Survey on Techniques for Cross Platform Mobile Application Development
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering & Technology (IJARCET) Volume 3 Issue 10, October 2014 Survey on Techniques for Cross Platform Mobile Application Development Apurva P. Pawar, Vandana S. Jagtap, Mamta S. Bhamare Abstract— Smart phone is used by most of the population. Different internal architecture of Operating System Over thousands of applications are used daily and a new becomes a reason for redevelopment of application to make it application gets launched as per need. In order to do work on run on each Operating System which in turn incurs lot of cost phones itself many desktop applications are getting converted to mobile version by developers. And it’s real challenge to market in terms of time, money, efforts. Consider example of are these applications and reach to the maximum users. From document editor software like Adobe Reader and Kingsoft developer point of view for application to reach to most of the office. People are also doing work through their Smartphone end users it need to run on max platforms, this needs too. It‘s not necessary that everyone is using windows redevelopment of application, we can solve this problem to some operating system on their Smartphone. Each mobile operating extent by developing cross platform application without system uses different programming model, developer would additional investment. Several techniques are available which will help to make it happen. Survey of these techniques could require additional overhead and troubleshooting since help application developers to make a proper choice. developer might have good hands on particular single platform. Hence, making software as cross platform Index Terms— Cross Compiled Approach, Cross Platform application can be a good option. Application, Cross Platform Application Development Tools, This paper will give an idea about techniques which are Hybrid approach, Interpreted Approach, Web Approach. used in platform independent application development. Section II explains the approaches used for cross platform development and section III and IV gives tools available for I. INTRODUCTION cross platform application development and comparison Now Mobile communication is being used by nearly half of among them respectively. the people all over world. In last four years a billion of subscribers got added making total mobile subscriber count as 3.2 billion. After observing huge growth rate of subscriber II. APPROACHES TO BUILD CROSS PLATFORM APPLICATIONS and product invention, we can make a statement that this An application can be made cross platform using different growth will cross 4 billion adding approximate 700 million methodologies. Some methodologies concentrate on the subscribers up to 2017 [1]. Earlier Phones were capable of application construction phase to achieve this, while some just basic functionalities like call and sms; however, there concentrate on the application execution phase. Each were some which are shipped with browser providing some methodology has its own purpose and context. Primarily cross advance features [2]. Along with this Smartphone platform development approaches can be classified as given advancement some major industries entered in mobile market below. to make their prominent identity in mobile application In Web Approach, application built is mainly designed to development. In past few years Google‘s ‗Android‘, Apple‘s run on web browsers of device and is accessed using URL; ‗iOS‘, Microsoft‘s ‗Windows Phone 8‘ and BlackBerry‘s thus mobile device doesn‘t need any installation of application ‗BlackBerry 10‘, Symbian are found to be leading market related component. These application uses HTML, CSS, holders. JavaScript for development. Browser based application itself According to IDC which is Worldwide Quarterly mobile becomes platform independent, thus output of application Phone Tracker, Android has captured top position in market development using this is platform independent [4]. shares followed by iOS at second and Windows Phone third; Though applications developed using web approach have limited access to device data and hardware, but instead data it and also they are going to be major mobile Operating System uses is server driven, there are Many software libraries like players up to 2017 [3]. This, paper will be more focused on Sencha Touch,WebApp.net, JQuery Mobile, JQTouch. technologies applicable to them. provide functionalities that could be used to simulate these applications with device features [4][5]. Though applications developed using web approach have Manuscript received Oct, 2014. Apurva P. Pawar, Department of Computer Engineering, MAEERS limited access to device data and hardware, but instead data it MIT, Pune. uses is server driven, there are Many software libraries like Vandana S. Jagtap , Department of Computer Engineering, MAEERS Sencha Touch,WebApp.net, JQuery Mobile, JQTouch. MIT, Pune, India. provide functionalities that could be used to simulate these Mamta S. Bhamare, Department of Computer Engineering, MAEERS MIT, Pune, India. applications with device features [4][5]. ISSN: 2278 – 1323 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJARCET 3551 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering & Technology (IJARCET) Volume 3 Issue 10, October 2014 III. TOOLS AVAILABLE FOR CROSS PLATFORM APPLICATION C. Adobe AIR DEVELOPMENT Adobe AIR framework can be called as multi-screen, Cross platform applications means developing single multi-operating system runtime, can be used by developer application or writing single source code and get it executed with good web development skills for building a rich internet on different platforms. While development of mobile Application(RIA) for desktop as well as mobile devices. application developer checks for technique which will be best Adobe AIR uses HTML, JavaScript and Ajax for application to save money, avoid learning new languages and make building. You can make use of any of the technology among application fit for maximum devices. Due to different Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax as per your software architecture and varying device hardware capability experience for example, application can be build using single or combination of Flash / Flex / ActionScript or HTML / it‘s a challenge to deploy single code base application on JavaScript / CSS / Ajax. User interaction to Adobe AIR is multiple platforms. exactly same as that with native applications, application Cross platform development tools gives a solution. There runtime is installed at one time and it can be used as native are number of tools available for cross platform development application. Extension of web-based applications to the for example, Rhodes, Titanium, PhoneGap, Xamarin, desktop is possible without need to learn traditional desktop MoSync, IBM Worklight, Corona, Marmalade, Adobe Air, development technologies or the complexity of native Dragonard. code[8]. A. Appcelerator’s Titanium Adobe AIR can build application for Windows and Mac OS desktops as well as iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, Titanium is an open source cross platform application and other Android™ devices [9]. development framework introduced by Appcelerator in December 2008 approved through license of Apache 2. D. Qt Framework provides an integrated environment to build wide Qt, a cross platform development framework provides a range of mobile applications and also some cloud services Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called Qt which can be used by backend of application. It supports Creator for building application and user interface for desktop model view controller model. and mobile. It provides support for iOS and Android among Titanium can be used independently or in combination with mobile operating systems and also desktop operating systems other tool like phoneGap. Application development using like Linux, OS X and windows. Titanium SDK and an integrated development environment is With Qt reuse of code is possible. Qt Creator provides free of cost but for additional cost need to be paid for tools for application design and development with the Qt analytical capabilities and cloud services [6]. application framework. Tools provided by Qt Creator helps in Appcelerator Titanium comes with Alloy framework where accomplishing all task during application development life user interfaces is designed using XML and CSS. Alloy has cycle that is from creation to deployment of application on added Titanium style Sheet abbreviated as TSS which works targeted platform. Qt provides two different integrated visual similar to CSS to apply styles to application. The editors for intuitive, modern-looking, fluid user interfaces and application_name.tss file contains complete styling for a traditional user interface that is clearly structured and information for project maintaining consistency across views enforces a platform look and feel known as Qt Quick and Qt in complete application. Designer respectively [10]. B. Corona SDK E. Sencha Touch Cross-browser applications, games, and e-books can be Sencha Touch is HTML5 mobile application framework. created using a mobile development platform known as One can experience native application like experience in Corona SDK, which provides faster application development hybrid shell or inside a browser. First version of Sencha than traditional way. It uses a scripting language called as Lua. Touch known as beta i.e version 0.90 was launched on 17th It is possible to incorporate Game Center, sprite sheets, social july,