The Pros and Cons of Cross-Platform App development and Design

Where finding solutions are now fast as ever, no one can wait to open their laptops to search or surf something instead they simply use their smart phones for it. It’s like the whole world is getting compact and its solutions are right there in your hands just few touches away. Hi, in today’s blog let’s talk about advantages and disadvantages of cross platform mobile application development over native apps for your mobile application development and designs.

If we look into the current scenario, the popular mobile operating systems are android, iOS, windows and Blackberry. Now comes the major challenge i.e. with so many platforms, developers have to create applications which are targeted at the specific mobile platforms means different programming languages for each. So, even organizations are forced to develop applications for all these major platforms in order to reach the maximum users and their consumers. Therefore, to resolve this problem, cross-platform come into the picture and proves its worth.

The idea behind most cross platform is to save time over the development and coding becomes easy over the different platforms and it can easily be complied with multiple platforms. Even if, these frameworks are easy to use and compile with, it got few pros and cons using it.

Pros

1. You can reuse the codes: It got some standard coding system so rather writing codes for each platform, a developer can write the codes once and later can use that standard codes for different platforms with minor changes and requirements. 

2. Easy to use: It’s easy for the developers since most of the frameworks are dynamic, so it becomes easy for a web developer to jump in and use. And more and less, most frameworks also support HTML5 and CSS3 so it gives an appeal to more native apps. 

3. Plug-ins: It offers an easy access to all plugins and modules that can easily plug into other services or tools.

4. It reduces development cost: Well this is the biggest advantage offered by a cross-platform service. 

5. Deployment is easy: Deploying and compiling apps is much faster in a cross-platform setup. This is especially beneficial for all those cloud based build tools with that various frameworks used to start. 

6. It supports cloud and enterprise services: It directly integrates with all cloud services and other enterprise platforms.

Cons

1. No high end graphics and 3D: For those game centric platforms there is still lot to come and develop but right now the services are limited.

2. Code might not run that fast as other do: The cross-compilation process can sometimes be slower because it can take longer to load.

3. The framework might not support all the features of that OS or device: The framework being used will need to be updated each time to support all those new functionalities and at times it lack doing it so.

4. You can’t always use your own tools: Most frameworks want users to use their own development tools and suites, but here it lacks a little. 

5. Vendor Lock-In: This is one major limitation with cross platform framework. Lot of frameworks are build with Javascript and hence if you wish to move this to another OS, therefore the code you used is not going to work here. 

So at the end, I would like to conclude every coin has its flip side. Technology is boon or bane, only you decide. It’s you who is going to use it and how you are going to use it. So, make a choice with a proper planning and requirement which can help you further.