The question is: can mobile cross-platform frameworks be all things to all people?
Dovetailing nicely into my previous post is an article that examines whether cross-platform mobile hybrid apps can meet both the objectives of time/cost and optimal user-experience. The history of cross-platform application development has been one of mostly failure and is littered with dozens of efforts including the first “cross-platform” development language C and the most well-known effort, Java with its “write once, run everywhere” (that is not to say they were failures but that they were not successful in one objective which was driving cross-platform development). Given the cost of software development projects and the number of platforms needed to support, the nirvana that a developer can write the software once and have it work on other platforms, with little or no extra effort has been too attractive to ignore.
Obviously, one of the most important decisions in initiating a mobile app development project is which approach will be used; native, hybrid or web. The decision drives staffing needs, project timelines and platform support. The darling of the cross-platform hybrid app efforts is PhoneGap (and it’s lesser-known sibling: Titanium). However, because the frameworks try to support multiple platforms, each with its own approach to user interface design and functionality, quite often the user experience is less than ideal. By its nature, a cross-platform framework supports the least-common denominator and therefore does not bring out the best features of a particular mobile app. So, as an initiative manager, the project scale must be examined with time/cost on one pan and user-experience on the other pan to determine where the project falls on the native/hybrid question.
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