Hybrid App – A Pace towards Hybrid Thinking

Overview – Probing through Mobile Applications development recently, one would stumble upon the concept Hybrid App. A mixture of dynamic content loading, integration with native apps and web based services, leads to Hybrid app. We are in a fast paced world, where huge information is accessible on hand 24/7

We are in the age of extraordinary use of Mobile apps. Banking, Travel, Finance, Navigation and a lot more, are used frequently on our Mobile devices.  Hybrid apps make it possible and they are the feasible solution to many problems.

Native App vs. Hybrid App Native app, resides fully on the local storage of a device. It is easily accessible and the performance is better. It does not require an internet connection to fetch app details on a phone. This ensures fastness. But on the other hand, it is platform oriented. So, it has to be custom-coded or custom-designed for each platform. This becomes cumbersome task.

Hybrid app is a result of integration of web applications with native browser. It has the finest ideas of native and web application pooled as one bundle. It is a generic application for numerous platforms. It works perfectly, even if they are not connected to internet. Overall, the development of such app is rapid and easy to maintain.

Resources for Hybrid App development – A good framework, speed and the look of the app, decides effectiveness of any app. Open Source offers various components and tools for such Hybrid app development. Some of them are

1.       Angular JS - Toolset

2.       JQuery

3.       Mobile optimized HTML

4.       Cordova – APIs

5.    PhoneGap, Ionic, OneSen UI, Kendo UI- Framework

6.       Appcelerator Titanium – Developer environment

Downsides of Hybrid App – Though we have so much to talk on Hybrid app best features. We do have some downside on this. Some of them are
1.       Slower compared to native apps

2.       Performance issues

3.       All aspects not covered by HTML5

4.       Many are rejected by Apple, as they expect them close to native apps.

Points to analyze for a Hybrid app development – Any hybrid mobile development, need a little analysis as groundwork. The following are some generic things to ponder:

Know the Mobile Operating System

Know the software and Hardware details

Learn about emulators, tools, SDK

Choose the best design for hybrid app

Choose a suitable framework, tools and open source elements for hybrid app

Know the best practices to integrate and make it as hybrid app

Know the best coding standards and optimization techniques

Choose Desirable Testing tools

Plan how debugging and maintenance has to be done

Know how to create best documentation to support the app

Conclusion – A huge buzz is going on Hybrid Apps, in the web designand mobile app development world. There is good amount of effort going in, to leverage of such hybrid apps. The future would be to encounter more efficient and robust hybrid apps for mobiles.
The need for Hybrid apps for mobiles is growing in numbers. Good amount of improvement is happening on the tools for Hybrid apps. It is expected that hybrid apps would hit the race in good speed.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) – The Demand of the Era

What is Response Web Design? Response Web Design is the DEMAND of the hour. So what is Responsive Web design? Have you ever noticed the progress in Technology recently! We have no restriction on screen size to view any information.

Adaptability - Laptop, Tablets, and Phones - whatever it may be the same information is available and viewable on all devices, in the same manner. This has been possible only due to the advent of Response Web Design since the year 2012. In 2013, there was remarkable leverage on web designs due to Responsiveness and it was even known as “The Year of Responsive Design”. The idea of grids and flexible layouts offers great help to designers. 

The Progress - Earlier, Coding was customized differently based on the screen size of the gadget or device. The present technology has leveraged and transformed these trends.  The layout adapts itself in the browser as per the screen size with the aid of Responsive Web Design.

Benefits of RWD

1. Lesser cost
2. Integration with Phones
3. Flexibility
4. Highly compatible
5. Enhanced view of websites
6. Preferred by Google
7. More appealing
8. Eliminates mobile website development need
9. URL remains the same

Mobile Friendly – The usage of mobile device is tremendously increasing. With the fast paced world, the demand of information access is growing boundless. Mobile devices, serve a multitude of purposes, like shopping, advertising, business purposes, news updates, social networking etc. RWD provides optimized way to handle all such demands.

SEO Friendly – It has been noted recently that Responsive Websites are more preferred, since the update of information in one spot, automatically is reflected on the other. This avoids repetitive work. For instance, SEO tasks need not be done over again exclusively for mobile devices or tablets. They are taken care of automatically once the SEO task is updates in desktop.

Marketing Friendly – The marketing methods have seen a big growth with email marketing, e-commerce etc. RWD has enabled the possibility of featuring Ad campaigns in an easy way and marketing the products.

How it works?

1.       On a desktop or laptop, you get the full view of a Responsive web site

2.       On a tablet, the design of website adapts and enables you to scroll sideways to view completely

3.       On a mobile device, the contents are stacked one below the other

RWD Style

1.    Optimized usage of technology

2.       One template for all devices

3.       Resizing of images

4.       Flexible fluid or elastic grids

5.       Fluid layouts, Scripts and Media queries

6.       Client-side processing – Whole website gets downloaded and then resizing occurs

Conclusion

Response Web Design is part of requirement of each client. One complete solution of designers to fit their design in different screen sizes. RWD has achieved a good market share too. It is expected to increase the user experience. The only disadvantage of RWD is the loading of entire content before resizing, which makes it bit slower. There would be a lot of advancement expected on RWD concepts in the future years. RWD has proved to be a one custom solution for user’s preferences and requirements. 

Mobile Web Design for the betterment of your venture

There has been immense growth in the field of mobile technology in the recent years. This is very certain from the increasing shown by companies and corporates to design a responsive website for themselves. This having become an indispensable element, isn’t that important to know details about its advantages and features so as to have a better understanding of the entire technology?

Key benefits of getting a mobile web design:

One of the primitive reasons to own a mobile web design is that it acts as a smart tool pulling visitors to your website. More importantly, if your business is focussed on customers on the go, it is a better way to go with these mobile web designs. Hotels, restaurants, online ticket booking, shopping solution, etc are some of the businesses that verily need mobile web design.

Never mind even if your business doesn’t seem to go with the flow along with latest technologies. You can enjoy every benefit of designing a mobile web design as it hugely helps elevate your business standard and reach among the public, and in the market as a whole. No matter what your business is about, your presence with a mobile web design will add the destined credit to your profile.

Unique features of mobile web design:

Before you choose to design a mobile web page, identify your own position on the web. Find out where you lie in Google by performing Google Analytics. This can brief you on the source of your website’s traffic. With this, you can have an approximate statistics of the number of users accessing your site from the PC or smartphones. Knowing this can be of help in performing tests with the respective device after the site is designed and developed.

Make sure your website has unique content in each of its pages. Your site may get penalized if similar or same content is repeated in multiple pages. Ensure to hire an experienced content writer who can provide unique content works for each of your pages. As a sign of benefitting the visitors to your website, make the number of images in your site restricted. The lesser is the image the better is the loading speed on phones. Allow the visitors have an enjoyable experience surfing through the pages. Though you may want Flash to enhance the look and feel of your site, it doesn’t help in fetching good results when viewed on phone. These aren’t mobile friendly and that’s very much to be remembered. More importantly, flash has nothing to do with helping SEO in Google, and hence you will have no loss in missing it out on your mobile site.

You may choose to go with a mobile app as well if you certainly need one. This can be made either free or paid depending on the need of users. This can bring a better experience and an enjoyable feel to your visitors too.