Cross-Platform Mobile Development: An Alternative to Native Mobile Development
2013 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Mobile devices and mobile computing have made tremendous advances and become ubiquitous in the last few years. As a result, the landscape has become seriously fragmented which brings lots of challenges for the mobile development process. Whilst native approach of mobile development still is the predominant way to develop for a particular mobile platform, recently there is shifting towards cross-platform mobile development as well.
In this thesis, a survey of the literature has been performed to see the trends in cross-platform mobile development over the last few years. With the result of the survey, it is argued that the web-based approach and in particular, hybrid approach, of mobile development serves the best for cross-platform development. Using the hybrid approach, a prototype application has also been developed and built into native application for different platforms. This has helped to get a better insight about the domain of cross-platform mobile development and its main advantage of the unification of the development and testing process.
The results of this work indicate that even though cross platform tools are not fully matured they show great potential and reduce the cost associated in developing native mobile applications. Cross-platform mobile development is equally suitable for rapid development of high-fidelity prototypes of the mobile application as well as fairly complex, resource intensive mobile applications on its own right. As the upcoming future trends and the evolution of HTML5 continues to redefine the web, allowing its growth as a software platform, there remains great opportunities for cross-platform mobile development and hence provides an attractive alternative for the native mobile development.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2013. , p. 61
Keywords [en]
Mobile development, literature survey, web-based approach, hybrid approach, crossplatform mobile frameworks, HTML5, jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap, Google Maps, Android, iOS, BlackBerry
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-30450OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-30450DiVA, id: diva2:664680
Subject / course
Computer Science
Educational program
Software Technology Programme, Master Programme, 120 credits
Presentation
2013-10-29, B3033, Linnaeus University, Växjö, 15:00 (English)
Supervisors
Examiners
2013-11-182013-11-152018-01-11Bibliographically approved