Cross Platform Development
Mobile apps are quickly increasing in appeal to businesses and enterprise organizations. They allow remote data entry, are incredibly portable compared to laptops, and have access to a variety of sensors (GPS, gyroscope, and a camera). However, creating a mobile or tablet application can be cheaper or more expensive than a traditional web application depending on how many mobile platforms you plan to deploy to (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.). Cross platform mobile application development allows developers and software engineers to create solutions such as customer portals that can be deployed to a variety of mobile platforms. This is also known as “build once – deploy anywhere”.Cross Platform Application and Software Development.
Cross-platform Mobile App
We recommend and uses a variety of tools to build cross platform mobile applications: PhoneGap/Cordova & React Native. Both frameworks take advantage of existing web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The name PhoneGap and Apache Cordova are often used interchangeable. PhoneGap was originally a product of Adobe, but was later donated to the open-source community and rebranded as Apache Cordova. The concept is quite simple, imagine a traditionally web application squeezed into a mobile application. The mobile app itself is basically a browser rendering HTML and CSS in the form of an iOS or Android app. This allows developers to create a cross platform mobile app using their existing web development skill set.
React Native is the newcomer to the world of mobile cross platform development and we can thank the folks at Facebook for sharing their framework with the open-source community. It follows most of the same principles as Cordova, but instead of HTML it uses a custom UI layer based on their React technology. This subtly difference resolves the performance and responsiveness that commonly plague Cordova applications. However, React Native currently only supports iOS and Android, but they are slowly expand their supported platforms.
Regardless of which technology is used, the outcome is the same. A single application that can be deployed to multiple mobile platforms. Cross platform mobile apps
Cross-Platform Desktop App
Creating desktop applications that work on both PC and Mac is not a new trend, but it is something that has become quite simpler. The same technologies JavaScript-powered technologies that are driving the cross platform mobile app development are also being used to build cross platform desktop applications. Frameworks like Electron take it a step further, and allow developers to reuse code they may have from their existing web applications. This allows organizations to share code between not only their mobile and web apps, but also their thick-client (desktop) applications.
But why use custom software development services to build desktop apps? There is an obvious a mass exodus from desktop applications to web apps, and if possible we would recommend a web app over a desktop application. There are situations and exceptions to every rule, and there are certain circumstances when it makes more sense to build a desktop application. Interacting with external hardware, complex or intensive tasks, offline activity, 3d rendering, and high performance applications are great examples of situations in which we would likely recommend a desktop application.
