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Mobile App Development: Web or Native, That Is the Question

Dylan discusses the state of this crucial decision for application developers, with special applicability to Dojo users.

7:05 AM Mar 13 2012

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I'll save you a click-through and quote the main point.

The Web wins in the long term because of simplicity and loose coupling:

"With the gap between native and Web shrinking dramatically, applications that share a common, Web-standards-based code base are appealing and also a very real option," said Dylan Schiemann, CEO of SitePen and co-creator of the Dojo Toolkit JavaScript library. "Creating apps for each native platform, as well as the desktop Web, all with disparate technologies, is not my idea of fun, especially now that we are equipped with HTML5 and open-Web technologies like Dojo Mobile, Wink Toolkit, Maqetta and PhoneGap to create extraordinary mobile application experiences. By clearly separating data from user experience, it's possible to more efficiently create applications that target the platforms of today and tomorrow."

On the one hand, you get faster code execution with native code versus JavaScript. However, Web apps cost less to port to multiple platforms. Also, Web apps are easy to change and give developers more control over their content.

For the next few years, there will be speed bumps in the road.

Longer term, the Web wins.

12:59 PM Mar 13 2012

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