Mobile apps can be divided into native, hybrid and web apps. Native apps allow you to use all the abilities of an operating system or device, with minimum expense on a given platform. Nevertheless, creating a web app permits your code to be ported across platforms, which can reduce immensely the development cost and time. Hybrid app development involves combining web technology and native execution, it uses a common code base to set up apps that are similar to native apps, to a broad range of platforms.
There are two ways of building a hybrid app:
There are two ways of building a hybrid app:
- WebView App: The CSS, JavaScript and HTML code base runs in an internal browser that is called the WebView, enveloped in a native app. Some native APIs are disclosed to JavaScript through this wrapper. Examples of this are Trigger.io and Adobe PhoneGap.
- Compiled Hybrid App: The code is written in a single language (such as JavaScript or C#) and it gets assembled to a native code for each supported platform. The result is a native app for every platform, with less freedom during development. Examples of this are Appcelerator Titanium, Xamarin and Embarcadero FireMonkey.