Evaluating usability of cross-platform smartphone applications

The computing power of smartphones is increasing as time goes. However, the proliferation of multiple different types of operating platforms affected interoperable smartphone applications development. Thus, the cross-platform development tools are coined. Literature showed that smartphone applications developed with the native platforms have better user experience than the cross-platform counterparts. However, comparative evaluation of usability of cross-platform applications on the deployment platforms is not studied yet. In this work, we evaluated usability of a crossword puzzle developed with PhoneGap on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. The evaluation was conducted focusing on the developer's adaptation effort to native platforms and the end users. Thus, we observed that usability of the cross-platform crossword puzzle is unaffected on the respective native platforms and the SDKs require only minimal configuration effort. In addition, we observed the prospect of HTML5 and related web technologies as our future work towards evaluating and enhancing usability in composing REST-based services for smartphone applications

THE NEW “UNIVERSAL TRUTH” OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB

We all see that the world wide web is permanently evolving and developing. New websites are created continuously and push the limits of the old HTML specs in all respects. HTML4 is the real standard for almost 10 years and developers are starting to look for new and improved technologies to help them provide greater functionality. In order to give the authors flexibility and interoperability and to enable much more interactive and innovative websites and applications, HTML5 introduces and enhances a large set of features, such as new form elements, APIs, multimedia elements, structure and semantics updates. The development of HTML5, started in 2004, is currently carried out by a joint effort of the W3C HTMLWG and the WHATWG organizations. A lot of important companies participate in this effort, including the largest browser developers: Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Apple. The specifications of the new “to be” standard is still work in progress and quite a way lies ahead before its completion. Taking into account this fact there is a certain possibility that the features presented below have already been somehow modified or changed even in the near future.html5, cross-platform, css3, JavaScript, mobile application development, flexibility, interoperability

Mobile application platform heterogeneity: Android vs Windows phone vs iOS vs Firefox OS

Modern smartphones have a rich spectrum of increasingly sophisticated features, opening opportunities for software-led innovation. Of the large number of platforms to develop new software on, in this paper we look closely at three platforms identified as market leaders for the smartphone market by Gartner Group in 2013 and one platform, Firefox OS, representing a new paradigm for operating systems based on web technologies. We compare the platforms in several different categories, such as software architecture, application development, platform capabilities and constraints, and, finally, developer support. Using the implementation of a mobile version of the tic-tac-toe game on all the four platforms, we seek to investigate strengths, weaknesses and challenges of mobile application development on these platforms. Big differences are highlighted when inspecting community environments, hardware abilities and platform maturity. These inevitably impact upon developer choices when deciding on mobile platform development strategies

Accessing the mobile web: myth or reality?

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring open web standard

Context-driven progressive enhancement of mobile web applications: a multicriteria decision-making approach

Personal computing has become all about mobile and embedded devices. As a result, the adoption rate of smartphones is rapidly increasing and this trend has set a need for mobile applications to be available at anytime, anywhere and on any device. Despite the obvious advantages of such immersive mobile applications, software developers are increasingly facing the challenges related to device fragmentation. Current application development solutions are insufficiently prepared for handling the enormous variety of software platforms and hardware characteristics covering the mobile eco-system. As a result, maintaining a viable balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue when developing mobile applications. This article proposes a context-aware software platform for the development and delivery of self-adaptive mobile applications over the Web. An adaptive application composition approach is introduced, capable of autonomously bypassing context-related fragmentation issues. This goal is achieved by incorporating and validating the concept of fine-grained progressive application enhancements based on a multicriteria decision-making strategy