Are Native Mobile Apps Really Better Than Web Apps?

In general, there is a perception that native mobile applications can be directly downloaded from the Play Store and easily installed on your mobile devices. Therefore, native applications are considered as more user-friendly than web applications, especially in terms of their general features. Moreover, the higher sales figures of native apps also give great evidence for this view.

Are native mobile applications really better than web applications? Let us take a look:

Creation:
When concerning about the process of mobile application development, native applications do win hands down. As the native apps are customized for various mobile platforms, the entire coding is usually done by the in-house developers of mobile app development companies. Therefore, finding out bugs and releasing updates, and also monitoring the application analytics are easy and guaranteed.

Speed:
If you buy and install an application from an iPhone or a Blackberry application development company, it automatically becomes a part of your mobile device’s built-in features. Also, launching the applications on compatible handsets generally takes only a few seconds. However, web applications are typically slower as they require strong internet connectivity all the time.

Cost Factor:
From the perspective of professional mobile app developers, the cost of native mobile app development is considerably higher than the cost of web application development. On the other hand, the applications that are compatible across various different platforms can be rather pricey. Also, the time taken to build prototypes of native applications is also higher.

Usability:
According to the professionals from leading Android or iPhone mobile application development company, both web applications and native applications can be user-friendly. However, the native applications seem to have the edge here, as they can be seamlessly integrated with the mobile camera, audio/video recorder, and another handheld device features.

App Store Approval:
Suppose, if a mobile app development company has developed a new mobile application, then the company has to get approval for that application in order to display at the online app stores. Even then, there is no guarantee that the new application would be able to gain the interest of many numbers of users. However, web applications do not require such store approval; hence it is easy for the development company to promote the web applications.

Security:
As mobile applications are tested for their quality and approved by leading app stores, they are completely bug-free and secure. However, no such assurance is available for web applications, even though the popular web applications can be easily trusted.

Requirement of Internal Memory:
Native applications usually require a certain amount of memory space in handsets, especially for functioning in an efficient manner. This is the reason why a great importance is given when selecting a mobile application development framework that never consume too much of memory on mobile phones. Conversely, web applications do not require any extra memory space to be launched and operated.

Monitoring Application Performance:
A mobile app development company that is expertise in native application creation would generally have to build multiple versions of each application, depending on the platform on which it would be used. Also, the analytics for each and every native application must be tracked in order to get an idea about how the application is performing. When concerning about web applications, they generally have only one version that makes performance tracking every easy.

Finding the Necessary Applications:
With the range of web applications available, sometimes it becomes little tricky for users to find the ones that they generally need on their mobile phones. There is no confusion regarding native applications as they are systematically displayed on the Apple Play Store, Android Store and the Blackberry App Store. Choosing and downloading native applications are not very difficult than searching for appropriate web applications.

Maintenance:
Since native mobile applications basically require customized coding for various different platforms, their maintenance seems to be a little more challenging than web applications. As web applications have a cross-platform single coding involved, making changes or modifications is easier. Also, the maintenance cost of web applications is also lower compared to the cost of native applications.

In terms of both performance and quality, the native applications are mostly better than web applications. Also, native applications offer more user-friendly advantages when compared to web applications even though the later have several positive points of their own.

HTML5 and CSS3 – Lift up your web design to next level

HTML5 and CSS3 are the new techniques which are considered as the future of web development. However, you don’t have to wait to start using them for your web development. Because, even though the specification is still in development, most contemporary browsers and mobile devices already support these techniques.

Gone are the days when adding additional markup just to design a button in a different way or stripe tables. Now, you have to learn how to use HTML5 and CSS3 new markup to create a better structure for your website content and also better interfaces for your forms.

Using HTML5 and CSS3, you can able to embed audio, video and vector graphics into your web pages without using Flash. You can find how web sockets, cross-document messaging, client-side storage, and offline caching can make your modern web development easy, also you can discover how CSS3 makes it into style sections of your web page. You will get a clear idea about both the developing solutions that are backwards compatible and accessible.

