It wasn’t long ago that everyone was so crazy about Web based Applications. The good old Internet Explorer seemed to be the perfect tool to launch your company’s Enterprise Applications. People even had a vision of doing away with Office productivity tools and were looking forward to using some web based tool instead. The USP of the Web Based Tool being that it brought down the risks of having any dependency on the Operating System or environment of the desktop or laptop being used by the user. Proprietary Applications like Oracle Databases or SAP rushed to create a Web based client interface for their Applications. If the edge of Web based Applications still have an edge over stand alone applications then why are we seeing a rush towards Apps? Let us check out the reasons below.
- Browsers as a tool started upgrading themselves to suit to new needs, and Application Managers had to keep their Applications in line with new versions of Browsers.
- HTML language too evolved into newer versions.
- Browsers, which earlier did not need any configuration at the user end became highly configurable, and users felt the need for tech support just to run a browser, based application.
- The advent of browsers on smart phones and tablets brought about changes in the display characteristics and input device functionalities that required application developers to worry about them and modify their designs to let their applications be run from mobility devices.
- The smart phone has a whole new range of metadata and functionalities that was never available on laptops and desktops, e.g., GPS position information gives the location of a user and opens up huge potential of applications based on the information or the accelerometer and magnetic direction sensors of the mobile devices too are potential inputs that can be used to make very useful applications that were unheard before.
Mobility Devices, New Challenges To Computing
While we discussed the reasons for weaning the developers away from the browser based interface, the new App Developer Community found itself facing a new challenge. Apps for mobility devices were basically being developed in what is known as Native Code. This was a challenge as unlike laptops and desktops mobility devices have a wide range of processors and operating systems. This forced Native App developers to create multiple version of their software, which were mapped to different makes and models of devices.
This led to some leaders of technology take advantage of the situation to add the functionality of creating apps to their browser. This gave birth to Chrome Apps Development.
Chrome App Development
Chrome App Development gives the developer the benefit of ignoring the underlying processor and operating system of the computing device as long as the Chrome Browser can be run on the device. The added feature of enabling plugins/addins into the browser enabled the user to download a Chrome App and run the App. The whole process does not recognize the computing device characteristics except that the device has to provide some folders to store the app data and code, and the browser user needs to have access to use it.You can visit us at www.appsterhq.com.
