Volume 16, 2017 BROWSER APP APPROACH: CAN IT BE AN ANSWER TO THE CHALLENGES IN CROSS-PLATFORM APP DEVELOPMENT? Minh Huynh* Southeastern Louisiana University,
[email protected] Hammond, LA USA Prashant Ghimire Southeastern Louisiana University,
[email protected] Hammond, LA USA *Corresponding Author ABSTRACT Aim/Purpose As smartphones proliferate, many different platforms begin to emerge. The challenge to developers as well as IS educators and students is how to learn the skills to design and develop apps to run on cross-platforms. Background For developers, the purpose of this paper is to describe an alternative to the complex native app development. For IS educators and students, the paper pro- vides a feasible way to learn and develop fully functional mobile apps without technical burdens. Methodology The methods used in the development of browser-based apps is prototyping. Our proposed approach is browser-based, supports cross-platforms, uses open- source standards, and takes advantage of “write-once-and-run-anywhere” (WORA) concept. Contribution The paper illustrates the application of the browser-based approach to create a series of browser apps without high learning curve. Findings The results show the potentials for using browser app approach to teach as well as to create new apps. Recommendations Our proposed browser app development approach and example would be use- for Practitioners ful to mobile app developers/IS educators and non-technical students because the source code as well as documentations in this project are available for down- loading. Future Research For further work, we discuss the use of hybrid development framework to en- hance browser apps.