method like cross-platform app development when you already have a native app development method? Let’s discuss some reasons:
Time Saver: Developing an app on different platforms separately consumes more time because it requires a separate set of codes which are to be implemented on all platforms, therefore, to save time, cross-platform app development is the perfect road to take.
Easy Updates: With utilities such as the Appcelerator and PhoneGap, it’s very easy to modify your hybrid apps as compared to the native ones. The synchronization of updates becomes easier because once the code is assembled in HTML5, it can be converted to be used over all platforms the app is developed on.
Code Reusability: The increase in demand has been significant for cross-platform app development because the code has to be written just once which can be used on multiple platforms for building applications. This saves resources and time and also reduces the possibilities of making mistakes in the code set. To get more information, check out this resource: https://papertrailapp.com/log-management.
Consistent App Experience: Users have a tendency to get used to a similar kind of app experience and when they find the same app having a different experience on multiple platforms, they don’t feel comfortable and start looking for other options. So, the only way to get them hooked to your app is through cross-platform app development which helps in providing a consistent app experience.
Here are some popular cross-platform app development tools:
Appcelerator
This utility is used to build, test and check the functionality of the application. It is also JavaScript-friendly.
Advantages :
- For those looking for a quick app development tool, Appcelerator is the one. For examining the interaction of the user interface and the user, the basic model of the application can be built quickly and with ease.
- It has ArrowDB which is a schema-less data store. The deployment of data model becomes easier by the effective use of zero setup efforts.
Disadvantages:
- Stability is an issue which Appcelerator faces along with the bugs, although, the latest version has shown some improvement.
- Appcelerator’s Developer Community provides poor backend support.
Xamarin
Xamarin allows the application of C# codebase to a wide variety of platforms. Also, in contrast to the other frameworks, it allows developers to work with native APIs, IDEs, and languages.
Advantages:
- Code sharing is enabled in Xamarin which saves the developer’s time and money.
- Android is Xamarin’s emulator, so it supports testing across a wide variety of gadgets and quality monitoring.
Disadvantages :
- Xamarin is not very compatible with IOS and Android open source libraries. This becomes a hindrance in developing a fully functioning application.
- The free version of the tool only provides the developer with a limited and specific set of features.
To conclude, developing applications on cross-platforms is a wise way that majority of the developers are opting for. As we have covered a good number of advantages that cross-platform app development offers, we hope that you get answers to all your queries.
