Abstract
Cross-platform frameworks for mobile application development are pervasive and allow developers to build applications that can operate on a spectrum of mobile platforms. With the high availability of such frameworks, it is imperative to give better understanding about the perception of industry and the challenges they face in this field. Although there are several studies in this field of research, only few research works investigate cross-platform mobile development in the industrial contexts in-depth. We conducted a qualitative research using multiple case-study approach. Interviews and focus groups methods were applied to gather information from four different software development companies in Palestine. This study aims at understanding industrial teams approach to mobile cross-platform development. In particular, it seeks to identify the challenges they face in the areas of code maintenance and software testing. Our findings cover the important aspects in industrial contexts, including the development process, as well as, how and why the cross-platform development approach is chosen. From the practitioners’ perspectives, we argue that the developers’ experience is the most influential factor in the development process. Further, our study investigates the different cross-platform technologies in the industry, and the dominant one from the practitioners’ perspectives, where they agreed that the React-Native is the promising and dominant technology. From the challenges perspective, we found that the APIs provided by the vendors are not easy to operate by developers and considered to be a major challenge. Finally, this research investigates how testing and maintenance methodologies are applied along with their challenges.
Highlights
RECENTLY, smartphones have become extensively utilized in different aspects of our modern life
Mobile app development is so different from traditional web and desktop applications and has its own peculiarities such as the need to deal with different platforms
Hybrid applications are developed based on Web technologies (HTML, JavaScript and CSS) but unlike the m-sites, they are not executed within the browser
Summary
RECENTLY, smartphones have become extensively utilized in different aspects of our modern life. Native approach uses programming language that is specific for certain mobile platform such as Java and Kolten for Android; and Swift for Apple devices. This means that the developed app using this approach can be run only on its particular platform. Hybrid applications are developed based on Web technologies (HTML, JavaScript and CSS) but unlike the m-sites, they are not executed within the browser Instead, they are run in a special web container with better access to device capabilities through a designed APIs. the use of non-native components in the interface harms the user experience, and the execution is slowed down by the load associated with the web container [5]. With the availability of these different options to develop mobile apps, we found it imperative to investigate the industrial perspective and the challenges they face
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