You want to build a an application once and deploy it to lots of different devices without much rework. That’s an age-old problem that we once thought would go away with modern web browsers. But now we have a new take on this issue: Web vs Native applications on mobile devices.
Well, two products are trying to help with build once, deploy anywhere: Adobe Flash Builder and IBM Web Experience Factory. These tools are targeted toward different kinds of developers, but they both have features that ‘easily’ target multiple devices.
Pick iOS in Flash Builder 4
Adobe Flash Builder: I understand that it is not widely known that Flash Builder will let you build native iOS applications, in addition to Flash and Flex applications. Holly Shinsky, @devgirlFL, explains how easy it is to use Flash Builder to create iOS applications using Flex/Air, both from Adobe. Here is a link to the article on her blog: Flex/AIR for iOS Development Process.
As you can see the image to the right, Apple iOS and Google Android applications can be generated right out of Flash Builder. Of course, you can’t deploy Flash applications to the iPhone, but Flex applications work fine.
IBM Web Experience Factory: IBM has just released Web Experience Factory Version 7.0.1. (Web Experience Factory used to be called Portlet Factory, but since it does so much more than build portlets, IBM wisely changed its name.) Web Experience Factory now includes Mobile and Multi-Channel support. This allows you to build one application and deploy it to Portal, WebSphere Application Server and now mobile devices. Here is a link to the announcement where you can get more details.
Applications built by Web Experience Factory are not native applications, but are web browser based. Support for mobile devices includes two new, cool features though. First, Factory uses its Profiling feature to allow you to target various devices in one code base. By enabling the mobile UI features, your application will tailor itself to various mobile devices, including iOS and Android. This video shows you how you can build a muli channel application using Facotry: Build multi-channel application in 13 minutes.
The second new feature in Web Experience Factory is the support for many device specific features such as Geolocation, selectable lists, phone numbers, etc.
You can access videos about Web Experience Factory here.
