Best cross platform mobile app

[William Spence]

So I showed the app that I have been developing on the desktop to many people and they think we need to bring it to the masses on mobile devices.  My app has to heavily process data that could take forever to process on a mobile device and display it in tabular form.  This would be inefficient.  So the plan is to do all of the heavy processing on a mainframe every night at 3am.  Then, a mobile user would only need to download the processed data when the app opens instead of processing it on the device, and they could sort and filter the data using the application as they see fit.  This would make it much more responsive.

I will be the first to admit that I am not a very good programmer.  I do not have the skills or time to write an app in different languages for each device and to maintain them.  I need a platform that I can write once and it will work on iOS and Android on both phones and tablets.  The only prerequisites that I have is that I can skin buttons for a customized look, plays nicely with arrays, and is very good at displaying webcontent such as pages or Google Maps.

My first thought was Adobe AIR, because I am already familiar with that language so the learning curve for doing a mobile app would be low.  But this is an app that would have a life of at least 5-10 years, and I am just sooo uneasy about Adobe's commitment to AIR in the long term.  We may try to sell this to a bigger company for their clients and investors to use and I don't know if they would have a lot of confidence in Adobe Air either.  I just absolutely love the platform though.

I have done a little searching and options like PhoneGap seem to be getting a lot of attention, but I have read a lot of negatives about writing code that handles complex processes.  So for all of you mobile developers, which is the best/easiest/reliable cross platform program to develop an app for?  Thanks for your thoughts!

[Lars Laborious]

Hi William,

I've made apps using Phonegap and will not recommend it. It sure performs poorly. The same goes for HTML5 apps. Native runs well, but doesn't give you that cross platform option. Considering how frequent Adobe is updating Adobe AIR I'd say they're committed. You might do a simple test with StageWebView to see if it works for you.

[Ismail_a]

Hi william,

When comes to cross platform mobile app development, I prefer xamarin is the right choice to develop mobile apps in both Android and iOS with same code base. It reduces the expenses and time taken for app development. For your clarity please go through the info about cross platform here https://www.wittyfeed.com/story/44601/cross-platform-mobile-app-development Hope it will be helpful for you

[zwetan_uk]

My first thought was Adobe AIR, because I am already familiar with that language so the learning curve for doing a mobile app would be low.  But this is an app that would have a life of at least 5-10 years, and I am just sooo uneasy about Adobe's commitment to AIR in the long term.

Considering that will be your first mobile app, just this has more risks compared to whatever tech you chose to build the app.

It's not about being uneasy because Adobe's commitment, its more about your commitment (as a dev) to the mobile app, for example

• testing, testing on devices
• maintaining/updating if/when bug on some devices
• signing the app, renew license over the years, re-sign, update, etc. cycle
• dealing with different mobile OS: iOS, Android
• dealing with screen size difference, retina display etc.
• dealing with the different app stores: Google Play store vs Amazon App store for ex
• memory/resources
• etc.

all those things have more chances to break your mobile app wayyyyyyyy before Adobe's commitment to Adobe AIR vanish ...