FHWS Science Journal - Fakultät Informatik und Wirtschaftsinformatik

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Patrick Mennig only the syntaxes of used languages differ from each other but the semantics, available classes, libraries and the program structure, depending on the targeted operating system. Apart from native development, another approach called web development exists. Following it, a developer creates so-called web apps. These use the operating systems browser as a runtime environment and are runnable on all mobile operating systems without any installation process. The programming languages to create web applications are HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Those allow platform independent development. 4 The application can be opened by accessing a specific website – nothing else are web applications. A specifically developed and adjusted website mocking a native application in design and functionality [Willnecker, F. et. al. 2012]. With particular techniques, these web apps can also be used without an Internet connection, as long as the user has saved them on the device once and not cleared the browser’s cache. In iOS, this is achieved via the function “add to home screen”. A third way of developing mobile applications is to combine native and web development. Connecting a container application written in platform specific code with a web app containing the application logic and the user interface leads to a program referred to as “hybrid”. In the most extreme case, the native app contains only a single browser window in full screen, running the web app [Franke, F. and Ippen, J. 2012]. The corresponding element is called UIWebView in iOS and WebView in Android and Windows. As the different development approaches for mobile applications have been shown, the question remains which of these – depending on the applied criterion – offers advantages and disadvantages. The criteria “Content vs. Experience”, “Performance”, “APIs”, “Distribution” and “Development Cost” are to be considered. Those are only a subset of possible criteria (e.g. [Frank, AM 2011], [Charland, A und Leroux, B. 2011], [Corral, L. et. al. 2011]) and represent those with a clear difference in results. 4 ANALYSIS OF CRITERIA Above-mentioned criteria should be considered hereafter. Interesting for each are the differences between native, hybrid and web applications. The idea behind the examination is a given firm, which is facing the decision which development approach to choose. 4.1 Content vs. Experience The first step is to decide what one wants to focus on, when developing an application. Two extremes lie in the mere representation of content and the communication of an experience. As long as the goal is to display specific data and information, it is possible speak of a focus on content. This is especially interesting in the area of enterprise applications. From a developers perspective this focus is possible with all three approaches, i.e., native, hybrid and web. There are no particular requirements on the design options. This is different, however, with a focus on experience. This term is very vague and hardly palpable. It can be described with the feeling that a user has, when using the application. Experience is influenced, inter alia, by the design, the haptic and responsiveness of the application. As the user manipulates the app with his own fingers, he has a very direct interaction. However, this is affected by sluggish or lack of feedback to touch, due to delays in moving content or too functionally designed user interfaces. A very good example of an app that wants to convey 4 The browser is used as a container. Hence the platform independence is only restricted by the browsers capabilities. As long as the browsers meet the HTML specifications, independence is given. Adjustments and changes to adapt to different browsers and versions are often inevitable. 26 FHWS Science Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2013
Patrick Mennig an experience is the calendar on the iPad under iOS. Although much content is presented, the frame as well as the background are lovingly designed and give the user the feeling that they have a real calendar of leather and paper in hand. Even details such as curved edges, demolition of old calendar pages in the month view or the shadows when turning pages have been minded. Native applications have a slight advantage in terms of this criterion because they allow a direct access to system resources and therefore can react very quickly to user input. Furthermore, they are using the operating system's control elements, thus enabling a seamless experience across the entire system. The advantage in resource usage allows for more advanced and skeuomorphic user interfaces due to more power. Basically this also possible with web languages, but it requires huge additional effort in creating the user interface, the transitions between screens and feedback on user interaction. Existing frameworks such as JQueryMobile and SenchaTouch help, but can not offset all the disadvantages of web and hybrid applications. When focusing on communicating a strong experience, native development is the better approach, as it allows reaching quality results with less effort. 4.2 Performance Depending on the use cases, which the application is based on, different requirements towards the performance of an application arise. If only a certain number of data is shown without being calculated intensively, the app has no special requests to the performance. However, once large amounts of data are displayed, emphasis must be placed on the observance of performance limitations. Figure 3: Loading and scrolling time in seconds per list item on mobile devices. Source: Author’s representation, based on [web & mobile developer 2013]. FHWS SCIENCE JOURNAL, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2013 27
Page 1 and 2: FHWS Science Journal Jahrgang 1 (20
Page 3 and 4: Neue wissenschaftliche Schriftenrei
Page 5 and 6: Artificial Communication - Can Comp
Page 7 and 8: Eberhard Grötsch, Alfredo Pina, Mi
Page 15 and 16: Präsentationssteuerung mit berühr
Page 17 and 18: Melanie Saul Transferleistung, die
Page 19 and 20: Melanie Saul der Systemsteuerung un
Page 21 and 22: Melanie Saul Zur besseren Übersich
Page 23 and 24: Native versus HTML5 - where’s mob
Page 25: Patrick Mennig Figure 1 illustrates
Page 29 and 30: Patrick Mennig Platform Feature B
Page 31 and 32: Patrick Mennig In the future, the s
Page 33 and 34: Mobile Enterprise Application Devel
Page 35 and 36: Florian Wolf, Karsten Huffstadt The
Page 37 and 38: Florian Wolf, Karsten Huffstadt exp
Page 39 and 40: Florian Wolf, Karsten Huffstadt REF
Page 41 and 42: Branded Financial Apps - Was erwart
Page 43 and 44: Sebastian Sprenger Mobiles Marketin
Page 45 and 46: Sebastian Sprenger und Apple App St
Page 47 and 48: Sebastian Sprenger Auf dem Gebiet n
Page 49 and 50: Analysis of Service Level Agreement
Page 51 and 52: Christian Mager information about a
Page 53 and 54: Christian Mager 4 PROCESS MINING AP
Page 55 and 56: Christian Mager Fig. 2. Dotted char
Page 57 and 58: Christian Mager REFERENCES AMELLER,
Page 59 and 60: Flow-Design and Event-Based Compone
Page 61 and 62: Tobias Gegner analyzed for substant
Page 63 and 64: Tobias Gegner reformat text represe
Page 65 and 66: Tobias Gegner approach leads to Boa
Page 67 and 68: Tobias Gegner strict with the FD de
Page 69 and 70: Tobias Gegner 2.3.5 Tooling EBC are
Page 71 and 72: Tobias Gegner Components, software
Page 73: Tobias Gegner WESTPHAL, R. 2010E. Z

FHWS Science Journal - Fakultät Informatik und Wirtschaftsinformatik

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?