Cross-app development has garnered more interest over the
years. Many consider it, the future of app development. So, why
is cross-platform development the new age beacon of business
growth? The sole reason is its ability to take your products to
new markets and consumers. Cross-platform apps provide
excellent audiences across platforms.
There are more than 3.5 billion smartphone users across the
world and reaching them needs great cross-platform apps. The
current state of app development technologies is more than
encouraging for your development needs.
Here, we are going to discover some amazing technologies for
cross-platform development and a guide on how to develop on?
Let’s first start with what is the difference between cross-
platform apps and other types.
How is Cross-Platform Development
Different?
Cross-platform app development is not platform-specific. As of
now, there are two major platforms in the market, one is Android,
and the other is Apple’s iOS. Both of them have 98% of the
market share among them. Native apps are developed according
to individual platforms that are either Android or iOS.
Cross-platform apps differ in this form. It is developed for the
users of both platforms. So, you don’t need to develop separate
apps for each platform. It helps you save money, time, and key
resources.
Yet, cross-platform development may be different from other
types of applications, hybrid apps come closest to beating it. The
hybrid app development explores the merger of native apps with
web applications. Most hybrid mobile app development services
can offer web app features wrapped in native elements.
Now, that we know how cross-platform apps are different, let’s
understand what are its benefits and downsides?
Cross-Platform Development:
Benefits:
Reusable Codes:
Cross-platform app development allows developers to use source
code across native platforms. That means you don’t need to hire
separate developers for native platforms. It allows developers to
reuse the 50-80% codes on different platforms.
Low-Development Time:
It helps to reduce the development time considerably. As you
don’t need to code for individual platforms, the time of
development reduces. It also encourages low-coding with
maximum code-sharing.
Easy on Budget:
Cross-platform development can help save money. For example,
a firm wants to develop an application for Apple devices, they
have to hire iPhone developer. But, when they want the same app
on AndroidOS, they have to look for an android app development
company. But, with cross-platform development, you don’t need
such extensive costs.
Faster Prototyping:
Prototyping is one of the most vital parts of app development.
Especially, companies tend to use Minimum Viable Product or
MVP. It helps faster MVP. The testing of beta functions and other
features becomes easy with low-coding. Developers can easily
test the apps without much change in the core of the app
architecture.
Downsides:
User Experience:
Creating a native experience in cross-platform apps becomes
difficult. The most native user interface is developed under
platform-specific environments. But, with cross-platform apps, it
is not that simple.
UIs developed for cross-platform apps lacks native experience. It
can affect the overall app experience and lead to lower app
traffic. To overcome such downsides, you can use technologies
like Flutter, but, we will come to that part later in our discussion.
Responsiveness:
Mobile responsiveness is one of the most important parts of
business today. When an average adult spends 2.3 hours a day
on mobile apps, non-responsive apps can be a revenue-killer.
When a user interacts with any app on the smartphone, it is
governed through a set of protocols. These are Application
Programming Interfaces or APIs.
In cross-platform apps, developers develop a common app logic.
Then apply the same logic across native platforms with a tweak
in the code. These tweaks of code affect the API and render
lower responsive apps.
We discussed what is cross-platform development. We also
discussed what are its advantages and disadvantages.
Now, is the time to look upon some amazing
Cross-Platform app development
frameworks that can help your firm in 2021.
Flutter:
Flutter is a cross-platform development framework. It is an open-
source framework with Dart as the primary programming
language. It follows a widget-based development for features of
apps. This is one of the most popular frameworks for cross-
platform development.
If you are looking for greater UI development and visualizations
of features, you should look for a Flutter app development
company to do it. They can help you leverage the widget-tree
concept in the Flutter for UI components.
React Native:
If you are talking about best cross-platform frameworks for
development, then React Native is right there among the elites. A
Javascript-based framework. It helps developers to easily write
their codes and develop native elements for Android and iOS
easily. It has a huge developer community for support.
They allow developers to perform complex activities like editing
the images or embedding videos. Developers can use their huge
repository and different development modules.
Xamarin:
Xamarin is an excellent cross-platform framework. If you
compare it with Flutter or ReactNative, Xamarin seems to be old
technology. But, that is not the case, It uses a single language
feature that makes code sharing very easy.
It allows 90% code sharing and is the highest so far. It supports
app development across Android, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS.
You can use programming languages like #c, .NET, and others
with Xamarin. It has been around for quite some time and has a
reputation for providing feature-rich apps.
Ionic:
Ionic is one of the popular cross-platform networks that have
indirect JavaScript support. It’s mostly based on AngularJs, which
is a JavaScript technology. It uses Cordova wrappers for native
elements. It supports languages like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript
for creating excellent UI features.
Conclusion:
Cross-platform app development can be advantageous to your
business. But it is equally important to gauge the project with proper
development planning. Here, we have tried to get to the answers on
questions like what is cross-app development? Why should you
choose it and What are the tools for cross-platform development?
Hope, you have all the answers you need and yet if you have any
doubt,
Feel free to share it with us in the below comment section!
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