Hybrid Apps Offer Benefits Over Native Mobile Apps

Today, organizations are no longer asking themselves, ‘Do I need a mobile app?’ With more people than ever accessing information from their favorite clothing stores, booksellers, furniture retailers and more, there is no question that organizations need apps that can deliver a responsive, appealing user experience on devices.

The question, though, has shifted to ‘Do I need a mobile app or a browser app?’ Native apps require unique skill sets for writing to discreet platforms, and those apps have to be written over and over to run on each platform. Browser apps can work well on mobile devices but don’t allow developers to take advantages of the device’s features.

This month’s cover story in SD Times looks at the pros and cons of hybrid apps. In the piece, news editor Christina Cardoza writes:

“According to the Ionic Developer Survey 2017, hybrid app development is taking over. The report revealed that 32.7 percent of responding developers plan to abandon native app development in favor of hybrid. In addition, the survey found a nearly 700 percent decrease in developers building exclusively with native tools.

“A hybrid app is essentially a native app, Ionic’s CEO Max Lynch explained. Hybrid apps are downloaded from an app store similarly to native, and can access native feature such the GPS, camera, contacts, accelerometer and sensors. The difference is that native require proprietary or platform-specific languages such as Swift, Objective-C and Java, while hybrids utilize web technologies — JavaScript, HTML and CSS. By using a webview wrapper, such as Electron or Apache Cordova, which enables the app to call into the device’s native features, web developers can use their existing skill set, whereas in a native approach they would have to learn a new set of skills.”

Angular bridges gap between developers, designers

Quite often in application development, the code and business logic are written in one place, and the design is created in another. This disconnect had led to some pretty unusual applications that have CTA buttons in unexpected places, copy that’s too narrow or wide, art that overwhelms or that you need a magnifying glass to really understand.

The Angular team is looking to address that problem with Angular for Designers, introduced last month at the ng-conf in Salt Lake City, Utah.

As SD Times reported:

“Apps that users love to use, developers love to build,” said Stephen Fluin, developer advocate for Angular. “But we have been leaving out designers and I think they are a critical part of building experiences that users love to use.”

Fluin defines designers as “individuals who focus more on the user interface and user experience.” The reason why the team is taking a broad definition to designers is because a lot of designers define themselves in different ways, use different tools and have a variety of different skills, so the team did not want to leave anyone out.”

Angular looks to deliver solutions that don’t require designers to learn development tools, but focus on the designers’ job: ergonomic file formats, ability to create a single HTML file, adding new commands, and more.

Node.js announces first release in 10.x line

The release, which will offer Long Term Support, upgrades to OpenSSL 1.1.0, leveraging work to improve code quality cleanup and modernization, reports SD Times online and social media editor Jenna Sargent. In the article, Sargent writes:

“Node.js 10.0.0 is the seventh major release of the project since the launch of the Node.js Foundation in 2015,” said James Snell, Node.js release manager for 10.0.0. “This release continues the project’s commitment to delivering improved stability, performance, and reliability for all Node.js users. While there are a handful of new features, the standout changes in 10.0.0 are improvements to error handling and diagnostics that will improve the overall developer experience.”