Are you wondering what is a hybrid application, what we use it for, how to create it, and how to use it? In this article, I will try to introduce you to this topic.
Let's start at the very beginning. It divides mobile applications into three types:
- Native Applications
- Web Application
- Hybrid Application
Mobile hybrid applications are a combination of native and web application solutions. They are built similarly to websites using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript technologies. However, compared to them, we do not use the browser to use them, but we download them similarly to native applications from the application store.
The most popular tools
The most popular tools for building hybrid applications are:
- IONIC
- Mobile Angular UI
- Intel XDK
- Titanium Appcelerator
- Sencha Touch
- Kendo UI
- PhoneGap
- Flutter
Hybrid application
Using this solution gives us the opportunity to make greater use of the potential of our smartphones in the web application, using libraries, enabling access to some native functions of our phone, such as the camera, GPS, calendar or many others, to which the access to the web application was limited or impossible.
Differences between hybrid and native
Applications
A well-written and optimised hybrid should not differ from the native application, also in appearance. As a result, the user may not notice that he is using a hybrid. In addition, its creation time is much shorter than with a native application because we write the application once, and it is available on three operating systems. For native applications, we need three different applications written in subjective-C (iOS), Java (Android) and C # (Windows Phone). Hence, the costs of writing a hybrid are incomparably lower, which is often important when choosing the application to be written.
Disadvantages of Hybrids
Unfortunately, no solution is ever perfect. For large, complex applications and games where speed is important and the application is not cut, the hybrid gives way to a native colleague. However, this changes over time and the speed of such an application continues to increase with the development of technology and faster mobile devices.
The most popular hybrid applications
Here is a list of some of the most popular hybrid applications that many people would never suspect that this technology was used to create:
- Amazon App Store
- Evernote
- Twitter
- Apple App Store
- Gmail
- Uber
- Instagram
RWD
By writing a hybrid application, we can adapt it to various types of devices, such as phones or tablets, so that its appearance changes depending on resolving the device, so that the application always looks nice and provides a friendly and comfortable environment for the user.
Summary
If
- We have a limited budget.
- we want to create an application quickly,
- the application is not too complicated, extensive, and demanding
... we can safely start writing a hybrid application. Otherwise, it may be better to write a native application.