Category: Hybrid App

Bade your byes to the platform-specific (native) application development where you have to build mobile applications for every platform individually. While it has its benefits, building mobile applications for every platform takes a lot of time and a lot more money. That is not something businesses look forward to as the market requirements change often and at times, erratically. 
The last thing businesses want is for them to build a solution when people no longer have the requirement or when the market becomes saturated.
Hybrid app development, on the other hand, requires one application that runs on all the platforms and costs less in comparison. Here are the four leading Hybrid App Development Technologies to look out for in 2020.

React Native 

Official Website: http://www.reactnative.com/

Git: https://github.com/facebook/react-native

React Native is an open-source mobile application framework built by the social media giant, Facebook. Ever since its release in 2015, React Native was widely adopted across the world for app development.Component creation and live-reload are some of the prominent features that make React Native preferable among other frameworks. Myntra, Uber Eats, Bloomberg, Airbnb, Discord, and Gyroscope are some of the well-known companies using React Native in their applications.

Ionic Framework

Official Website: https://ionicframework.com/

Git: https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic

Ionic’s rise can be credited to its ability to provide many native features in hybrid mobile app development. It is also built on AngularJS allowing a better and manageable mobile app architecture and design. It also provides the developers with the ability to customize the user interface with the themes and components. Not to mention, companies can switch to Ionic without any difficulties as it is extremely easy to learn and develop.

Onsen UI

Official Website: https://onsen.io/

Git: https://github.com/OnsenUI/OnsenUI

The brainchild of Asial Corporation, Onsen UI is an open-source UI framework for HTML5 hybrid app development. Onsen UI stormed the app development world with its stable release in July 2019 and is much younger compared to its counterparts. So it has just started to gain momentum and a must-watch-out framework for 2020.

Flutter

Official Website: https://flutter.dev/

Git: https://github.com/flutter/flutter

Although not exactly a framework, Flutter is always among the leading technologies if hybrid app development is the motive. Flutter is an open-source software development kit developed by Google with Dart programming language. Of all the benefits, Flutter is especially known for its Hot Reload feature which allows the developers to see the changes made in code without running the code every time. This greatly reduces the programming time. The use of widgets, less coding requirement, access to many native features, and official support are some of the other advantages of Flutter.

Hybrid app development still has a long way to go. 
Although it is being adopted at an incredible pace, it still loses to the native app development in terms of features and functionalities offered to be summated to the applications. But for the cost and time hybrid app development reduces for the companies, it is on equal standing with native app development. It actually comes down to the requirements of the companies. And by exploring the advantages and disadvantages of all the hybrid app development technologies, they can easily settle on the ideal framework that will assist the company in the long run.

Cross-Platform App Development is widely adopted by a lot of enterprises and is finally on-track to reach great heights. It is especially gaining traction for three things: one, low cost to build applications; two, super-easy maintenance; and three, one application for all the platforms.
And this blog is dedicated to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Flutter, one of the leading open-source cross-platform software development technologies developed by Google.

Pros of Using Flutter for Cross-Platform App Development

• Hot Reload

  The Hot Reload feature of Flutter greatly increases the speed of development. Usually, whenever developers make changes to the application, they have to run the app to see how the change has affected the application. But with Hot Reload, developers can see the changes instantly. 
  Hot reload keeps the application running and enables developers to make changes on the go.

• Less Code

  Flutter is entirely built with Dart, an object-oriented programing language. And this enables Flutter to not rely on a JavaScript bridge and thus increasing its overall performance. Flutter also uses less code to perform operations, which implies that it has got fewer bugs to worry about during testing.

• Widgets

  Widgets are essential to build fast, extensible, and customizable app interfaces. Flutter makes use of high-quality widgets to build faster UI. Developers also have the freedom to create their own widgets or customize the existing ones as required. Each widget created is a part of the hierarchy formed by the root widget, and all the widgets inherit the properties of the parent widget it is nested under.

• Support

  Flutter is backed by Google and has the support of a huge team of contributors. Despite being new, Flutter is already becoming a regular name of mobile app development. Flutter has a lot of updates scheduled to bridge the gap between various platforms and club them as one.

Cons of Using Flutter for Cross-Platform App Development

• Mobile-only

  Flutter is a mobile-only platform for app development and is not supported by web browsers. So if you are looking for a one-stop solution that caters to both mobile and web app responsibilities, Flutter may not be the right choice for your development.

• Limited Library

  Although Flutter has many helpful libraries with impressive functionalities, it is still relatively new. Not all the features that can be summated to native apps can be implemented with Flutter, at least not with the limited libraries it has. If developers need to add the functionalities, they will have to build libraries themselves, which is time-consuming.

• Continuous Integration

  Flutter is rapidly evolving, but as of now, it is not supported by Travis and Jenkins CI platforms. However, Travis and Circle CI platforms can be used by setting up the toolkit to achieve automatic building, testing, and deployment. 

Google plans to bring app development under one wing: Flutter. It aims to bring out the complex visuals and the performance of native apps with the help of its Dart powered software development kit. Although Flutter has a few inconsistencies to overcome, the upcoming releases are expected to address them.