It's 2011 and another year has passed by. But in technology the years pass like dog years. It's barely believable that the term "App Store" had not entered the technology lexicon less than three years ago. Since the Apple launched the App Store, some 7 billion apps have been downloaded - that's equivalent to one download for every person on the planet. There's simply no denying that apps have changed the way people use their mobiles.
However, before Apple created the SDK for native app development they announced that the iPhone would be able to run applications created using web standards.
“Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great these applications look and work on iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable.”
This approach seems to have been lost in the stampede that followed to get into the app store, but apps created for one native platform cannot be run on another and the costs of developing a native application for each mobile platform; iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian and more can be prohibitive.
However, web standards have progressed slowly but surely and now represent a viable alternative approach to native development in certain cases with the benefit of working across multiple platforms including mobile and desktop.
HTML 5.0
HTML 5.0 is the next progression in web standards, but it's not seen likely to be finalised until 2022 - some 11 years from now. However, browsers are increasingly adopting the working standards and these features can be exploited today. It is worth noting that HTML 5.0 on it's own is not sufficient to build web apps, and both Javascript and CSS 3.0 are required to create apps. However, when developers refer to HTML 5 web apps, they are generally referring to this bundle of technologies.
In the next article in this series, we'll look at the technologies used in HTML 5 and what they do.
- Part 1 : Tech Spotlight: Native v HTML 5 apps
- Part 2 : Tech Spotlight: HTML 5 technologies
- Part 3 : Tech Spotlight: Why go native?
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