Professional Mobile Application Development

Chapter 2

Diving into Mobile: App or Website?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past three years, you know that mobile applications are the hottest technology since websites became popular in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Both of these technology explosions have similar traits, mainly revolving around people, companies, and developers trying to adapt to new technology and learning only enough to get the project done. Many developers read comics that poke fun of upper management learning buzzwords, from virtualization to cloud computing. If you are reading this book someone probably approached you with an idea to create a mobile application.

The parallels of the dot-com boom to the mobile boom start with nontechnical upper management and toys. In the late 1990s the toy was the Internet, and today it’s the iDevice. iDevices like the iPad and iPhone are making their way into upper-management hands; they like the ease of use, and feel that every application should be developed with a user interface that is as easy to use as the iDevices. Whether it’s a web app or desktop app, in most situations, entire user interfaces must be rewritten to get this type of user experience. I have worked with a few companies where the decision makers have completely replaced desktop computers with tablet computers. This creates a great number of issues for the IT staff. In many situations, these companies have a good point about the interfaces and applications that newer mobile devices ...