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Main stream tool. For example it can be
evaluated with measuring size of community, count
of bug fixes, count of updates, and count of
responses to submitted problems.
Open Source is another criterion that may not be
obligatory, but could be beneficial if the developed
solution is based on open source tools and
technologies. Open source solution also partly relate
to satisfying demand for extensibility. A widely used
and supported licence type is also beneficial, such as
GNU General Public License (GPL) or MIT license
(MIT).
Functionality relates to which mobile device
features are supported by selected tools. Typical
mobile device features include contacts,
accelerometer, camera, compass, files, geolocation,
media, network, storage, barcode scanner, alert
notifications, sound notifications, etc (Corral, Sillitti,
et al. 2012).
3 SOLUTION IDENTIFICATION
FOR BUSINESS APPLICATION
As for typical application profile we chose simple
business applications that include catalogue of
services, graphical details and functionality to
perform simple monetary deals.
Criteria for framework:
1. Supported platforms: Android, Apple iOS, RIM
(BlackBerry), Windows Phone 7.
2. Single code base solution.
3. Size of tools (plug-ins) repository. As count of
published tools (up to February 1, 2013).
4. Count of updates (up to February 1, 2013).
5. Count of registered members in the community
(up to February 1, 2013).
6. Open source solution.
7. Supported mobile device functions:
accelerometer, contacts, camera, files,
geolocation, media, network, storage, barcode
scanner, alert notifications and sound
notifications.
Leading and often mentioned (Christ, 2011;
Corral, Janes, et al., 2012; Espada et al., 2012;
Corral, Sillitti, et al. 2012; Newman, 2011) hybrid
application development frameworks are
RhoMobile, Corona, Appcelerator and PhoneGap.
We performed evaluation of those frameworks
compliance to criteria.
Based on performed analysis (see Table 1) it can
be seen, that highest compliance to criteria reach
Adobe PhoneGap.
Adobe PhoneGap other advantage are that
applications are built using common web
technologies such as HTML and CSS (Myer, 2012).
For example, RhoMobile requires knowledge of
Ruby language. However, Adobe PhoneGap main
disadvantages include, application is rendered using
platform’s web browser engine, not individual native
user interface objects and each mobile platform
requires installing appropriate SDK.
Another part of typical development process is
application styling. In a lot of cases it has same
importance as functionality of developed
application. There are several possible solutions
available that contribute application development
with hybrid development method. Popular and often
mentioned ones are JQTouch, JQuery Mobile,
SenchaTouch, DojoMobile (Corral, Sillitti, et al.
2012; Firtman, 2012).
In most cases these solutions physically are
JavaScript libraries that have to be added to the
developed application.
Table 1: Identification of hybrid framework for
development of business applications.
Criterion
No.
RhoMobile
Corona
Appcelerator
PhoneGap
1. + - - +
2. + + + +
3. N/A 22 N/A 77
4. 6 N/A 10 16
5. 2716 N/A N/A 15095
6. - - - +
7. + + + +
Criteria for styling solutions:
1. Size of tools (plug-ins) repository. As count of
published tools (up to February 1, 2013).
2. Count of updates (up to February 1, 2013).
3. Count of registered member topics in the
community (up to February 1, 2013).
4. Open source solution.
5. Footprint, which is the size in KB of script
code. This criterion has importance on
execution speed of particular solution as script
is loaded into memory before starting to
execute functions of the script.
Table 2 shows comparison of identified solutions.
Based on performed analysis of styling solutions
(see Table 2) it can be seen, that highest compliance
to criteria reach JQuery Mobile. Main benefits of
this framework are the plug-in repository, longer
Cross-platformSolutionforDevelopmentofMobileApplications
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