Developing HTML5 And Hybrid Apps For Mobile Devices

HTML5 is a mark-up language that is used to structure and present content on the World Wide Web. Mobile apps developed with HTML5 have a distinct advantage over native apps. They can be used on any platform and are comparatively inexpensive to develop. The future, however, may belong to hybrid apps, which combine HTML5 and native apps, to get the best of both worlds. Developing HTML5 apps for mobile devices

- Vinayak Vaid

Web traffic analysis tool StatCounter indicated that as on March 2017, Indians accessed the Internet through their mobiles nearly 78 per cent of the time compared to using their desktops to go online just 22 per cent of the time. This has altered the way in which companies, content providers and firms interact with their customers. They are now shifting more towards mobility to usher in new trends in their businesses and to reap the maximum profits. But there is one bottleneck that can hurt the transition to mobile phones and that is the prevalence of different mobile operating systems. Though Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS are the market leaders, other operating systems like BlackBerry and Windows can’t be written off straight away. Different OSs require the use of different languages that the respective platforms support (iOS uses objective C whereas Android uses Java). This also implies developers and testers must have the skills needed to work in the different languages. Additionally, updates have to be rolled out separately for the individual OSs, which adds to the cost borne by the app development companies.

HTML5 has proven to be a boon to the mobile application development market. HTML5 apps have many advantages over native apps. They are cheaper, easier to create and maintain, and can be deployed on different platforms without any additional costs. Also, users do not need to install new updates to use the latest functionalities incorporated in the app. Organisations, these days, are looking at HTML5 mobile app development to streamline implementation, as well as to reduce costs and complexity. Also, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript can be combined with HTML5 to provide a high-end UI experience and validation support.

How HTML5 mobile application development works