Modern Mobile Development

July 2017

• David Fekke
• Building mobile native app for 9 years 
• Swyft Technology L.L.C.
• Chief Mobile Architect
• Twitter: @davidfekke | @jaxnode
• Skype: davidfekke

Fun Facts

• 7 Billion people in the world
• 4.8 Billion have smartphones
• 4.2 Billion have toothbrushes

Developing for the World

• 100 of millions of PCs
• Billions of Mobile devices
• Developing world skipped land lines and PC revolution

Mobile First Web Dev

• If you are a web developer, you are a mobile developer
• Use Mobile first design
• Bootstrap 3 is a mobile first framework
• Mobile CSS should load first
• Use tools like WebPack to minimize JS and CSS content

Hybrid

• HTML/CSS/JS in a native container
• PhoneGap/Cordova
• Native functionality available through plugins
• Publish to AppStores

Native

• Build native using native languages
• Vendor supplied toolchains
• Best Performance
• APIs and languages more difficult to learn

JS bound Native apps

• React Native
• Native Script
• Uses native components bound by JavaScript
• Create truly cross platform native apps
• React is a Facebook OSS project
• Native Script is a Telerik OSS project

Unity

• Game Development
• Game Engine supports 2D and 3D
• Unity IDE
• Supports C#, UnityScript (i.e. JavaScript)
• iOS/Android OpenGL|ES Abstraction

Xamarin (Visual Studio)

• Started by Miguel De Icaza from Mono project
• Rebranded Visual Studio
• Now Visual Studio for macOS
• Write code in C#
• Share code between iOS, Android and Windows Phone
• Xamarin Forms shares native UI between platforms
• Sold to Microsoft last year

Mobile platforms

• iOS
• Android
• BlackBerry OS (moving to Android)
• Windows Phone (nevermind)
• Apple and Google own Smartphone space

You will target over 90% of the world smartphone market if you build for iOS and Android.

iOS

• Based on BSD Unix, Mach microkernel
• Core foundation came from NextStep
• Obj-C primary language
• C and C++ also supported
• Swift to the rescue
• Xcode IDE/Interface Builder
• $99 a year for developer membership

Android OS

• Based on Linux
• Purchased by Google
• Java Dalvik/Android Runtime (ART)
• Ahead of Time compiler with JIT
• Android Studio
• Can use native code w/ NDK
• Not posix compliant ☹️
• Hard to test because of thousands of Android devices

Windows Phone

• Build native apps with .NET and Xaml
• Less than 1% market share
• Build w/ Visual Studio
• Microsoft AppStore

Publishing to AppStores

• Apple Developer membership $99
• Google Play one time $25
• Requires certificates
• Many Rules to follow
• Need bank account and business to collect revenue
• App approval on iTunes Connect less than 2 days, Google a couple of hours

So Many Choices

• Web Only
• Hybrid
• Native
• React Native
• Xamarin

Languages

• Web/Hybrid: HTML5/CSS/JavaScript
• iOS Native: Obj-C/Swift
• Android Native: Java/Kotlin
• React-Native: JSX/JavaScript ES2016
• Xamarin: C#/F#

Uncanny Valley

Avoiding Uncanny Valley

• UI elements different between OSes
• JQuery Mobile shares same elements between operating systems
• Web, PhoneGap and Cordova bad choices for avoiding Uncanny Valley

Native Development

• Best user experience
• Superior performance
• Better Support for tools
• Sucks to have to write the same app twice

React-Native

• Use native UI
• 10-20% tradeoff in performance vs fully native
• You can use Web developers to build native apps
• Best code reuse between platforms
• Layout based on FlexBox
• Still new and buggy

Picking a framework

• Which OSes do I need to support?
• What kind of development experience does my team have? C++, .NET, Java?
• Is most of your development experience Web based?
• Is Best of breed more important than cross-platform?

Demo

Questions?

Resources

• developer.apple.com
• developer.android.com
• cordova.apache.org
• Tal Kol talk at ReactConf 2016
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abSNo2P9mMM