Some of you might ask how a horizontal portal like Liferay and iOS or android could be in the same sentence. I was a bit surprised to see this myself. Liferay recently announced Liferay Screens which is, “a collection of native mobile components that uses the power of Liferay Portal’s backend to build enterprise mobile apps.” Essentially, Liferay is giving you some tools to access their content, forms, login, etc without having to build it all from scratch.
I’m intrigued by this because a possible client recently said they wanted to build native apps from Liferay and my first question was, “what kind of native app would you build?” However, if you dig deeper in what Liferay Portal does, you can see some possibilities:
A view of the native app using Liferay Screens
- Liferay provides a web content system and native apps need to consume web content. Making it easier to consume content as a service makes sense
- Liferay has a list and forms tool set that makes it relatively easy to create a form and store the results. When used as a service, a developer can make both a web form and a form in a native app.
- Liferay also provides a host of other social networking and collaborative functionality
- It may not be critical but you can also use the Liferay login as well.
While I probably haven’t seen all the possibilities envisioned by the Liferay Community, it seems like Liferay Screens is a good start. Let me leave you with a final quote from an email they sent
As mobile becomes the preferred pathway to the Internet, our digital strategy must also include a roadmap for mobile audience targeting to ensure a personalized in-app experience for customers. Liferay Screens is the first step in expanding the reach of Liferay Portal to mobile devices without sacrificing a high-quality mobile experience.
