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Thread: Mobile applications

  1. #1
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    Default Mobile applications

    Just a general question... I've never built any apps before, but my cousin and I are working on something and we want it to be compatible across all mobile platforms. Now granted majority phones are iPhone and Android, but there are some on Windows mobile as well. Since I've never created mobile apps before, my concern is I would have to create 3 apps for each platform. My idea is instead of having to do that, if I created a web-based application and then just created an app that simply rendered the web-based app to that phone; would that be as good as just creating a separate app?

    My biggest concerns are security, user interaction, and ease of use.

    Does anyone have any experience with mobile app development?

    Thanks in advance!

  2. #2
    Purple Developer Purple Elephant1au's Avatar
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    Hi,

    It depends on what exactly the application does.

    Native applications can make use of the phones internal hardware such as camera, storage etc. But do require platform specific code for each application.

    Web based applications can work cross-platform, but normally 'require' constant internet access, depending on how you implement it ie offline saved pages etc.

    If your application does not need to use any of the internal hardware of the phones, i would go with a web application, but thats me.

    Web based ones will ofc be slower to perform certain tasks.

    I am currently making an android app for work which uses the NFC chip reader inside the phone, so i have to make a native app, but my project at university is a web application which uses Bootstrap as its framework as it helps greatly when creating both mobile and desktop web applications.

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  3. #3
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    I can't say too much because we actually have a business idea that we're trying to license and get all the legal documents taken care of.
    I would say that it would need to use the phone's GPS, it would probably use the camera as well, and it would need access to file storage as it requires the user to upload images/videos.

    I was actually considering in using bootstrap as the foundation of the UI as well. I really like some of the templates I have seen using that.

    Are there any web libraries/frameworks that would allow the use of the hardware I mentioned above? Damn, I might need to hire someone to build this for us. Like I said though we need to sort out all the legals first.

  4. #4
    Purple Developer Purple Elephant1au's Avatar
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    I believe the newer android and Iphone OSs can actually use the hardware sensors on the phone from a web application.

    HTML5 even includes a tag to allow the phone to upload a captured image straight from the camera.

    Goes to show how much i keep up with latest trends in programming lol

    So by the looks of things, you can use GPS, camera, storage etc straight from the web application, aswell as offline use.
    I might have to reconsider how im doing my application for work now.

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  5. #5
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    Thanks man! That's helpful. I just hope I can swing this. I have some good ideas, but putting stuff into motion might be the tricky part.

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    Über Prodigy & Developer Razo[R]apiD's Avatar
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    Check out Titanium Framework or PhoneGap/Cordova.

    But to be honest - ditch Windows Phone/Mobile for now and focus on iOS + Android and then create Windows version.
    Also I have bad experience with frameworks mentioned above. They are cool and awesome until your app needs to make some specific thing which is designed differently on different platforms - then you end up writing native plugins to those frameworks and in the end you understand you would be better to just write iOS and Android native apps from start.

    Also I think it's better to use native platform UI, because future OS updates on given platform may break your UI, but as long as you stick to native UI, your app will just get new UI also without any work needed to fix compatibility issues.

  7. #7
    Über Prodigy & Developer Razo[R]apiD's Avatar
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    You can't use HTML5 Camera API on iOS for example. Windows apps made in HTML run on IE/Edge engine which is problematic in itself.

    You can't control the resolution and size of uploaded images straight from the camera etc. Also many Android devices don't get OS updates, which means that a lot of users may lack new HTML5 features in their phones, and so on and so on...

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