With the mobile market continuing to grow, developers must create apps for a large range of devices, so that all users can have a good experience working with the apps. The two ways to develop mobile applications are native development and cross-platform development. The first targets a specific operating system, meaning iOS or Android, while the latter can target multiple operating systems. Cross-platform frameworks can help developers target both iOS and Android at the same time, by sharing a single code-base. This can save time and resources because developers don’t have to maintain multiple code-bases.
What Are Cross-Platform Frameworks?
Cross-platform frameworks let you use a single project for all targeted operating systems. With cross-platform development, you can write code that converts into native code using languages like JavaScript, C#, and Java, which aren’t specific to a particular platform. This approach contrasts with native app development, which requires platform-specific programming languages. By writing code only once and deploying it across many platforms, you save time and resources, resulting in shorter development cycles.
Commonly used cross-platform frameworks like Xamarin, Flutter, or React Native, offer a variety of features and packages that let developers create visually appealing and highly efficient applications. Because they usually include pre-built components, native device capabilities, and many plugins and extensions, these platforms are flexible and strong.
Benefits of Cross-Platform Apps
So what are some of the most important benefits of working on cross-platform frameworks?
- Reusable Code: Cross-platform apps let you write a single codebase for both iOS and Android. Instead of needing two separate teams for native apps, one team can manage both platforms, saving a lot of time.
- Reduce Costs: Developing for multiple platforms can be costly, but cross-platform apps help lower expenses. Updates and bug fixes apply to a single codebase, reducing maintenance costs. Plus, one team can handle all operating systems, cutting down on personnel expenses.
- Wider Audience: By creating an app that works on multiple platforms, you can reach more people and gain a larger market share. Instead of targeting users on a single platform, like just Android or Apple, you target both.
- Easy Maintenance: Cross-platform apps share a codebase, making maintenance and upgrades quick and simple. Developers work on a single codebase instead of modifying several platform-specific ones, which lowers maintenance expenses and minimizes app downtime.
- Consistency: There are design and navigational variations between iOS and Android. Cross-platform programming handles most common UI variations by default. Even in a highly communicative team, minor variations in function implementation can occur with native development. Cross-platform programming avoids this since the platforms use the same codebase. It also helps create a consistent brand identity for apps across both platforms.
- Fast Time-to-Market: For new product lines and businesses, quick time-to-market is crucial. Shipping the product early helps you start receiving positive user reviews sooner. Cross-platform app development is ideal here because it’s quick to develop and iterate. Native mobile development, on the other hand, takes more time and is more difficult to maintain, delaying time-to-market.
Challenges in Using Cross-Platform Frameworks
However, there are also a few downsides to working with cross-platform development:
- Lower Performance: Performance is one of the most important features. Many factors can influence it, but generally speaking, a native application will be a little faster compared to a cross-platform application with identical functionality. These performance variations are typically minor, though, particularly for straightforward applications.
- Delayed Feature Integration: When new SDK versions for native frameworks include updates and new features, cross-platform frameworks usually require an additional upgrade to use these more recent features.
- Complex Code: Cross-platform apps must update their features and design to work on both platforms, which can differ greatly from one another, as well as on particular devices. This forces developers to deal with particular exceptions for a range of devices and platform variations, adding to their workload, particularly for more complex features. Since these difficulties are less common in native apps, developers can focus on resolving user issues.
Final Thoughts
Developers face challenges when creating apps for both iOS and Android simultaneously because native development requires different languages, APIs, and tools for each platform. This often necessitates separate teams for each operating system. In contrast, cross-platform technologies enable developers to use frameworks like React Native, Flutter, and Capacitor, which offer unified APIs and simplify access to native features with well-documented code.
Developers still need to be familiar with tools like Xcode and Android Studio, but they can rely on cross-platform frameworks for daily tasks, resulting in faster development and shorter time-to-market. Cross-platform development also allows for specific components to be implemented natively. This approach provides significant advantages, including reduced time and cost, flexibility in integrating native elements, and access to extensive libraries, which enhance overall efficiency in app development.
