Generally the marketplace for any smartphone platform contains the native apps for those platforms. And these native apps are notoriously known to have compatible issues. So any native app developed for one platform will work only for that platform. So in order to have same apps or games available for all the smartphone platforms the same app needs to be developed separately for each platform. This is not only time consuming but also requires additional overheads. To address this, another category of app called Hybrid Apps took birth. The Hybrid Apps successfully bridged the gap between Native Apps and Web Apps and also solved the major issue of cross platform compatibility.
Cross Platform App Development Methodology
As technology is constantly evolving, we have a plethora of tools and frameworks at our expense to build real cross platform applications which can even access most of the native features of the device in which it will run.
One such technique of building cross platform mobile app is called cross compilation. The framework used in this process provides a platform independent API using dynamic languages like JavaScript, Python or Ruby. This API is used to build the mobile application. The code is then processed by a cross compiler which transforms it into platform specific native app based upon the target platform. The applications developed in this way are faster and can access most of the native features of the device like camera, GPS etc.
Another method in which we can develop cross platform application is by using the virtual machine technique. In this method, the framework used will provide an API as well as the runtime environment for the app. The main disadvantage of this method is slower performance.
Another more popular but less powerful method is building mobile web app using HTML5 and CSS3. The powerful nature of HTML5 and CSS3 let us build apps that gives almost similar user experience like a native app. Usage of JavaScript framework like Sencha Touch can take this approach further.
Cross Platform Frameworks
There are lots of cross platform framework available, few of them with Open Source licenses and few with commercial licenses. Some are quite powerful and some are there just for the sake of it’s existence. The most widely used and popular among them are PhoneGaap, Appaccelerator Titanium, Rhodes, Adobe Air, Sencha Touch, Jquery Mobile etc.
Conclusion
The cross platform mobile apps solve the ardent task of creating same application multiple times for multiple platforms. So this is a viable option in many cases. However it has few shortcomings, such as cross platform apps are good only for presentation types of apps, but when it involves complex Enterprise Apps or rich 3D games, cross platform technique is not suitable. The only option then is creating native apps separately for each platform you want your application to be available for. Cross platform apps use features common to many platforms so they are not capable of device API access, hence all features of the device cannot be used. Also most of these cross platform frameworks are catering to Android and iOS, so there is lots of room for improvement for support of other platforms.
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