HTML5:
HTML5 is the most recent version of Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. This technology is currently supported by only a few numbers of browsers, hoping to see more in usage by the next year. However, the features that are available now are a best possible way to become acquainted with HTML5 and add some fantastic elements to your website.
To avoid many bugs and crashes, refuse to allow Flash on the iOS and also learn how to use the more intricate features of HTML5 to develop apps and iOS-friendly websites. As Google is rolling out an HTML5-friendly version of YouTube, many web and mobile app developers have started to see how important this technique will become in the near future.
Every browser may support various features of HTML5 that makes it mandatory for those interested in programming to figure out which features they require and which will be supported by various different browsers.

Features of HTML5:
• Any HTML5 syntax needs a doctype that must be specified, so that the browser can provide the web page in standards mode. One important thing is that the doctype declaration has also been made simpler from previous HTML. Hence, it is now just: <!DOCTYPE html>
• HTML5 provides an outstanding support to both audio and visual. As soon as all browsers support HTML5, you can be able to easily add audio and video to your website without the need of other plugins.
• Using HTML5, you can easily edit the content of your website. Use the attribute “contenteditable” to effortlessly change your content on your website. To do this, just add contenteditable=“true” to any element.
• You can use the canvas element to bypass Photoshop in order to make your 2D images and directly add them in your code.
• The application cache allows you to easily navigate web applications, even though you are offline.

Why use HTML5?
• HTML5 gives you more flexibility when creating your website.
• As HTML5 generally implements Web sockets. Hence, it will load much faster than its older version.
• Using HTML5, you can create universal applications for all mobile devices. Therefore, mobile phone applications will become much more accessible if they are written in HTML5.
• Audio, video and images are all effortlessly written perfectly into the code. This eliminates the need for any other third-party software like Flash.
• HTML5 is growing more rapidly and this will be resulted in a number of features that will leave traditional websites looking outdated.
• As HTML5 is generally built on HTML4, the old markup can able to stay in place as you develop the new features.
• Both HTML5 and CSS3 together will provide some great designer credibility.

CSS 3:
CSS3 or Cascading Style Sheet 3 is a style sheet language that specifies style formatting, such as color, font, size and layout, for websites. This technique is mostly used in HTML pages. However, unlike HTML, CSS mainly focuses on the design and style of a website rather than its content. The main purpose of using CSS is to make changes on every page on a website without rewriting the code.
Even though CSS3 is not supported by all browsers that are available now, it is becoming very popular because it makes website changes so much easier, when compared with its previous version or JavaScript plugins.
CSS3 provides many exciting new features that help you to enhance the appearance of a website. Using CSS3, you can able to improve the functionality and appearance of your website exponentially.

Features of CSS3:
• Using CSS3, you can easily create a shadow around an element by using the same code, and also be able to change the color, position, and blur of that shadow.
• Rounded corners appear more user-friendly than square boxes. Using CSS3, you can apply this effect to HTML elements.
• Just like normal text, you can be able to add a shadow to HTML text that can be highlighted. Using CSS3, you can change the shadow blur, the shadow angle, and the shadow color in CSS.
• The property “opacity” can make elements more transparent. You can set the opacity of an image in an image editor and then save it with transparency enabled.
• With CSS3, you can create gradients right in the browser as soon as you load the web page.

Why use CSS3?
In fact, there is no high demand of innovation that CSS3 was developed, however, the possibilities that CSS3 could be able to provide for us. Before CSS3 has been introduced, web designers can able to create CSS to meet the expected result using images and markup. But, now, with CSS3, they can be able to create the same effects as layout images and extra markup with less effort and more dynamics. This not only helps in making changes easily, but also decreases the size of a web page with less number of images.

Conclusion:
Hence, the combination of both HTML5 and CSS3 are very powerful and can create incredible, high-quality solutions. So, it is mandatory for you to learn them and start using them from today, otherwise you will fall behind your competitors.