The times when only large companies had their own mobile application are long gone. Even 8-10 years ago, such solutions seemed unreasonably expensive and were more of a status indicator than an applied tool. In addition, development was carried out separately for Android and iOS, and you also had to pay for two versions. Much has changed since then: mobile accounts for more than 90% of all traffic, programming has stepped forward, application downloads break records every year, and a solution for mobile devices is available not only to large, but also to medium and even small businesses. You no longer need to choose one OS or pay twice for both. You can create a business solution for iOS and Android simultaneously thanks to cross-platform mobile application development.
What is cross-platform development
There are two approaches to developing mobile applications: native and cross-platform.
Native (from the English native - native), the name itself makes it clear that we are talking about something native. In this case, it is implied that a separate native code base is written for each platform in different programming languages. Following this approach means creating an application for each OS separately: development in the programming languages Kotlin or Java for Android and in the languages Swift or Objective-C for iOS.
Disadvantages of the approach:
- Expensive. Native mobile development is more expensive than cross-platform development: one team works on an Android app, and another on iOS. Or one team, but the solutions for the platforms are different and are written in parallel.
- Long. The native approach requires more resources and time. At a minimum, it is two codes, which means twice as much time.
- It is difficult to make two applications look absolutely identical. The functionality on the platforms, navigation, and design when creating a solution for each OS separately, no matter how hard you try, are different. With a different code base, it is strange to expect an absolutely identical interface and application operation.
But, as in any business, native development also has its advantages: high performance and availability of all functions without restrictions in each OS.
Cross-platform is a property of a program or, in our case, an application, that allows it to work on any device with any operating system. In the field of mobile development, this is a relatively new trend, but, in general, it is a completely normal requirement for software. The same programs, having one code base, should work equally well on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
The main difference from the native approach is that cross-platform development is a method in which an application is created for both iOS and Android at once. How it works: one code is written, and during compilation it is selected for which platform to adapt it. The framework shopify website design itself replaces the commands with those corresponding to the selected OS.
In a cross-platform approach, the code is not written in the native languages of the platforms, but other technologies are used. We will talk about them further.
React Native — JavaScript at its best
React Native is such a cool tool for creating cross-platform mobile applications that it has its own interesting legend about its origin. Paradoxically, it appeared as a resu lt of a mistake. It all started when Facebook decided to adapt its application for mobile devices, to make a web version in HTML5. And this version turned out to be a failure and inconvenient. After that, one of the Facebook programmers, trying to improve the solution, accidentally found out that JavaScript can be used to create UI elements in an iOS application. For the IT sphere, this was a discovery akin to the discovery of America for the rest of the world. A hackathon was quickly organized on this occasion to study it in more detail, and as a result of the hackathon, React Native appeared.
React Native is a framework or platform for developing mobile applications with an interface for both iOS and Android. The code is the same, the programming language is JavaScript with a small admixture of the JSX markup language. React Native is based on the React library, which is well-known among developers and is used to create web page interfaces.