Exponential growth Mobile devices make up roughly 20 percent of U.S. web traffic and there are more mobile phones on the planet than there are people.
Tech
Go Native with Your Next Mobile App BY Tim Masterson
C
hances are you’ve at least thought about a mobile app for your organization. With hundreds of thousands of apps being developed and released every year it is becoming more and more important to ensure that when you do make your first app it enhances your organization’s mission. With the app gold rush a number of new frameworks have been developed that promise to make app development faster and cheaper. Many of these frameworks are great if you are building the kind of app that the framework is designed to make. Here are some quick summaries of the most important players right now.
Corona:
I’m not talking about the beer, but the 2D game development framework. This framework is great when you want to build a 2D game like Angry Birds. The framework uses a little known language called Lua that can be compiled for both iPhone and Android. It has been optimized for iPhone although some apps can also be built for Android.
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January - February 2013 · MODERN GOVERNMENT
Unity3D:
This is a full-blown 3D game development platform that can be used to build both iPhone and Android apps. I recommend only using this framework to build a 3D training simulation, or a 3D immersive visualization app, because it doesn’t use the interface elements most organizations need in their apps. If you plan on building anything other than a 3D training simulation then you would be best served using a different framework to build your application.
Titanium:
This framework uses HTML and JavaScript to make an application. The framework then generates and compiles a mobile application. By its very nature this framework is good for website like applications. Since it uses HTML and JavaScript you can build for both iPhone and Android with largely the same code base.
Native frameworks:
Apple and Google provide native frameworks for developers to build mobile apps. All of
the frameworks mentioned above are built on top of native frameworks. When the hardware capabilities change, native frameworks are the first to be updated and the best maintained. Apple and Google have more developers and larger budgets than the third party framework vendors. Native framework updates are released as the hardware changes. Third party frameworks are typically six to nine months behind hardware updates. You don’t have to worry about Apple or Google going out of business, or being acquired and discontinued. Apps written with the official native framework will be more responsive, more stable, and perform faster than apps written with third party frameworks. In a few years, when changes in phone hardware slow down, third party frameworks will be a more viable option. But for now the hardware is changing so fast that your best bet is to go native. It may be a little more expensive, but in my opinion it will provide your organization with the best value and give you the best opportunity to share your mission. (MG)
In a few years, when changes in phone hardware slow down, third party frameworks will be a more viable option.