ABSTRACT
Developers may either choose to build and optimize for one platform or build a multiplatform application that provides satisfactory performance on multiple platforms. This impacts the choice of a suitable
12.6 Testing mobile applications ................................................................. 230 12.7 Mobile web application technologies ................................................. 232
12.7.1 HTML5 ....................................................................................... 232 12.7.2 jQuery ......................................................................................... 233 12.7.3 JavaScript modules ................................................................... 234 12.7.4 Courses ....................................................................................... 234
12.8 Summary ................................................................................................ 235 References ........................................................................................................ 235
development tool, since many mobile hardware providers offer toolsets that are designed to develop optimized applications for their hardware. Hence, a major issue for mobile development is whether to develop native applications optimized for one class of hardware or to develop web-based applications where the mobile device is merely the user interface and performs very little data processing. In native code development, a significant part of the application’s code is placed on the mobile device. Hence, different versions of this code need to be developed and maintained for each mobile device on which the application is used. The web-based application approach is most beneficial from the developer’s perspective since it can be ported from established desktop/laptop browser-based versions, with the primary rework being limited to screen size variation for small mobile devices. However, many of the specialized features of mobile hardware can be accessed only through the code specifically designed for the device, and applications with a rich user experience need to be designed to optimize relatively scarce resources on the mobile device.
